Bruce Springsteen: Encyclopedia - Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He has frequently recorded and toured with the E Street Band. Springsteen is most widely known for his brand of heartland rock infused with pop hooks and Americana sentiments. His eloquence in expressing ordinary, everyday problems have earned him numerous awards, including Grammy Awards and an Oscar, along with a huge fan base. His most famous albums, Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A., epitomize his penchant for writing about the struggles of a young man growing up in the streets of his native New Jersey.

Springsteen's lyrics often concern men and women struggling to make ends meet. He has gradually become identified with progressive politics. Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." was so popular that Ronald Reagan attempted to co-opt it during his 1984 presidential campaign, misinterpreting it as a plainly nationalistic song rather than one about the negative after-effects of the Vietnam War. Springsteen requested that the Reagan campaign to stop using the song, as he supported Walter Mondale, which they did, but it was already linked with Reagan in the minds of many. Springsteen is also noted for his support of various relief and rebuilding efforts in New Jersey and elsewhere, and for his response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on which his album The Rising reflects.

Springsteen's recordings have tended to alternate between commercially accessible rock albums and somber folk-oriented works. Much of Springsteen's popularity stems from his concerts, marathon shows in which he and the E Street Band revolve amongst intense ballads, rousing anthems, and party rock and roll songs.

Springsteen has long had the nickname "The Boss," a term which he was initially reported to dislike but now seems to have come to terms with, sometimes jokingly referring to himself as such on stage.

Bruce Springsteen - Early years

Bruce Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up 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-Puerto Rican or 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. [1]. Bruce's sister, Pamela Sue Springsteen, had a brief film career, but walked away from acting for good to pursue her still photography career full time.

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.

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 Hammond, who had signed Bob Dylan to the same record label a decade earlier. 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 [2], though sales were slow. Because of his lyrics-heavy, folk rock-rooted music and the Columbia and Hammond connections, critics frequently compared Springsteen to Bob Dylan in the early days of his recording career. [3]

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 (Come Out Tonight)" from this album would go on to become one of Springsteen's most beloved concert numbers.

Bruce Springsteen - Commercial success

In the May 22, 1974 issue of Boston's The Real Paper, music critic Jon Landau wrote, "I saw rock and roll 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" [4] (Landau subsequently became Springsteen's manager and producer). With the release of Born to Run in 1975, Springsteen appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in 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. The album 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 best and most consistent 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. [5]

By the late 1970s Sprinsteen had developed a reputation in the pop world as a songwriter whose material could provide hits for others if not for himself. Manfred Mann's Earth Band had gotten a U.S. number one pop hit out of a heavily rearranged version of Greetings's "Blinded by the Light" in early 1977. Patti Smith reached number 13 with her take on Springsteen's unreleased "Because the Night" in 1978, while The Pointer Sisters hit number two in 1979 with Springsteen's also unreleased "Fire".

Springsteen continued to consolidate his thematic focus on working-class life with the double album The River in 1980, which finally yielded his first hit single of his own, "Hungry Heart" (originally written for The Ramones but retained for his own use instead).

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. The title track on this album is about the murder spree of Charles Starkweather. 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 Arthur Baker dance mixes of three of the singles). The five-record boxed set Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live/1975-85 (also released on three cassettes or three CDs) 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."

Bruce Springsteen - 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." [6]

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. Highlights included a sold-out fifteen show run at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey and a ten night sold-out engagement at at New York's Madison Square Garden. 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.

He celebrated his 50th birthday with a concert at Philadelphia's Spectrum, which he opened with Growing Up. Prior to beginning the song, Springsteen celebrated his strong affiliations with Philadelphia, saying: "All things being equal, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."

Bruce Springsteen - 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". The title track gained airplay in several radio formats, and the record became Springsteen's best-selling album of new material in 15 years. A massive tour was made to promote The Rising. While Springsteen had maintained a loyal hardcore fan base everywhere, his general popularity had dipped over the years in some southern and midwestern regions of the U.S. But it was 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. [7]. 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 became 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 would mystify casual Springsteen fans. He also frequently rehearses for tours in Asbury Park; some of his most devoted followers even go so far as to 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, Dave Grohl, and E Street Band member Steven van Zandt in tribute to the late Joe Strummer; Springsteen and the Clash had once been considered multiple-album-dueling rivals at the time of the double The River and the triple 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 Mellencamp, 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 – he had always refrained from explicitly endorsing candidates for political office (indeed he had rejected the efforts of Walter Mondale to construe an endorsement during the 1984 Reagan "Born in the U.S.A." flap). This new stance led to 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 this and a few of his other 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 or shortly after the Tom Joad tour, a couple of them being performed then but never released. [8]. 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 solo tour at the same time as the album's release, playing both small and large venues. Attendance was sparse in a few regions, and everywhere tickets were easier to get than in the past. Unlike his mid-1990s solo tour, he performed on piano, electric piano, pump organ, autoharp, ukelele, 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" jolted audiences to attention, while rarities, frequent set list changes, and a willingness to keep trying even through audible piano mistakes kept most of his loyal audiences happy.

In November 2005, New Jersey Senators Frank Lautenberg and Jon Corzine sponsored a US Senate resolution to honor Springsteen on the 30th anniversary of the release of his Born to Run album. In general, resolutions honoring native sons are passed with a simple voice vote. For unstated reasons, this resolution was killed in committee. Eonline story, 11/2005Also in November 2005, Sirius Satellite Radio started a 24 hour, 7 days a week radio station on Channel 10 called E Street Radio. This channel features commercial free Bruce Springsteen music including rare tracks, interviews and daily concerts of the B.S. & the E Street Band recorded throughout their career.

Bruce Springsteen - 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. [9] The E Street Band was inactive from the end of 1988 through early 1999, except for a brief reunion in 1995.

Bruce Springsteen - Current members

• Danny Federici - organ, glockenspiel, accordion, 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; became Springsteen's wife in 1991; they have a daughter and two sons)
• 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.

Bruce Springsteen - 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)

Bruce Springsteen - Domain dispute

In February 2001, Springsteen lost a domain name dispute to Jeff Burgar, who had registered brucespringsteen.com. A WIPO panel ruled 2 to 1 in favor of Burgar.

In November 2000 Springsteen filed legal action against Burgar which accused him of registering the domain in bad faith along with several other celebrity domains to funnel web users to his Celebrity 1000 portal site. Once the legal complaint was filed, Burgar pointed the domain to a Springsteen biography and message board. Burgar claims to be running a Springsteen fan club.

Bruce Springsteen - Samples

• Download sample of "Badlands" from Darkness on the Edge of Town
• Download sample of "Thunder Road" from Born To Run.
• Download sample of "Dancing in the Dark" from Born in the U.S.A.
• Download sample of "Open All Night" from Nebraska

Bruce Springsteen - Discography

For a detailed discography, see Bruce Springsteen discography.

Bruce Springsteen - Awards and recognition

Grammy Awards:

• 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:

• Academy Award for Best Song, 1993, "Streets of Philadelphia" from Philadelphia

Emmy Awards:

• The Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live In New York City HBO special won two technical awards in 2001.

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 Springsteen always found to be ironic, considering that the song "is about leaving New Jersey") [10]

See also

• List of best selling music artists
• Italian American

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Bruce Springsteen", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki