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45s.com -- Recording Artist Information: Bruce Springsteen
Date Born September 23, 1949 Location Freehold, New Jersey Music Rock and Roll singer, guitarist, songwriter Charted Pop/Rock Hits 24 and counting Period Active September 20, 1975 to.... Biggest Hits Born In The U.S.A.; Dancing In The Dark; Hungry Heart; Glory Days; Brilliant Disguise; I'm On Fire. Music List and Data Search Music List Notable Information Bruce Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. Other Names Nickname is "The Boss." Other Web Sites Greg's Bruce Springsteen Page New Jersey Online: Bruce Springsteen
Rollingstone.com: Bruce Springsteen
Yahoo! Music: Springsteen, Bruce
Wall of Sound: Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. The following information was obtained from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
Bruce Springsteen ranks in importance alongside such rock and roll legends as Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Just as those artists shaped popular music at various points, Springsteen served as a pivotal figure in its evolution with his rise to prominence in the mid-Seventies. The unrestrained energy of his live shows, the evocative power of his songwriting, and the direct connection he forged with his listeners catapulted Springsteen to fame and helped lift rock and roll from its early Seventies doldrums.
Springsteen grew up in the working-class town of Freehold, New Jersey. "Rock and roll was the only thing I ever liked about myself," he once remarked. Prior to the release of his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., in 1973, Springsteen had been making music for nearly ten years as a struggling rocker on the Jersey shore. His early groups included the Rogues, the Castiles, Earth, Child, Steel Mill, Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom and the Bruce Springsteen Band. His big break came in 1972, when manager Mike Appel landed him an audience with Columbia Records executive John Hammond Sr. Moving between guitar and piano, Springsteen performed 12 originals at that May 2nd audition and was signed to Columbia, where he remains to this day.
Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. didn't make Billboard's Top 200 LPs until it was pulled onto the charts by the success of Born to Run in 1975. All the same, it ignited a groundswell of support for Springsteen with such favorites as "Blinded by the Light," "Growin' Up" and "Spirit in the Night." Greetings featured such Jersey Shore vets as saxman Clarence Clemons, bassist Garry Tallent, keyboardist David Sancious and drummer Vini Lopez. Rounded out by keyboardist Danny Federici, a longtime Springsteen accompanist, this outfit was tagged "the E Street Band." Touring incessantly, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band built a grassroots following in the northeast. Their profile was further raised with the November 1973 release of The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, which included the rousing anthem "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)."
Springsteen's national breakout came in 1975 with Born to Run. Densely layered in the rock-orchestral style of Sixties producer Phil Spector, every song conveyed an epic sweep, from "Born to Run" and "Thunder Road" to the lengthy side-closers "Backstreets" and "Jungleland." Prior to its release, Springsteen played a now-legendary five-night stand at New York's Bottom Line. By this time, the E Street Band's classic lineup was set, with Springsteen accompanied by keyboardists Federici and Roy Bittan, guitarist Steve Van Zandt, saxophonist Clemons, bassist Tallent and drummer Max Weinberg.
Springsteen soon changed managers, turning to Jon Landau, a former Rolling Stone writer/editor. It was Landau who wrote, in a 1974 concert review, "I have seen rock 'n' roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen." Fame thereupon came quickly for the ascendant star, who simultaneously made the covers of Time and Newsweek in November 1975. However, internal problems were brewing, as Springsteen and Appel squared off in court over management contracts signed years earlier. Springsteen filed a massive suit, charging fraud, undue influence and breach of trust. Appel responded with an injunction that prevented Springsteen and Landau from recording. During the two-year legal imbroglio, Springsteen funneled songs to other artists, including Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes ("Fever") and Patti Smith ("Because the Night").
The parties settled out of court in 1977, and Springsteen immediately began work on his fourth album, Darkness on the Edge of Town. A year later - and nearly three years after Born to Run - one of rock's most eagerly anticipated albums was released. It was noticeably sparer than Born to Run, betokening "a certain loss of innocence - more so than in the other albums," according to Springsteen. He took Darkness on the road, and its 118 shows rank among his most memorable. Springsteen's next release, The River, was a 20-song, two-disc tour de force released in 1980. This sprawling masterwork exchanged the thematic unity that had been a feature of previous albums for a mix of songs and styles, from fiercely playful party rockers to more sobering material like "Independence Day" and "Hungry Heart," Springsteen's first Top Ten hit. His live shows typically ran three and a half hours long, with an average of 30 songs being played. By the end of the 139-date River tour in September 1981, he had performed to more than a million people.
Springsteen's followup to his hard-won stardom was Nebraska, a haunting, low-fi album of homemade demos that found him putting the brakes on his swelling celebrity. It was a brief respite, however, as 1984's Born in the U.S.A. album and tour catapulted Springsteen to a level of fame few have ever known. As an album - 12 songs culled from roughly a hundred worked on over a period of two years - Born in the U.S.A. loomed larger than life, much like Michael Jackson's Thriller and Prince's Purple Rain from the same period. Born in the U.S.A. ultimately sold 12 million copies in the U.S., making it Columbia Records' all-time best seller. Seven songs from Born in the U.S.A. - more than half the album's contents - became Top Ten hits in 1984 and 1985: "Dancing in the Dark" (#2), "Cover Me" (#7), "Born in the U.S.A." (#9), "I'm On Fire" (#6), "Glory Days" (#5), "I'm Goin' Down" (#9) and "My Hometown" (#6). The four-night finale to the 15-month Born in the U.S.A. world tour drew 330,000 people to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Springsteen had become one of rock's most revered figures, and he didn't take the charge lightly, saying: "I believe that the life of a rock and roll band will last as long as you look down into the audience and can see yourself, and your audience looks up at you and can see themselves - and as long as those reflections are human, realistic ones."
Even off the road and out of the limelight, the Springsteen phenomenon roared on. Lines formed at stores across the country when Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live/1975-85 went on sale in the fall of 1986. It wound up selling 3 million copies - an amazing feat for a box set. His next studio record, Tunnel of Love, addressed one-on-one relationships rather than the larger rites of community that had been his preoccupation on Born in the U.S.A. The longest break between Bruce Springsteen albums was the nearly five years that passed between Tunnel of Love and its dual followups, Human Touch and Lucky Town, released in April 1992. During that hiatus, Springsteen parted ways with the E Street Band, married singer Patty Scialfa and began raising a family. He supported Human Touch and Lucky Town - which entered the album chart at #2 and #3, respectively - with a fall tour for which he assembled a new band. In 1994, Springsteen contributed the somber "Streets of Philadelphia" to the soundtrack of the film Philadelphia. It became his first Top Ten hit since "Tunnel of Love" and won four Grammys and an Academy Award.
Springsteen's Greatest Hits retrospective appeared in late 1995, entering the charts at Number One and reuniting him with the E Street Band on several tracks. In marked contrast, Springsteen closed the year by releasing The Ghost of Tom Joad, an album of spectral songs about marginalized characters struggling to survive. He supported the album with a solo acoustic tour of small halls. It was a far cry from the celebratory rock and roll marathons of the Born in the U.S.A. era, now a decade in the past. Without apology or concession, Springsteen stared into what he saw as the heart of darkness in a troubled America. All the same, it was in keeping with his mission, stated years earlier: "When I started in music, I thought, 'My job is pretty simple. I search for the human things in myself, and I turn them into notes and words, and then in some fashion, I help people hold on to their own humanity."
In early 1999, Springsteen announced that he was reuniting with the E Street Band for a world tour.
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