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Bruce Springsteen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bruce Springsteen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ram Stone  |  by en.wikipedia.org. All rights reserved. 15.04 | 17:33

Cities such as , inspired the themes of ordinary life in Bruce Springsteen's music.

From 1969 through 1971, Springsteen performed around New Jersey with , and in a band called Child, later renamed Steel Mill. They went on to play at in Richmond, VA, and also in .

During this time Springsteen also performed regularly at small clubs in and along the , quickly gathering a .
Even after gaining international acclaim, Springsteen's New Jersey roots reverberated in his music, and he routinely praised "the great state of New Jersey" in his live shows. Drawing on his extensive local appeal, he routinely sold out consecutive nights in major New Jersey and venues and, much like the , his song lists varied significantly from one night to the next.

He also made many surprise appearances at and other shore nightclubs over the years, becoming the foremost exponent of the .
Springsteen seems to have come to terms with his longstanding nickname "The Boss," which he was initially reported to dislike—he sometimes jokingly refers to himself as such on stage. The nickname originated when a young Springsteen, playing club gigs with a band in the 1960s, took on the task of collecting the band's nightly pay and distributing it amongst his bandmates.


Springsteen signed a solo record deal with in 1972, with the help of , who had signed to the same a decade earlier. Springsteen brought many of his New Jersey-based colleagues, including Van Zandt, into the studio with him, thus forming the E Street Band. His debut album, , released in January 1973, established him as a critical favorite, though sales were slow.

Because of his lyrics-heavy, -rooted music exemplified on tracks like " " and "For You," as well as the Columbia and Hammond connections, critics initially compared Springsteen to Bob Dylan. "He sings with a freshness and urgency I haven't heard since I was rocked by ' '," wrote magazine editor Peter Knobler in Springsteen's first interview/profile, in March, 1973. Crawdaddy "discovered" Springsteen in the rock press and was his earliest champion.

Famed music critic wrote in , 1975, that when Springsteen's first album was released...

.."many of us dismissed it: he wrote like Bob Dylan and , sang like Van Morrison and , and led a band that sounded like Van Morrison's.

" The track "Spirit in the Night" especially showed Morrison's influence, while with "Lost in the Flood" Springsteen presented the first of his many portraits of .
In September 1973 his second album, , came out again to critical acclaim but no commercial success. Springsteen's songs became grander in form and scope, with the E Street Band providing a less folky, more R B vibe and the lyrics often romanticizing teenage street life.

"4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" and "Incident on 57th Street" would become fan favorites, and the long, rousing " " would rank among Springsteen's most beloved concert numbers.
In the , issue of 's , music critic wrote after seeing a club performance, "I saw rock and roll's future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.

" Landau subsequently became Springsteen's and , helping to finish the epic new album, . Given an enormous budget in a last-ditch effort at a commercially viable record, Springsteen became bogged down in the recording process while striving for a production. But, fed by the release of an early mix of " " to , anticipation built toward the album's release.


On , , Springsteen and the E Street Band began a five-night, 10-show stand at New York's club; it attracted major media attention, was broadcast live on , and convinced many skeptics that Springsteen was for real. (Decades later, magazine would name the stand as one of the 50 Moments That Changed Rock and Roll. ) With the release of on , , Springsteen finally found success: while there were no real hit singles, " ", " ", "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out" and " " all received massive airplay and remain perennial favorites on many stations to this day.

With its panoramic imagery, thundering production and desperate optimism, some fans consider this among the best rock roll albums of all time and Springsteen's finest work. It established him as a sincere and dynamic rock roll personality who spoke for and in the voice of a large part of the rock audience. To cap off the triumph, Springsteen appeared on the covers of both and in the same week, on of that year.

So great did the wave of publicity become that Springsteen eventually rebelled against it during his first venture overseas, tearing down promotional posters before a .
A legal battle with former manager kept Springsteen out of the for over two years, during which time he kept The E Street Band together through Despite the optimistic fervor with which he often performed, the new songs he was writing and often debuting on stage had taken a more somber tone than much of his previous work. Reaching settlement with Appel in 1977, Springsteen finally returned to the studio, and the subsequent sessions produced (1978).

Musically, this album was a turning point of Springsteen's career. Gone were the rapid-fire lyrics, outsized characters and long, multi-part musical compositions of the first three albums; now the songs were leaner and more carefully drawn and began to reflect Springsteen's growing intellectual and political awareness. Some fans consider Darkness Springsteen's best and most consistent record; tracks such as "Badlands" and "The Promised Land" became concert staples for decades to come, while the track "Prove it All Night" received a significant amount of radio airplay.

Other fans would prefer the work of the adventurous early Springsteen. The cross-country to promote the album would become legendary for the intensity of its shows.
By the late 1970s, Springsteen had earned a reputation in the pop world as a songwriter whose material could provide hits for other bands.

had achieved a U.S. No.

1 pop hit with a heavily rearranged version of Greetings' " " in early 1977. reached number 13 with her take on Springsteen's unreleased " " in 1978, while hit No. 2 in 1979 with Springsteen's also-unreleased " ".


Springsteen continued to consolidate his thematic focus on life with the in 1980, which finally yielded his first hit single of his own, " ", but also included an intentionally paradoxical range of material from party rockers to intense piano ballads. The album sold well, and a followed, featuring Springsteen's first extended playing of Europe and ending with a series of multi-night arena stands in major cities in the U.S.


Springsteen suddenly veered off the normal rock career course, following The River with the stark solo in 1982. According to the biographies, Springsteen was in a state when he wrote this material, and the result is a brutal depiction of life. The title track on this album is about the murder spree of .

The album actually started (according to Marsh) as a demo tape for new songs to be played with the E Street Band - but during the recording process, Springsteen and producer Landau realized they worked better as solo acoustic numbers; several attempts at re-recording the songs in a studio led them to realize that the original versions, recorded on a simple, low-tech four-track cassette deck in Springsteen's kitchen, were the best versions they were going to get.
While did not sell especially well, it garnered widespread critical praise (including being named "Album of the Year" by magazine's critics) and influenced later significant works by other major artists, including 's album, . It helped inspire the musical genre known as , becoming a cult favorite among .

Springsteen did not tour in conjunction with Nebraska's release.
Springsteen probably is best known for his album (1984), which sold 15 million copies in the U.S.

alone and became one of the best-selling albums of all time with seven singles hitting the top 10, and the massively successful world tour that followed it. The was a bitter commentary on the treatment of , some of whom were Springsteen's friends and bandmates. The song was widely misinterpreted as , and in connection with the became the .

Springsteen also turned down several million dollars offered by for using the song in a car commercial. (In later years, Springsteen performed the song accompanied only with acoustic guitar to more explicitly make clear the song's original meaning. An acoustic version also appeared on Tracks, a later album.

) " " was the biggest of seven hit singles from Born in the U.S.A.

, peaking at No. 2 on the music charts. The for the song featured a young dancing on stage with Springsteen, an appearance which helped kickstart the actress' career.


The Born in the U.S.A.

period represented the height of Springsteen's visibility in popular culture and the broadest audience demographic he would ever reach (this was further helped by releasing of three of the singles). , a five-record box set (also released on three cassettes or three CDs), was released near the end of 1986 and also became a huge success, selling 13 million units in the U.S.

and becoming the first box set to debut at No. 1 on the . It is one of the best selling live albums of all time.

It summed up Springsteen's career to that point and displayed some of the elements that made his shows so powerful to his fans: the switching from mournful dirges to party rockers and back; the communal sense of purpose between artist and audience; the long, intense spoken passages before songs, including those describing Springsteen's difficult relationship with his father; and the instrumental prowess of the E Street Band, such as in the long to "Racing in the Street". Some fans and critics felt the song selection on this album could have been better, but in any case, Springsteen concerts are the subjects of frequent and trading among fans.
After this commercial peak, Springsteen released the much more sedate and contemplative (1987), a mature reflection on the many faces of love found, lost and squandered.

It presaged the breakup of his first marriage to actress . Reflecting the challenges of love, on Tunnel of Love's title song, Springsteen famously sang:

Ought to be easy, ought to be simple enough. Man meets woman, and they fall in love.

But the house is haunted, and the ride gets rough. You got to learn to live with what you can't rise above.

The subsequent tour shook up fans with changes to the stage layout, favorites dropped from the set list, and horn-based arrangements; during the European leg in 1988, Springsteen's relationship with E Street Band backup singer became public.

Later in 1988, Springsteen headlined the truly worldwide for . In the fall of 1989, Springsteen dissolved the E Street Band, and he and Scialfa relocated to California.
Bruce Springsteen won an and multiple for his song "Streets of Philadelphia" on the soundtrack.

Springsteen married Scialfa in 1991; they had three children born 1991, 1993 and 1995.
In 1992, after risking charges of "going Hollywood" by moving to (a radical move for someone so linked to the blue-collar life of the Jersey Shore) and working with , Springsteen released two albums at once. and were even more introspective than any of his previous work.

Also different about these albums was the confidence he displayed. As opposed to his first two albums, which dreamed of happiness, and his next four, which showed him growing to fear it, at points during the Lucky Town album, Springsteen actually claims happiness for himself.
Some E Street Band fans voiced (and continue to voice) a low opinion of these albums, (especially Human Touch), and did not follow .

For other fans, however, who had only come to know Springsteen after the 1975 consolidation of the E Street Band, the "Other Band" Tour was an exciting opportunity to see Springsteen develop a working onstage relationship with a different group of musicians, and to see him explore the Asbury Park soul-and-gospel base in some of his classic material.
It was also during this tour that fans generally became aware of Springsteen using a so as to not forget his lyrics, a practice that he may have begun on the Tunnel of Love Express but in any case has continued ever since. An electric band appearance on the acoustic television program (that was later released as ) further cemented fan dissatisfaction.


I've gotta thank him because — what would I conceivably have written about without him? I mean, you can imagine that if everything had gone great between us, we would have had disaster. I would have written just happy songs – and I tried it in the early '90s and it didn't work; the public didn't like it.

A multiple winner, Springsteen also won an in for his song " ", which appeared in the soundtrack to the film . The song, along with the film, was applauded by many for its sympathetic portrayal of a man dying of . The for the song shows Springsteen's actual vocal performance, recorded using a hidden microphone, to a prerecorded instrumental track.

This was a technique developed on the "Brilliant Disguise" video.
In 1995, after temporarily re-organizing the E Street Band for a few new songs recorded for his first album (a recording session that was chronicled in the documentary ), he released his second (mostly) solo guitar album, . This was generally less well-received than the similar Nebraska, due to the minimal and twangy vocals.

The lengthy, worldwide, small-venue solo acoustic that followed successfully featured many of his older songs in drastically reshaped acoustic form, although Springsteen had to explicitly remind his audiences to be quiet during the performances.
In 1998, another precursor to the E Street Band's upcoming re-birth appeared in the form of a sprawling, four-disc of out-takes, .
In 1999, Springsteen and the E Street Band officially came together again and went on the extensive , lasting over a year.

Highlights included a record sold-out, 15-show run at in to kick off the American leg of the tour.
Springsteen's Reunion Tour with the E Street Band ended with a triumphant 10-night, sold-out engagement at 's in mid-2000 and controversy over a new song, " ", about the police shooting of . The final shows at Madison Square Garden were recorded and resulted in an Concert, with corresponding DVD and album releases as .


In 2002, Springsteen released his first studio effort with the full band in 18 years, , produced by . The album, mostly a reflection on the , was a critical and popular success. The title track gained airplay in several radio formats, and the record became Springsteen's best-selling album of new material in 15 years.

Bruce and the band played multiple songs on "The Today Show" from his hometown of Asbury Park in August 2002, thereby setting the stage for his new tour. commenced at the same time, barnstorming through a series of single-night arena stands in the U.S.

and Europe to promote the album in 2002, then returning for large-scale, multiple-night stadium shows in 2003. While Springsteen had maintained a loyal hardcore fan base everywhere (and particularly in Europe), his general popularity had dipped over the years in some southern and midwestern regions of the U.S.

But it was still strong in Europe and along the U.S. coasts, and he played an unprecedented 10 nights in in New Jersey, a ticket-selling feat to which no other musical act has come close.

During these shows Springsteen thanked those fans who were attending multiple shows and those who were coming from long distances or another country; the advent of robust Bruce-oriented had made such practices more common. The Rising Tour came to a final conclusion with three nights in , highlighted by renewed controversy over "American Skin" and a guest appearance from He also performed "Born in the USA" at the end of the night.
During the 2000s, Springsteen became a visible advocate for the revitalization of , and he's played an annual series of winter holiday concerts there to benefit various local businesses, organizations and causes.

These shows are explicitly intended for the faithful, featuring numbers such as the unreleased (until Tracks) E Street Shuffle outtake "Thundercrack", a rollicking group-participation song that would mystify casual Springsteen fans. He also frequently rehearses for tours in Asbury Park; some of his most devoted followers even go so far as to stand outside the building to hear what fragments they can of the upcoming shows.
In 2004, Springsteen announced that he and the E Street Band would participate in a politically motivated " " tour, in conjunction with , , the , , , , and other musicians.

All concerts were to be held in , to benefit and to encourage people to vote against . A finale was held in , bringing many of the artists together. Several days later, Springsteen held one more such concert in New Jersey, when polls showed that state surprisingly close.

While in past years Springsteen had played benefits for causes in which he believed – against , for , and the – he had always refrained from explicitly endorsing candidates for political office (indeed he had rejected the efforts of to attract an endorsement during the 1984 Reagan "Born in the U.S.A.

" flap). This new stance led to criticism and praise from the expected partisan sources. Springsteen's "No Surrender" became the main campaign theme song for 's unsuccessful ; in the last days of the campaign, he performed acoustic versions of the song and some of his other old songs at Kerry rallies.

Springsteen's stance coincided with a reduction in his fan base over the next two years, but how much was due to his politics versus his uncommercial music choices was unclear.
was released on , , and was recorded without the E Street Band. It is a low-key, mostly acoustic album, in the same vein as Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad although with a little more instrumentation.

Some of the material was written almost 10 years earlier during, or shortly after, the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, a couple of them being performed then but never released. . The title track concerns an ordinary soldier's feelings and fears during the .

rejected a co-branding deal for the album, due in part to some sexually explicit content but also because of Springsteen's anti-corporate politics. Nonetheless, the album entered the album charts at No. 1 in 10 countries ( , , , , , , , the , the and ).


Springsteen began the solo at the same time as the album's release, playing both small and large venues. Attendance was disappointing in a few regions, and everywhere (other than in Europe) tickets were easier to get than in the past. Unlike his mid-1990s solo tour, he performed on piano, , , , , , electric guitar and stomping board, as well as acoustic guitar and harmonica, adding variety to the solo sound.

(Offstage , guitar and percussion also are used for some songs.) Unearthly renditions of "Reason to Believe", "The Promised Land", and 's "Dream Baby Dream" jolted audiences to attention, while rarities, frequent changes, and a willingness to keep trying even through audible piano mistakes kept most of his loyal audiences happy.
In November 2005, New Jersey Senators and sponsored a U.

S. Senate resolution to honor Springsteen on the 30th anniversary of the release of his Born to Run album. In general, resolutions honoring native sons are passed with a simple voice vote.

For unstated reasons, this resolution was killed in committee. Also in November 2005, started a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week radio station on Channel 10 called "E Street Radio." This channel, which has since been discontinued, featured commercial-free Bruce Springsteen music, including rare tracks, interviews and daily concerts of Bruce Springsteen the E Street Band recorded throughout their career.


In April 2006, Springsteen released his latest album, , an American roots music project focused around a big folk sound treatment of 15 songs popularized by . It was recorded with a large ensemble of musicians, including only Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, and the from past efforts. In contrast to previous albums, this was recorded in only three one-day sessions, and frequently one can hear Springsteen calling out key changes live as the band explores its way through the tracks.

The began the same month, featuring the 18-strong ensemble of musicians dubbed the Seeger Sessions Band. Seeger Sessions material was heavily featured, as well as a handful of (usually drastically rearranged) Springsteen numbers. The tour proved very popular in Europe, selling out everywhere and receiving some excellent reviews , but newspapers reported that attendance at U.

S. shows was occasionally sparse. By the end of 2006, the Seeger Sessions tour toured Europe twice and toured America for only a short span.

By January 2007, rumors surfaced on the Internet suggesting that Springsteen is recording in his home studio with members of the E Street Band, with the goal of releasing a new record and touring. On April 3 of 2007, Billboard magazine announced Springsteen's intention to release a live CD/DVD documenting his Fall 2006 Seeger Sessions Band tour of Europe. The album was recorded from a 3-night set of shows at the Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland and contains songs such as "This Little Light of Mine," "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live," "American Land,"When the Saints Go Marching In," as well as a few Springsteen originals that appeared on his earlier albums.

The record will be released on June 5, 2007. Rumors persist that Springsteen is recording a new E Street Band album in Atlanta.
In March of 2007, Little Steven Van Zant suggested that Bruce and the E Street Band could have a new album out soon.

He said that, though Bruce had not yet called them, they record quickly and could record the album and release it within 3 months of getting the call. Unfortunately, he also suggested that Bruce might want to take 2007 off because of the Seeger Sessions tour that took much of the year, but he added "we'll be back." Bruce has said that he wants to release more material at a faster pace because he has been recording long enough that he doesn't have to think about the process as much.


  • , 1984, "Dancing in the Dark"
  • , 1987, "Tunnel of Love"
  • , 1994, "Streets of Philadelphia"
  • , 1996, The Ghost of Tom Joad
  • , 2002, The Rising
  • , 2003, "Disorder in the House" (with )
  • , 2004, "Code of Silence"
  • , 2006, The Seeger Sessions: We Shall Overcome
  • , 2006, "Wings For Wheels: The Making Of Born to Run"
    • Only one of these awards has been one of the cross-genre "major" ones (Song, Record, or Album of the Year); he has been nominated a number of other times for the majors, but failed to win.
  • The minor planet 23990, discovered Sept. 4 1999 by I.

    P. Griffin at Auckland, New Zealand, was officially named in his honor

  • Banner hung from the rafters of Philadelphia's in the colors of the , honoring Springsteen's 41 Philadelphia sold-out shows.
  • Ranked #23 on 's list of the .

    , 2004.

    • In November , Springsteen filed legal action against Jeff Burgar which accused him of registering the domain brucespringsteen.com (along with several other celebrity domains) in bad faith to funnel web users to his Celebrity 1000 portal site.

    Once the legal complaint was filed, Burgar pointed the domain to a Springsteen biography and message board. Burgar claims to be running a Springsteen fan club.
    In February , Springsteen lost his dispute with Burgar.

    A panel ruled 2 to 1 in favor of Burgar.

  • . It Ain't No Sin To Be Glad You're Alive : The Promise of Bruce Springsteen.

    Little Brown, 1999. .

  • Coles, Robert.

    Bruce Springsteen's America: The People Listening, a Poet Singing. Random House, 2005. .

  • Cross, Charles R. Backstreets: Springsteen - the man and his music Harmony Books, New York 1989/1992. .

    Contains 15+ interviews and a complete list of all Springsteen songs including unreleased compositions. Complete lising of all concerts 1965-1990 - most of them with tracklists. Hundreds of previously unreleased high quality color pictures.

  • Cullen, Jim. Born in the U.S.

    A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition. 1997; Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005.

    New edition of 1997 study book places Springsteen's work in the broader context of American history and culture.

  • Eliot, Marc with . Down Thunder Road.

    Simon Schuster, 1992. .

  • Graff, Gary.

    The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z. Visible Ink, 2005. .

  • Guterman, Jimmy. Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce Springsteen. Da Capo, 2005.

    .

  • Hilburn, Robert. Springsteen.

    Rolling Stone Press, 1985. .

  • .

    Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts : The Definitive Biography, 1972-2003. Routledge, 2003. .

    (Consolidation of two previous Marsh biographies, Born to Run (1981) and Glory Days (1987).)

  • Wolff, Daniel. 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land.

    Bloomsbury, 2005. .

  • Smith, Andrew , The Register, , .

  • Greetings from E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Chronicle Books, 2006. .

  • Days of Hope and Dreams: An Intimate Portrait of Bruce Springsteen. Billboard Books, 2003. .

  • Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader. Penguin, 2004. .

  • Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce Springsteen. Da Capo Press, 2005. .

  • The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z. Visible Ink Press, 2005. .

  • Bruce Springsteen: "Talking". Omnibus Press, 2004. .

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    Keywords: Bruce Springsteen, Seeger Sessions, Asbury Park, Promised Land, Tom Joad, Van Morrison, American Dream, Bind Bruce, American Dream Listening, Bob Dylan
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