Bruce Springsteen

About Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen grew up in Freehold, New Jersey, which matters because he never really left it, at least not in his songs. He started playing guitar as a teenager in the mid-1960s, bouncing between bar bands with names like the Castiles and Steel Mill before forming the E Street Band in the early 1970s. His first two albums went nowhere commercially, but they caught the attention of people who pay attention.

Then came "Born to Run" in 1975. The title track became his signature for a reason—it compressed every American dream and dead-end highway into four and a half minutes. The album made him famous, though it also landed him on the covers of Time and Newsweek simultaneously, which created a backlash he'd spend years working against. He was supposed to be the future of rock and roll, which is a lot to carry when you're trying to write songs about car crashes and boardwalks.

He followed it with "Darkness on the Edge of Town" in 1978, a stripped-down record that traded teenage romanticism for adult disappointment. "The River" came in 1980, a double album that gave him his first top ten single with "Hungry Heart," though the deeper cuts like "Stolen Car" and "Wreck on the Highway" showed where his head was. Then "Nebraska" in 1982, recorded on a four-track in his bedroom, all stark acoustic songs about murderers and economically decimated towns. His label didn't know what to do with it.

"Born in the U.S.A." in 1984 made him unavoidable. Seven top ten singles. The synthesizers were new, the stadiums got bigger, and Reagan's campaign tried to co-opt the title track despite it being about a Vietnam vet with nothing to come home to. He spent the rest of the eighties trying to figure out what to do with that level of fame, breaking up the E Street Band in 1989 and making quieter, more personal records.

The nineties and 2000s brought reunions, more albums, a Super Bowl halftime show. "The Rising" in 2002 dealt with September 11th in the way people needed it to. He kept touring, kept writing, never really stopped. "Western Stars" in 2019 had him singing over string arrangements about aging stuntmen and drifters. He sold his catalog for around half a billion dollars, did a Broadway residency, co-wrote a book with Barack Obama.

He's in his mid-seventies now and still plays three-hour shows when he tours. The E Street Band is mostly intact, though some members are gone. He's become an institution, which is probably what happens when you spend fifty years writing about the same places and people. Some artists chase different sounds and reinvention. Springsteen just kept digging in the same dirt, finding new things each time.

Four-hour shows where he visibly enjoys himself and the crowd responds by treating it like a religious experience. He plays deep cuts alongside the anthems. People cry at "The River." He works the whole stage. No phones visible.

Known for Born to Run, Thunder Road, Born in the U.S.A., Dancing in the Dark, The River

See Bruce Springsteen Live