Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen
Background information
Birth name	Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen
Also known as	"The Boss"
Born	September 23 1949 (1949-09-23) Long Branch, New Jersey, U.S.A
Genre(s)	Rock Folk
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Instrument(s)	Vocals Guitar Harmonica Piano
Years active	1965–present
Label(s)	Columbia Records
Website	www.brucespringsteen.net/
Notable instrument(s)
Fender Esquire

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American songwriter, singer, and guitarist. He has recorded and toured with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of heartland rock infused with pop hooks, poetic lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered around his native New Jersey. His eloquence in expressing ordinary, everyday problems has earned him numerous awards, including 18 Grammy Awards and an Academy Award, along with a notoriously dedicated and devoted global fan base. His most famous albums, Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A., epitomize his penchant for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily life. He has sold over 65 million albums in the U.S.

His recordings have tended to alternate between commercially accessible rock albums and somber folk-oriented works. Much of his iconic status stems from the concerts and marathon shows in which he and his band present intense ballads, rousing anthems, and party rock-and-roll songs, among which Springsteen intersperses long, whimsical or deeply emotional stories.

Springsteen has long had the nickname "The Boss," a term which he was initially reported to hate but now seems to have come to terms with, as he sometimes jokingly refers to himself as such on stage. The artist was inducted both into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1999.

Life and career

Early years

Springsteen was born at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, New Jersey. He spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold. Raised a Roman Catholic, Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima parochial school in Freehold Borough, where he was often at odds with both the nuns and other students.

In ninth grade he transferred to the public Freehold Regional High School, but did not fit in there either. After completing high school he briefly attended Ocean County College. Springsteen's reputation as a troublesome youth led to the Travelling Wilbury's lyric, "In Jersey everything's legal, as long as you don't get caught.

Springsteen had been inspired to take up music at the age of seven after seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show. At 13, he bought his first guitar for $18.00. Later, his mother took out a loan to buy the 16-year-old Springsteen a $60.00 Kent guitar, an event he later memorialized in his song "The Wish."

In 1965, he became the lead guitarist and later lead vocalist of The Castiles. The group recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township, New Jersey and played a variety of venues, including Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village.

File:DSCN0373 beachtickets.JPG

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

From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed around New Jersey with guitarist Steve Van Zandt, organist Danny Federici, drummer Vini Lopez, and later bassist Vinnie Roslin, in a band called Child, subsequently renamed Steel Mill. They went on to play the mid-Atlantic college circuit and also briefly toured in California. During this time, Springsteen also performed at small clubs in Asbury Park and along the Jersey Shore, where he gathered a dedicated following. Other acts followed over the next two years, as Springsteen sought to shape a unique and genuine musical and songwriting style. These included Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom (early to mid 1971), Sundance Blues Band (mid 1971), and The Bruce Springsteen Band (mid 1971 to mid 1972).

With the addition of pianist David Sancious, the core of what would later become the E Street Band was formed. The group explored blues, R&B, jazz, early rock and roll, soul, and gospel. Springsteen's prolific songwriting ability brought his skill to the attention of new managers Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos. Legendary Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond auditioned Springsteen in May 1972.

Drawing on his extensive local appeal, he routinely sold out consecutive nights in major New Jersey and Philadelphia venues with song lists that varied significantly from one night to the next. He also made many surprise appearances at The Stone Pony and other shore nightclubs over the years, becoming the foremost exponent of the Jersey Shore sound.

1972–1974

Springsteen signed a record deal with Columbia Records in 1972, with the help of John Hammond, who had signed Bob Dylan to the same record label a decade earlier. His debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., released in January 1973, established him as a critical favorite, though sales were slow.

In September 1973 his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle was released, 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. The songs "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" and "Incident on 57th Street" would become fan favorites, and the long, rousing "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" would rank among Springsteen's most beloved concert numbers.

1975–1981

On August 13, 1975, Springsteen and the E Street Band began a five-night, 10-show stand at New York's Bottom Line club. The show attracted major media attention and was broadcast live on WNEW-FM, convincing many skeptics that Springsteen was for real. With the release of the album Born to Run on August 25, 1975, Springsteen finally found success. While the album produced no big hit singles, "Born to Run," would become Springsteen's signature song and would go on to be listed at number 21 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The album established him as a sincere and dynamic rock and 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 Time and Newsweek in the same week, on October 27 of that year.

In 1977, Springsteen returned to the studio and produced Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978). Musically, this album was a turning point of Springsteen's career. The songs were leaner and more carefully drawn, beginning to reflect Springsteen's growing intellectual and political awareness. Tracks such as "Badlands" and "The Promised Land" became concert staples for decades to come, while "Prove It All Night" received a significant amount of radio airplay, reaching number 33 on the Billboard Hot 100. Springsteen's performances on the cross-country Darkness Tour to promote the album would become legendary.

By the late 1970s, Springsteen had earned a reputation in the pop world as a songwriter whose material could provide hits not only for himself but for other bands as well. Manfred Mann's Earth Band achieved a U.S. number-one pop hit with a heavily rearranged version of "Blinded by the Light" in early 1977. Patti Smith reached number 13 with her take on "Because the Night," which she co-wrote with Sprignstten in 1978, while The Pointer Sisters hit number two in 1979 with Springsteen's unreleased "Fire."

In September 1979, Springsteen and the E Street Band joined the Musicians United for Safe Energy anti-nuclear power collective at Madison Square Garden for two nights, premiering two songs from his upcoming album. The subsequent No Nukes live album, as well as the following summer's No Nukes documentary film, represented the first official recordings and filming of Springsteen's fabled live act, as well as Springsteen's first tentative foray into political activism.

Springsteen continued to consolidate his thematic focus on working-class life with the 20-song double album The River in 1980. This album yielded his first hit Top-Ten single, "Hungry Heart." The album sold well, and a long tour in 1980 and 1981 followed, featuring Springsteen's first extended performances in Europe, and ending with a series of multi-night arena stands in major cities in the U.S.

1982–1989

Following The River, Springsteen produced the stark, solo acoustic Nebraska in 1982. Springsteen was reportedly in a depressed state when he wrote this material, and the result was a brutal depiction of American life.

While Nebraska did not sell especially well, it garnered widespread critical praise, including being named "Album of the Year" by critics at Rolling Stone magazine. It helped inspire the musical genre known as lo-fi music, becoming a cult favorite among indie-rockers.

Born in the U.S.A. (1984) is Springsteen's best known album, selling a phenomenal 15 million copies in the U.S. alone. One of the best-selling albums of all time, it featured seven singles that hit the the Top Ten. A massively successful world tour followed its release. The title track was a bitter commentary on the treatment of Vietnam veterans, some of whom were Springsteen's friends and bandmates.

"Dancing in the Dark" was the biggest of seven hit singles from Born in the U.S.A., peaking at number two on the Billboard music charts. The music video for the song featured a young Courteney Cox dancing on stage with Springsteen, an appearance which helped kickstart the actress's career. A number of the videos for the album were made by noted film directors Brian De Palma or John Sayles.

The Born in the U.S.A. period represented the height of Springsteen's visibility in popular culture. Live/1975–85, 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 number one on the U.S. album charts. Is was one of the best selling live albums of all time.

After this commercial peak, Springsteen released the much more sedate and contemplative Tunnel of Love (1987), a mature reflection on the many faces of love found, lost and squandered, which only selectively used the E Street Band.

1990s

File:Bruce springsteen philadelphia.jpg

Bruce Springsteen won an Academy Award and multiple Grammy Awards for his song "Streets of Philadelphia" on the Philadelphia soundtrack.

In 1992, after risking charges of "going Hollywood" by moving to Los Angeles (a radical move for someone so linked to the blue-collar life of the Jersey Shore) and working with session musicians, Springsteen released two albums at once. Human Touch and Lucky Town 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.

A multiple Grammy Award winner, Springsteen also won an Academy Award in 1994 for his song "Streets of Philadelphia," which appeared in the soundtrack to the film Philadelphia. The music video 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 Greatest Hits album (a recording session that was chronicled in the documentary Blood Brothers), he released his second (mostly) solo guitar album, The Ghost of Tom Joad, inspired by "Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass," a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Dale Maharidge. This was generally less well-received than the similar Nebraska, due to the minimal melody, twangy vocals, and political nature of most of the songs, although some praised it for giving voice to immigrants and others who rarely have one in American culture. The lengthy, worldwide, small-venue solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour 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 box set of out-takes, Tracks. Springsteen and the E Street Band officially came together in 1999 and went on the extensive Reunion Tour, lasting over a year. Highlights included a record sold-out, 15-show run at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey to kick off the American leg of the tour. In 1999, Springsteen was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

2000s

Springsteen's Reunion Tour with the E Street Band ended with a triumphant 10-night, sold-out engagement at New York City's Madison Square Garden in mid-2000 and controversy over a new song, "American Skin (41 Shots)," about the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. The final shows at Madison Square Garden were recorded and resulted in an HBO Concert, with corresponding DVD and album releases as Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live in New York City.

In 2002, Springsteen released his first studio effort with the full band in 18 years, The Rising, produced by Brendan O'Brien. The album, mostly a reflection on the September 11 attacks, 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. Kicked off by an early-morning Asbury Park appearance on The Today Show, The Rising Tour commenced, 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.

At the Grammy Awards of 2003, Springsteen performed The Clash's "London Calling" along with Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl, and E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt in tribute to Joe Strummer.

Springsteen and the Sessions Band performing in Milan in 2006

Devils & Dust was released on April 26, 2005, 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 but 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 album entered the album charts at numner one in 10 countries (United States, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Ireland).

In November 2005, Sirius Satellite Radio started a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week radio station on Channel 10 called "E Street Radio." This channel 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 another radical departure, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, an American-roots music project focused around a big folk-sound treatment of 15 songs popularized by the radical-music activism of Pete Seeger. 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 Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band Tour began the same month, featuring the 18-strong ensemble of musicians dubbed the Seeger Sessions Band (and later shortened to the Sessions Band). Springsteen numbers. The tour proved very popular in Europe, selling out everywhere and receiving some excellent reviews, newspapers reported that a number of U.S. shows suffered from sparse attendance.

Springsteen's most recent album, titled Magic, was released on October 2, 2007. Recorded with the E Street Band, it featured 10 new Springsteen songs plus "Long Walk Home," performed once with the Sessions band, and a hidden track (the first included on a Springsteen studio release), "Terry's Song," a tribute to Springsteen's long-time assistant Terry Magovern. On October 7, Magic debuted at number one in Ireland and the UK. Greatest Hits reentered the Irish charts at number 57, and Live in Dublin almost cracked the top 20 in Norway again. On October 20, 2007 Media Traffic reported that Springsteen's Magic sold 563,000 copies around the world in its first week, making it the best-selling record in the world for that particular week. Ultimately, Magic sold 1,915,000 copies by the end of 2007. Sirius Satellite Radio also restarted "E Street Radio" on Channel 10, on September 27, 2007 in anticipation of Magic.

In April 2008, Springsteen announced his endorsement of U.S. Senator Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign.

Legacy

Springsteen's lyrics often concern men and women struggling to make ends meet. He has gradually become identified with progressive politics. During the 2000s, Springsteen became a visible advocate for the revitalization of Asbury Park, and he's played an annual series of winter holiday concerts there to benefit various local businesses, organizations, and causes. The song "My City of Ruins" was originally written about Asbury Park, in honor of the attempts to revitalize the city. The song has since become associated with post-9/11 New York.

Awards and recognition

Springsteen has won 18 Grammy Awards, in the years ranging from 1984's (Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, "Dancing in the Dark), to 2007's (Best Rock Instrumental Performance, "Once Upon A Time In The West.")

He won both an Academy Award for Best Song, 1993, "Streets of Philadelphia" from Philadelphia and an Emmy Award for the Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live In New York City, in an HBO special.

In 1999, Springsteen was inducted both into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. His song, "Born to Run," was named "The unofficial youth anthem of New Jersey" by the New Jersey state legislature (something Springsteen always found to be ironic, considering that the song "is about leaving New Jersey.") He is ranked number 23 on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time (2004).

Discography

• 1973: Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
• 1973: The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
• 1975: Born to Run
• 1978: Darkness on the Edge of Town
• 1980: The River
• 1982: Nebraska
• 1984: Born in the U.S.A.
• 1987: Tunnel of Love
• 1992: Human Touch
• 1992: Lucky Town
• 1995: The Ghost of Tom Joad
• 2002: The Rising
• 2005: Devils & Dust
• 2006: We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
• 2007: Magic

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Alterman, Eric. It Ain't No Sin To Be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen. New York: Little Brown, 1999. ISBN 0-316-03885-7
• Coles, Robert. Bruce Springsteen's America: The People Listening, a Poet Singing. New York: Random House, 2005. ISBN 0-375-50559-8
• Cross, Charles R. Backstreets: Springsteen: The Man and His Music. New York: Harmony Books, 1992. ISBN 0-517-58929-X
• Cullen, Jim. Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8195-6761-2
• Eliot, Marc, with Appel, Mike. Down Thunder Road. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. ISBN 0-671-86898-5
• Guterman, Jimmy. Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce Springsteen. Cambridge: Mass. Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-306-81397-1
• Hilburn, Robert. Springsteen. New York: Rolling Stone Press, 1985. ISBN 0-684-18456-7
• Marsh, Dave. Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts: The Definitive Biography, 1972-2003. New York: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-96928-X
• Wolff, Daniel. 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land. London: Bloomsbury, 2005. ISBN 1-58234-509-0

External links

• Bruce Springsteen - official website
• Backstreets.com - semi-official fan site
• Springsteen Lyrics - large archive of Springsteen compositions and covers: several versions and detailed info for each song

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