Bruce Springsteen

The New Jersey songwriter who made Born to Run as a last chance, recorded Nebraska alone in his bedroom, and became one of the biggest rock stars in the world with the E Street Band.

Origin
Long Branch, New Jersey, United States
Years active
1964-present
Genres
rock, heartland rock, folk rock
Labels
Columbia
Also known as
The Boss

Freehold

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on 23 September 1949 and grew up Catholic in nearby Freehold. His mother, Adele, a legal secretary, was the family's main earner. His father, Douglas, a Second World War veteran and bus driver, struggled with his mental health all his life. Seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show made the boy want to play music, and after the Beatles appeared on the same show in 1964 he bought a guitar for $18.95.

He joined the Castiles in 1965 and played the Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village with them. He failed his draft physical in 1968, partly because of a concussion from a motorcycle accident, and spent the next years in a run of bands, among them Steel Mill, with Danny Federici and Vini Lopez, and the Bruce Springsteen Band. He was called the Boss because he collected the band's pay each night and shared it out. In May 1972 he auditioned for John Hammond, who had signed Bob Dylan, and joined Columbia, his label ever since.

Born to run

Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle both came out in 1973. Critics compared him to Dylan, but neither record sold, and Columbia agreed to pay for one more album on the understanding that a failure would end his contract. In May 1974 Jon Landau saw him in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and wrote that he had seen rock and roll's future. The title track of Born to Run alone took six months, and the album that followed in August 1975 put him on the covers of Time and Newsweek in the same week. Born to Run became his first top-forty single.

A lawsuit with his manager Mike Appel kept him out of the studio for almost a year, so he toured. Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) had a rawer sound, and the double album The River (1980) gave him his first American number one and, with Hungry Heart, his first top-ten single.

Nebraska and the U.S.A.

At a ranch he rented in Colts Neck, New Jersey, he recorded new songs alone on a four-track cassette machine around the turn of 1982, meaning them as demos for the band. Band versions did not satisfy him, and the tape became Nebraska, released in September 1982 with no tour and no interviews. Some of the songs from that cassette, including the title track of Born in the U.S.A., were remade with the E Street Band.

That album, released in June 1984, sold more than thirty million copies and produced seven American top-ten singles. Van Zandt had left, and Nils Lofgren and Patti Scialfa joined for a 156-show tour. Its title song is about a Vietnam veteran's homecoming, but Ronald Reagan invoked Springsteen in a September 1984 speech, and Springsteen answered from the stage. The live box Live/1975-85 followed in 1986, and Tunnel of Love (1987) turned inward, to love and marriage. In October 1989 he broke up the E Street Band.

Later years

He won an Academy Award for Streets of Philadelphia, and The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) returned to the spare manner of Nebraska. The band reunited for a tour in 1999, the year he entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and The Rising (2002) was largely a reflection on the September 11 attacks. Federici died in 2008 and Clarence Clemons in 2011. Springsteen on Broadway ran from 2017 to 2018 and won a Special Tony, and Letter to You (2020) made him the first artist with a top-five album in six consecutive decades. In 2021 he sold his recordings and songs to Sony for about $500 million.

He has sold more than 140 million records and won 20 Grammys. Steven Hyden names Born in the U.S.A. as a model for records by the Killers, Arcade Fire, the War on Drugs and Sam Fender, while Justin Vernon and Zach Bryan are among those who cite Nebraska. In 2025 came Tracks II, seven unreleased albums, an expanded Nebraska with the band sessions, and a film about its making. In 2026 he toured America again, and the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music opened in June.

Members

Records

Songs

Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Bon Iver, The War on Drugs, Steve Earle

Where to go next

Official

Reference

Discography and data

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Live performance archives

Film and video

Fan sites and communities

  • Brucebase The gig and session wiki: setlists for every known show since the 1960s, and notes on every take and mix.
  • Backstreets The fanzine of record from 1980 to 2023, with its news archive and forums.
  • Killing Floor Setlists from 1964, studio sessions, lyrics and tour grids.

Sources

  1. Bruce Springsteen, Wikipedia
  2. E Street Band, Wikipedia
  3. Born to Run, Wikipedia
  4. Nebraska (album), Wikipedia
  5. Born in the U.S.A., Wikipedia
  6. Jon Landau review gig, Harvard Square Theatre, Brucebase