Bruce Springsteen

Singer, songwriter, guitarist

Discovered by John Hammond

Lionized by Critics

Contract Dispute Forced Hiatus

Achieved Pop Legend Status

Selected discography

Sources

Bruce Springsteen has been something of a heroic figure since his arrival on the national music scene in the mid-1970s. In an era when music was dominated by flat, formulaic sounds, he embodied the pure, raw spirit of rock and roll in a way that Elvis or the Beatles had in earlier decades. Instead of mouthing Pop platitudes, Springsteen delivered characters and situations concerned with the struggle to maintain dignity and make sense out of life in a tarnished, troubled America. This outlook was a natural reflection of his own youth in a gritty New Jersey town where most people expected little more from life than a daily grind in a dead-end job. At a young age, Springsteen decided to avoid that fate by becoming a rock star.

At age thirteen he began playing guitar, and a year later he joined a band called Castile. They became quite popular locally, recording two of Springsteen’s compositions in 1966 and playing a series of dates in 1967 at the Cafe Wha in New York City. Their success convinced the young guitarist to stay in New Jersey even when the rest of his family moved to California during his senior year in high school. He lived with various friends while finishing school and gigging in local clubs. After graduation, he moved to Asbury Park, New Jersey, where he formed Earth, a power trio inspired by Cream. He also attended Ocean County Community College for a short time but dropped out when a New York record producer offered him a contract. The contract never materialized and the producer vanished, but Springsteen decided to stay focused on music rather than return to college.

Child was Springsteen’s next band, and it included two musicians who would be with him for years to come—drummer Vini Lopez and keyboardist Danny Federici. Soon renamed Steel Mill, the band gigged as far south as Virginia and developed a loyal following along the Atlantic seacoast. In 1969, Steel Mill played some club dates in San Francisco, which led to a contract offer from Fillmore Records. But the band members rejected the contract, saying that the advance offer was too small. Steel Mill returned to their home turf, where they remained popular until Springsteen disbanded them in 1971. He then formed Dr. Zoom and Sonic Boom, but that group lasted for just three gigs. Next he experimented with a band featuring several singers and a four-piece horn section. But by autumn the band had fallen apart and Springsteen was working solo.

Discovered by John Hammond

In 1972 Springsteen hired Mike Appel to manage his career. It was to be a double-edged association. On one hand, Appel’s management did guide Springsteen

For the Record…

Born September 23, 1949, in Freehold, N.J.; son of Douglas (a bus driver) and Adele (a secretary; maiden name, Zirlili) Springsteen; married Julianne Phillips (an actress; divorced); married Patty Scialfa (a singer and guitarist), 1991; children: one son. Education: Attended Ocean City Community College.

Began playing guitar at age 13; performed in numerous local bands in New Jersey, including Castile, 1964–67, Earth, c. 1968, Child (renamed Steel Mill) c. 1969–71, Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom, 1971; performed and recorded as a soloist, 1971–72 (and for various brief periods during the late 1980s), and as featured performer with the E Street Band, 1972—.

Awards: Platinum Record from Recording Industry Association of America, 1978, for Darkness on the Edge of Town, and 1980, for The River; gold record from Recording Institute Association of America, 1975, for Born to Run, 1977, for The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, 1978, for Darkness on the Edge of Town, and 1978, for Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

Addresses: Record company —Columbia Records, 51 West 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019.

to the top, but disputes over their contract would eventually lead to a long, unwelcome hiatus in the musician’s career. For the moment, however, their partnership seemed nothing but mutually beneficial. Appel arranged for his client to audition for John Hammond, artist and repertory manager at Columbia Records, whose notable feats included “discovering” Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan. As Hammond listened to Springsteen’s word-packed songs and raspy voice, he wrote an enthusiastic evaluation concluding that he had heard “the greatest talent of the decade!”

In June 1972 Springsteen signed a ten-record contract with Columbia. Within a month, he had delivered his first album: Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. Some of the music was set to the rhythm and blues stylings of his revitalized band, some to acoustic backing. The album was only a modest success by industry standards, selling mostly to Springsteen’s East Coast followers. Critical response was overwhelming, however; at the age of twenty-four, Bruce Springsteen was lionized as a powerful new force and frequently compared to the early Bob Dylan. Writing in Crawdaddy, Peter Knobler and Greg Mitchell announced that he had written “individual lines worth entire records.” Melody Maker’s Richard Williams called Asbury Park “staggeringly good,” and declared: “Whatever happens next in music, I have a strong suspicion that Bruce Springsteen will be a big part of it. He may even be it.”

Extensive tours of the Northeast followed the release of the record, and Springsteen began developing the stage show that would become his trademark: a marathon event filled with epic tales, long narratives leading into songs, and emotionally exhausting performances. He tried to capture the unique qualities of his show on his second album, The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. Lyrics and instrumentals were interwoven with extended narratives, producing another album that was lauded by critics but only a modest commercial success. On the road again (this time with the original E Street Band), Springsteen developed and tightened his show even further.

Lionized by Critics

It was about this time that Boston critic Jon Landau wrote in the Real Paper: “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.… On a night when I needed to feel young, he made me hear music like I was hearing it for the first time.” That quote was used as the centerpiece of a massive publicity campaign launched by Columbia before the release of Born to Run. The album, jointly produced by Springsteen, Appel, and Jon Landau, underscored the singer’s histrionics with dramatic arrangements and production techniques. During the final phases of production, Springsteen expressed dissatisfaction with the sound that had been developed and urged the release of a live album instead. But Columbia’s promotional campaign had already reached a fever pitch, and Born to Run was released in October of 1975, just as Springsteen appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the same week.

The intensity of the hype generated a good deal of skepticism among those who were unfamiliar with Springsteen’s music, and he was himself dismayed by all the media attention. He believed that it trivialized his artistry and made him appear to be an invention of the record company’s publicity department—a manufactured product to be packaged, promoted, and foisted off on the public. In a Chicago Tribune interview, he told Lynn Van Matre: “You know what I thought right after that Time and Newsweek thing? All I could see ahead for me was ‘Celebrity Bowling.’ It was funny. I’m talking in an extreme way, I know, but I knew things were going to be rough—and they were rough.” But he weathered the hostility and the skepticism, and as the first reviews were published it became apparent that critics almost without exception felt that, if anything, Springsteen had exceeded the claims of the advance publicity. His first national tour, in 1975, was a sellout wherever it went.

Contract Dispute Forced Hiatus

Springsteen was perfectly poised to release a followup album that would cement his critical acceptance and further his fame, but legal difficulties brought his career to a grinding halt. He had fired his manager, who retaliated by blocking the release of the next album. Suits and countersuits dragged on, and an injunction prohibited Springsteen from recording again until May 1977. During 1976 and early 1977 he toured at a grueling pace to maintain the momentum of his hard-earned success. The very fact that he was unavailable on records gave his live concerts (and bootleg recordings of them) an almost mythical status. He also wrote prolifically at this time, both for his upcoming albums and for other artists.

Darkness on the Edge of Town, finally released in 1978, reflected the bitterness and disillusionment Springsteen felt during that period. The songs on it were marked by a more adult, somber tone than his earlier compositions, and this starkness was matched by a stripped-down production style. He began work on The River in April of 1979 and during the extended period he took to complete it he appeared onstage only two times. One of those appearances was at the Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) concert in New York City (released on film as No Nukes). Reviewing the movie, Janet Maslin wrote in the New York Times: “Springsteen, who steals the show … proves that in performance he is indeed a thing of beauty…. When ‘No Nukes’ cuts away from him to another backstage planning session, the comedown is considerable.”

Prior to the release of The River, Springsteen embarked on another marathon tour, crossing the United States twice, and performed in Japan, Australia, and Europe as well. Every one of his four-hour shows was a sellout. When The River, a two-record set, was released, sales swiftly topped two million, in part because of all the anticipation that had built up regarding the album, but also because of its crowd-pleasing mix of brief, uptempo songs along with those colored in the darker tones. Asked about the dichotomy within the album by Dave DiMartino in Creem, Springsteen said: “When I did The River, I tried to accept the fact that … the world is a paradox and that’s the way it is. And the only thing you can do with a paradox is live with it.”

After the runaway sales of The River, the obvious move would have been to release a very similar album. Instead, Springsteen heeded an inner feeling that his studio work had lost its vitality, and he accordingly released a solo, acoustic album whose sound quality was not far removed from that of a typical demo tape. Nebraska was, in fact, recorded on a four-track machine in his home. The simple treatment seemed appropriate for the stark, gloomy themes of fear, loneliness, and despair that dominated the album. Rolling Stone reviewer Steve Pond applauded Springsteen’s decision to assert his “right to make the records he wants to make…. Nebraska comes as a shock, a violent, acid-etched portrait of a wounded America that fuels its machinery by consuming its people’s dreams.”

Achieved Pop Legend Status

If Nebraska was somewhat inaccessable, its followup, Born in the U.S.A., was all a record company executive could dream of. It also covered bitter themes of disillusionment and tragedy, yet many seemed to embrace it as a flag-waving anthem. The album was in the Top Ten for more than a year, and became the best-selling album in Columbia’s history. It spawned another epic tour, with audiences on their feet singing and screaming throughout the entire show. The Born to Run phenomenon established Springsteen once and for all as “the Boss,” a genuine rock legend. It seemed appropriate, then, for Columbia to canonize him by releasing a monumental collection of his work, the five-record set Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live, 1975–1985.

Included in the collection were spoken sections in which Springsteen discussed his music and the influence of Woody Guthrie. Robert Palmer discussed the connection between the two musicians in the New York Times: “Springsteen gives the people who attend his concerts some food for thought, along with plenty of celebratory music that involves the crowd in call-and-response and sing-along routine.… He is a kind of latter day Woody Guthrie, singing about America—not the major cities or the enclaves of the rich, but smalltown, working-class America, where young people frustrated by dead-end jobs, factory shut-downs and the sounds of shattering hopes and dreams are as much a part of the picture as the more traditional rock and roll imagery of fast cars and summertime romances.”

Tunnel of Love, released in 1987, turned to a quieter, more intimate tone than Springsteen had dealt with previously. Its songs depicted the pitfalls, tensions, and misunderstandings of love. This was perhaps a reflection of his courtship and marriage to actress Julianne Phillips—a doomed union that dissolved shortly after the album was released. Springsteen told Bill Barol in a Newsweek interview: “For 10 or 14 years I wrote songs about the man in the car…. This record is about the man in the house. One of the things I wanted the record to be about is, we live in a society that wants us to buy illusion everyday…. You just can’t live like that and people shouldn’t be asked to.”

In 1991 Springsteen married Patty Scialfa, a guitarist and vocalist in his backup band and the mother of his son.

Selected discography

On Columbia

Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., 1973.

The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, 1973.

Born to Run, 1975.

Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1978.

The River, 1980.

Nebraska, 1982.

Born in the U.S.A., 1984.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, 1975–1985, 1985.

Tunnel of Love, 1987.

Sources

Books

Contemporary Authors, Volume 111, Gale, 1984.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 17, Gale, 1981.

Gambaccini, Peter, Bruce Springsteen, Quick Fox, 1979.

Marsh, Dave, Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story, Doubleday, 1979.

Swartley, Ariel, Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, edited by Greil Marcus, Knopf, 1979.

Williams, Paul, Right to Pass and Other True Stories, Berkeley Publishing, 1977.

Periodicals

America, February 6, 1988.

Atlantic, September 1978.

Business World, December 1, 1975.

Chicago Sun-Times, October 6, 1985.

Chicago Tribune, November 2, 1980.

Crawdaddy, March 1973; March 1974; October 1975; August 1978; October 1978.

Creem, November 1975; January 1981.

Detroit News, February 15, 1983.

Down Beat, October 19, 1978; February 8, 1979.

Esquire, December 1985; December 1988.

Grooves, June 1979.

Harper’s, April 1988.

Houston Post, May 26, 1974.

Maclean’s, November 18, 1978.

Melody Maker, March 31, 1973; October 12, 1974; June 10, 1978; November 10, 1979.

Musician, November 1982.

New Republic, March 23, 1987.

Newsweek, September 8, 1975; October 27, 1975; August 5, 1985; November 3, 1975; June 5, 1978; November 2, 1987.

New Times, September 5, 1975; October 17, 1975; August 7, 1978.

New Yorker, November 4, 1974.

New York Times, August 29, 1975; October 5, 1975; October 22, 1976; May 26, 1978; August 7, 1984; August 6, 1985; November 9, 1986; October 4, 1987; February 27, 1988; June 12, 1988.

People, August 10, 1981; October 19, 1987; March 14, 1988; June 27, 1988; August 22, 1988; September 26, 1988; October 10, 1988; January 11, 1990.

Playboy, December 1975.

Pulse, March 1989.

The Real Paper, May 22, 1974.

Record World, October 2, 1975.

Rolling Stone, July 13, 1978; August 24, 1978; September 6, 1979; November 15, 1979; November 27, 1980; February 5, 1981; August 10, 1981 ; October 14, 1982; October 28, 1982; October 10, 1985; September 10, 1987; November 5, 1987; May 5, 1988; September 8, 1988.

Stereo Review, August 1978; December 1982.

Super Rock Awards, Winter 1978.

Teen, September 1981.

Thunder Road, Spring 1979.

Time, April 1, 1974; October 27, 1975; August 7, 1978; January 29, 1990.

Village Voice, October 10, 1974; June 12, 1978; June 19, 1984; September 8, 1985.

—Joan Goldsworthy