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The following biography
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Bruce
Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23,
1949) is an American singer, songwriter, and
guitarist, nicknamed "The Boss." He has frequently
recorded and toured with The E Street Band.
Springsteen is most widely known for his brand of
heartland rock, rock and roll infused with Americana
sentiments. His eloquence in expressing ordinary,
every-day problems has earned him a huge fan base.
His most famous albums, Born to Run and Born in the
USA, epitomize his penchant for writing about the
struggles of a young man growing up in the streets
of New Jersey. Comparisons are inevitably made
between him and Bob Dylan because of his folk rock
roots. Springsteen, however has become popular in
his own right because of the appeal of his songs.
Springsteen's lyrics often concern men and women
struggling to make ends meet, and frequently
denounce the rich and greedy. He has gradually
become identified with progressive politics.
Springsteen's "Born in the USA" was so popular that
Ronald Reagan chose it to be the theme of his 1984
presidential campaign, misinterpreting it to be as a
simply nationalistic song rather than one about the
negative after-effects of the Vietnam War.
Springsteen is also noted for his work for the
relief effort after the September 11th attacks on
which his album The Rising reflects.
*
* * *
Early years
Bruce
Frederick Joseph Springsteen was born September 23,
1949 in Freehold Borough, New Jersey. His father,
Douglas, was a bus driver of Dutch and Irish
ancestry and his mother, Adele Zirilli Springsteen,
an Italian-American legal secretary. He was inspired
to become a musician when he saw Elvis Presley on
the Ed Sullivan Show. At the age of 13, he bought
his first guitar for US$ 18. In 1965, he went to the
house of Tex and Marion Vinyard, who sponsored young
bands in his town. They helped him become the lead
guitarist of The Castiles, and later became the lead
singer of the group. The Castilles recorded two
original songs at a public recording studio in
Bricktown, New Jersey, and played a variety of
venues, including Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village.
Marion Vinyard said that even when Springsteen was a
young man, she believed him when he said he was
going to make it big.
He
began performing in Richmond, Virginia in late 1969
and through 1970 with singer Robbin Thompson in a
band called Steel Mill. They went on to perform some
memorable shows at Virginia Commonwealth University
in Richmond. Before being discovered nationally, he
returned to Asbury Park, New Jersey, and performed
regularly at small nightclubs there and along the
Jersey shore. His New Jersey shows quickly gathered
cult-like appeal for their energy, passion and
longevity, most lasting in excess of three hours.
Areas
such as Asbury Park, New Jersey inspired the themes
of ordinary life in Bruce Springsteen's music. Even
after gaining international acclaim, Springsteen's
New Jersey roots would reverberate in his music,
with him routinely praising "the great state of New
Jersey" in his live shows. Drawing on his extensive
local appeal, his appearances in major New Jersey
and Philadelphia venues routinely would sell out for
consecutive nights and, much like the Grateful Dead,
his show's song lists would vary significantly from
night to night. He would also make many surprise
appearances at The Stone Pony and other shore
nightclubs over the years. He began his recording
career with the E Street Band in 1973. He signed a
solo record deal with Columbia Records in 1972 with
the help of John A. Hammond, who signed Bob Dylan to
the same record label. Springsteen brought many of
his New Jersey-based musician friends, including
guitarist Steven Van Zandt, into the studio with
him, many of them forming the E Street Band. His
debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., from
January 1973, established him as a critical
favorite, though sales were slow. Manfred Mann's
Earth Band subsequently turned one song from the
album, "Blinded by the Light", into a number one
hit. Later in 1973 his second album, The Wild, The
Innocent, & The E Street Shuffle came out, again to
critical acclaim but no commercial profit. The long,
full-of-life "Rosalita" from this album would go on
to become one of Springsteen's most beloved concert
numbers.
Commercial success
In
Boston's The Real Paper May 22, 1974, music critic
Jon Landau wrote, "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 manager and
producer). With the release of Born to Run in 1975,
Springsteen made the covers of both Time Magazine
and Newsweek the same week, on October 27 of that
year. This was Springsteen's last ditch effort to
make a commercially viable album; its wall of sound
production had an enormous budget. It succeeded:
while there were no real hit singles, the title
track, "Thunder Road", and "Jungleland" all received
massive FM radio airplay and remain perennial
favorites on many classic rock stations to this day.
A legal
battle with former manager Mike Appel kept
Springsteen out of the studio for a while, and
probably also contributed to the much more somber
tone of his 1978 album, Darkness on the Edge of
Town. Musically, this album was the turning point of
Springsteen's career. Gone were the rapid-fire
lyrics, out-sized 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. Many fans consider Darkness
Springsteen's most consistent and best record;
tracks such as "Badlands" and "The Promised Land"
became concert staples for decades to come. Other
fans would always like the adventurous early
Springsteen best.
Springsteen continued to consolidate his thematic
focus on working-class life with the double album
The River in 1980, which yielded his first hit
single, "Hungry Heart".
He
followed this with the stark solo acoustic Nebraska
in 1982. According to the Marsh biographies,
Springsteen was in a depressed state when he wrote
this material, and the result is a brutal depiction
of American life. While this album did not sell
especially well, it garnered him widespread critical
praise. Springsteen did not go on tour with the
release of this album.
Springsteen is probably best known for the
multi-million selling Born in the U.S.A.(1984), and
the massively successful world tour that followed
it. The title track was a tribute to Springsteen's
buddies that had experienced the Vietnam War, some
of whom did not come back. The song was widely
mis-interpreted on release as nationalistic. In
later years Springsteen performed the song
accompanied only with acoustic guitar to restore the
song's original meaning. "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. This famous appearance helped launch
Cox's 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 dance mixes of
three of the singles). The three-disc Bruce
Springsteen & the E Street Band Live/1975-85 summed
up Springsteen's career to this point, and displayed
some of the elements that made Springsteen 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
emotionally 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
coda to "Racing in the Street". Some felt the song
selection on this album could have been better, but
in any case, Springsteen concerts are the subjects
of frequent bootleg recording and trading among
fans.
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. It coincided with the breakup
of his first marriage to actress Julianne Phillips.
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."
1990s
In
1992, three years after breaking up with most of the
E Street Band (Roy Bittan remained) and 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), Springsteen
released two albums simultaneously. 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,
these albums saw a finally satisfied and mature
Springsteen. However, most fans view these albums
(especially Human Touch) and the "Other Band" tour
that followed as the low point in Springsteen's
career; it was also during this tour that
Springsteen first began using a teleprompter so as
to not forget his lyrics, a practice he has
continued with ever since. An abortive acoustic band
appearance on the MTV Unplugged television program
that was later released as In Concert/MTV Plugged
further cemented fan dissatisfaction.
Springsteen seemed to realize this dissatisfaction a
few years hence when he spoke humorously of his late
father during his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
acceptance speech: "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 Grammy Award winner, Springsteen also won
an Academy Award in 1993 for his song "Streets of
Philadelphia," which appeared in the soundtrack to
the film Philadelphia. The song, along with the
film, was applauded by many for its sympathetic
portrayal of a gay man dying of AIDS, especially
coming from a mainstream, heterosexual musician.
Unusually, the music video for the song shows
Springsteen's actual vocal performance, recorded
using a hidden microphone, as he refused to lip-sync
to a prerecorded vocal track.
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 solo guitar album, The Ghost of
Tom Joad. This was less well-received than the
similar Nebraska, due to the minimal melody, twangy
vocals, and didactic nature of most of the songs.
The small-venue solo 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.
In
1999, the E Street Band officially re-united and
went on an extensive world tour, lasting over a year
in length and finishing with ten sold out shows at
New York's Madison Square Garden. The E-United World
Tour resulted in an HBO Concert, with corresponding
DVD and album releases as Bruce Springsteen & the E
Street Band: Live In New York City.
Drawing
on his strong fan base in Philadelphia, Springsteen
chose to celebrate his 50th birthday in September
1999 with a live show at the Philadelphia Spectrum,
which he opened with his hit "Growing Up." Closing
the song on that night, he quoted W. C. Fields: "All
things being equal, I'd rather be in Philadelphia".
This fantastic show also included a rare performance
of "The Fever."
2000s
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, and hailed the return of "The
Boss". A massive tour was made to promote The
Rising. While Springsteen's popularity has dipped
over the years in some southern and midwestern
regions of the U.S., it is still strong along the
coasts, and he played an unprecedented 10 nights in
outdoor football Giants Stadium in New Jersey, a
ticket-selling feat that no other musical act can
come close to. During these shows Springsteen
thanked those fans who were attending multiple shows
and those who were coming from long distances or out
of the country; the advent of robust Bruce-oriented
online communities had made these practices easier.
The final Giants Stadium show concluded with an even
better thank you: a performance of "Jersey Girl".
The Rising tour would come to a final conclusion
with 3 nights in Shea Stadium. Bruce Springsteen
lost his police escort for the second night after
performing "American Skin (41 shots)", a song about
the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. Bob Dylan was
a surprise guest on the last night, the two
performing "Highway 61 Revisited" together.
During
the 2000s Springsteen has become a visible advocate
for the revitalization of Asbury Park, and has
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 out-take "Thundercrack", a rollicking
group participation song that casual Springsteen
fans would be mystified by. He also frequently
rehearses for tours in Asbury Park; his most devoted
followers stand outside the building to hear what
fragments they can of the upcoming shows.
At the
Grammy Awards of 2003, Springsteen performed The
Clash's "London Calling" along with Elvis Costello,
E Streeter Steven van Zandt, and Dave Grohl in
tribute to the late Joe Strummer; Springsteen and
the Clash had once been considered
multiple-album-dueling rivals at the time of The
River and Sandinista!.
In
2004, Springsteen announced that he and the E Street
Band would participate in a politically motivated
"Vote for Change" tour, in conjunction with John
Fogerty, the Dixie Chicks, R.E.M., Jurassic 5 and
other musicians. All concerts were to be held in
swing states, to benefit MoveOn.org and encourage
people to vote against George W. Bush. A finale was
held in Washington, D.C., 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 he
believed in — against nuclear energy, for Vietnam
veterans, Amnesty International, and the Christic
Institute — these shows were the first time he was
explicitly endorsing a candidate for political
office, and this led to both criticism and praise
from the expected partisan sources. Springsteen's
"No Surrender" became the main campaign theme song
for John Kerry's unsuccessful presidential campaign.
In the last days of the campaign, he performed
acoustic versions of a few of his songs at Kerry
rallies. Whether Springsteen's stance causes a
reduction in his fan base (now an older, more
affluent demographic) remains to be seen as of 2005.
Springsteen's most recent album, 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 although with a little more
instrumentation. Some of the material was written
almost ten years earlier during the Tom Joad tour, a
couple of them being performed then but never
recorded. The title track concerns an ordinary
soldier's feelings and fears during the Iraq War.
Starbucks rejected a co-branding deal for the album,
not only due to some sexually explicit content, but
also because of Springsteen's anti-corporate
politics. Nonetheless, the album entered the album
charts at number 1 in ten different countries
(United States, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden,
Denmark, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, The United
Kingdom, and Ireland).
Springsteen began a small-venue solo tour at the
same time as the album's release. It has quickly
become a success, with most shows selling out in
minutes. Unlike his previous solo tour, he performs
on piano, electric piano, pump organ, banjo,
electric guitar, and stomping board, as well as
acoustic guitar and harmonica, adding variety to the
solo sound. (Offstage synthesizer, guitar, and
percussion are also used for some songs.) Unearthly
renditions of "Reason to Believe", "The Promised
Land", and Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" have jolted
audiences to attention, while rarities appearing at
many of the performances have kept his loyal
audiences happy.
E
Street Band
The E
Street Band is considered to have started in October
1972, even though it wasn't officially billed and
known as such until September 1974. The E Street
Band was inactive from the end of 1988 through early
1999, except for a brief reunion in 1995.
Current members
-
Danny Federici - organ,
glockenspiel, accordian, keyboards
-
Garry Tallent - bass guitar
-
Clarence "Big Man" Clemons -
saxophone, percussion, occasional vocals,
larger-than-life persona and Springsteen foil
-
Max Weinberg - drums (joined
September 1974)
-
Roy Bittan - piano, synthesizer
(joined September 1974)
-
Steven van Zandt - guitar,
mandolin, backing vocals (officially joined July
1975 after playing in previous bands; left in
1984 to go solo; rejoined 1995)
-
Nils Lofgren - guitar, pedal
steel guitar, backing vocals (replaced Steven
van Zandt in June 1984; remained in group after
van Zandt returned)
-
Patti Scialfa - backing and duet
vocals, guitar (joined June 1984; later became
Springsteen's wife)
-
Soozie Tyrell - violin, backing
vocals (joined 2002, occasional appearances
before that)
-
Springsteen himself does all
lead vocals, most lead guitar parts (most
noticeable in concert), harmonica, and
occasional piano.
Former members
-
Vinnie "Mad Dog" Lopez - drums
(inception through February 1974, when asked to
resign)
-
David Sancious - keyboards (June
1973 to August 1974)
-
Ernest "Boom" Carter - drums
(February to August 1974)
-
Suki Lahav - violin, backing
vocals (September 1974 to March 1975)
*
* * *
Awards and recognition
Grammy Awards:
-
Springsteen has won 12 Grammy
Awards, with the first coming for the year 1984
and the most recent for 2004. The most notable
of these are:
-
Best Rock Vocal Performance,
Male, 1984, "Dancing in the Dark"
-
Best Rock Vocal Performance,
1987, "Tunnel of Love"
-
Song of the Year, 1994, "Streets
of Philadelphia" (which also won three other
awards)
-
Best Contemporary Folk Album,
1996, The Ghost of Tom Joad
-
Best Rock Song, 2003, "The
Rising" (which also won two other awards)
Academy Awards:
Emmy
Awards:
Other recognition:
-
Inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame, 1999
-
Inducted into the Songwriters
Hall of Fame, 1999
-
"Born to Run" named "The
unofficial youth anthem of New Jersey" by the
New Jersey state legislature (something Bruce
always found to be ironic, considering that the
song "is about leaving New Jersey.")
*
* * *
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