Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Nicknamed "the Boss", Springsteen has released 21 studio albums spanning six decades; most of his albums feature the E Street Band, his backing band since 1972. Springsteen is a pioneer of heartland rock, combining commercially successful rock with poetic, socially conscious lyrics that reflect working class American life. He is known for his energetic concerts, some of which last more than four hours.

Springsteen released his first two albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, in 1973. Although both were well-received by critics, neither earned him a large audience. He changed his style and achieved worldwide popularity with Born to Run (1975). Springsteen followed with Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) and The River (1980), Springsteen's first album to top the Billboard 200 chart. After the solo acoustic album Nebraska (1982), he recorded Born in the U.S.A. (1984) with the E Street Band, which became his most commercially successful album and the 23rd-best selling album of all time as of 2024. All seven singles from Born in the U.S.A. reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, including the title track. Springsteen mostly hired session musicians for the recording of his next three albums, Tunnel of Love (1987), Human Touch (1992), and Lucky Town (1992). He reassembled the E Street Band for Greatest Hits (1995), and recorded the acoustic album The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) and the EP Blood Brothers (1996) solo.

Springsteen then released The Rising (2002), which was dedicated to the victims of the September 11 attacks. He released two more folk albums, Devils & Dust (2005) and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006), his first cover album. Springsteen followed with two more albums with the E Street Band, Magic (2007) and Working on a Dream (2009). His next albums, Wrecking Ball (2012) and High Hopes (2014), topped album charts worldwide. In 2017, 2018 and 2021, Springsteen performed the critically acclaimed show Springsteen on Broadway, in which he performed songs and told stories from his 2016 autobiography; an album version from the Broadway performances was released in 2018. He released the solo album Western Stars in 2019, Letter to You with the E Street Band in 2020, and a solo covers album entitled Only the Strong Survive in 2022. Letter to You reached No. 2 in the US, making Springsteen the first artist to release a top-five album in six consecutive decades.

One of the album era's most prominent musicians, Springsteen has sold more than 71 million albums in the U.S. and over 140 million worldwide, making him the 27th-best-selling music artist of all time as of 2024. His accolades include 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009, was named MusiCares person of the year in 2013, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 and the National Medal of Arts in 2023. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked Springsteen 23rd on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", describing him as "the embodiment of rock and roll".

Springsteen was born at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, New Jersey, on September 23, 1949, to Douglas Frederick "Dutch" Springsteen (1924–1998) and his wife, Adele Ann (née Zerilli; 1925–2024). Springsteen's father worked as a bus driver and other jobs. His father had mental health issues throughout his life, which worsened in his later life. His mother, who was originally from the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, worked as a legal secretary and was the family's main breadwinner. He is of Dutch, Irish, and Italian descent, and grew up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey.

Springsteen's paternal ancestors were among the early Dutch families who, in the 17th century, settled in colonial-era America, then part of the Dutch Republic known as New Netherland. Springsteen's paternal ancestor, John Springsteen, was a patriot in the American Revolution, which evolved into the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. The Springsteen surname originates in Groningen, a province in the Netherlands, and is topographic, translating to "jump stone" and meaning a stepping stone used on unpaved streets or between two houses. Springsteen's Italian maternal grandfather was born in Vico Equense and emigrated through Ellis Island. He arrived in the United States unable to read or write English, but went on to become a lawyer and impressed the young Springsteen as being "larger than life".

Springsteen has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela (born c. 1962). Pamela Springsteen worked briefly as an actress and later as a photographer; she took photos for three Springsteen albums, Human Touch, Lucky Town, and The Ghost of Tom Joad.

Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima Catholic School in Freehold, where he was at odds with the nuns and rebelled against the strictures imposed upon him, though some of his later music reflected a Catholic ethos and included Irish Catholic hymns with a rock music twist. In 2012, Springsteen said that it was his Catholic upbringing rather than his political ideology that most influenced his music. He said his faith gave him a "very active spiritual life" but joked that this "made it very difficult sexually" and added "once a Catholic, always a Catholic". He grew up hearing fellow New Jersey singer Frank Sinatra on the radio, and became interested in being a musician by the age of seven after seeing Elvis Presley's performances on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956 and 1957. Soon after, his mother rented him a guitar from Mike Diehl's Music in Freehold for $6 a week, but it failed to provide him with the instant gratification he desired.

In ninth grade, Springsteen entered Freehold High School, a public high school, but did not fit in there either. A former teacher said Springsteen was a "loner who wanted nothing more than to play his guitar". He graduated in 1967, but felt so alienated that he skipped his graduation ceremony. He briefly attended Ocean County College, but dropped out. At age 19, Springsteen was drafted, but failed his physical examination because of a concussion he suffered in a motorcycle accident two years earlier combined with his behavior at induction, both of which reportedly made him unacceptable for military service. In failing his examination, Springsteen likely avoided conscripted service in the Vietnam War. In 1969, when he was 20 years old, Springsteen's parents and sister Pamela moved to San Mateo, California; he and his sister Virginia, who was married and pregnant at the time, remained in Freehold.

In 1964, Springsteen saw the Beatles' televised appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Inspired, he bought his first guitar for $18.95 at the Western Auto appliance store. Thereafter, he started playing for audiences with a band called the Rogues at local venues, including Elks Lodge in Freehold. Later that year, his mother took out a loan to buy him a $60 Kent guitar, an act he later memorialized in his song "The Wish". In 1965, he went to the house of Tex and Marion Vinyard, who sponsored young bands in town. They helped him become the lead guitarist and subsequently one of the lead singers of the Castiles, a band that recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township and played a variety of venues, including Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. Marion Vinyard said she believed the young Springsteen when he promised he would make it big. In the late 1960s, Springsteen performed briefly in a power trio known as Earth, who played in various clubs in New Jersey and at a major show at the Hotel Diplomat in New York City.

From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed with the band Child, which later changed its name to Steel Mill and included Danny Federici, Vini Lopez, Vinnie Roslin, and later Steven Van Zandt and Robbin Thompson. Steel Mill performed at various Jersey Shore venues and also outside of New Jersey, in Richmond, Virginia, Nashville, Tennessee, and California, and gathered a cult following. In his January 1970 review of Steel Mill's show at The Matrix, music critic Philip Elwood wrote in the San Francisco Examiner that he had "never been so overwhelmed by a totally unknown talent" and called Steel Mill "the first big thing that's happened to Asbury Park since the good ship Morro Castle burned to the waterline of that Jersey beach in '34". Elwood praised the band's "cohesive musicality" and called Springsteen "a most impressive composer". In San Mateo, Steel Mill recorded three original Springsteen songs at Pacific Recording.

As Springsteen sought to shape a unique and genuine musical and lyrical style, he performed with the bands Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom from early-to-mid-1971, the Sundance Blues Band in mid-1971, and the Bruce Springsteen Band from mid-1971 to mid-1972. His songwriting ability included, as his future record label described it in early publicity campaigns, "more words in some individual songs than other artists had in whole albums". He brought his skills to the attention of several people who went on to prove influential to his career development, including managers Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, who in turn brought him to the attention of John Hammond, a talent scout at Columbia Records. In May 1972, Springsteen auditioned for Hammond.

In October 1972, Springsteen formed a new band for the recording of his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. The band eventually became known as the E Street Band, although the name was not used until September 1974. Springsteen acquired the nickname "the Boss" during this period, since he took on the task of collecting his band's nightly pay and distributing it among his bandmates. The nickname also reportedly sprang from games of Monopoly, which Springsteen played with other Jersey Shore musicians.