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Bruce Springsteen

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Performers and composers

                      Bruce Springsteen
   "The Boss" in Asbury Park, New Jersey on April 20, 2005
   "The Boss" in Asbury Park, New Jersey on April 20, 2005
                    Background information
   Birth name    Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen
   Also known as "The Boss"
   Born          September 23, 1949
                 Long Branch, New Jersey, USA
   Genre(s)      Rock
                 Heartland rock
                 Folk
   Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter, guitarist
   Instrument(s) Guitar, Harmonica, and Piano
   Years active  1972–present
   Label(s)      Columbia
   Associated
   acts          E Street Band
   Website       brucespringsteen.net

   Bruce Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American rock
   singer-songwriter and guitarist. Springsteen has frequently recorded
   and toured with the E Street Band, in addition to recording and
   performing as a solo artist and with other musicians. An heir to Elvis
   Presley, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Eddie Cochran and Bob Dylan, but
   also influenced by early 1960s rock and R&B, Springsteen is most widely
   known for his brand of heartland rock infused with pop hooks, poetic
   lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered around his native New Jersey.

   His eloquence in expressing ordinary, everyday problems has earned him
   numerous awards, including several Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and
   induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with a very large,
   devoted, and long-lasting fan base. His most famous albums, Born to Run
   and Born in the U.S.A., epitomize his penchant for finding grandeur in
   the struggles of daily life.

   Springsteen's lyrics often concern men and women struggling to make
   ends meet. He has gradually become identified with progressive
   politics. 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 iconic status in America as well as his popularity abroad
   stems from his concert performances—marathon shows, up to four hours in
   length, in which he and the E Street Band energetically perform intense
   ballads, rousing anthems, and party rock and roll songs, with
   Springsteen telling long whimsical or deeply emotional stories in
   between.

   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
   — he sometimes jokingly refers to himself as such on stage.

Biography

Early years

   Bruce Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in
   Freehold. His father, Douglas, was a bus driver of Dutch and Irish
   ancestry and his mother, Adele Zirilli Springsteen, an Italian-American
   legal secretary.

   Growing up, Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima parochial school
   in Freehold, where he was at odds with both the nuns and other
   students. In ninth grade he transferred to the public Freehold High
   School, where again he failed to fit in. He completed high school but
   felt so uncomfortable that he skipped his own graduation ceremony. He
   then attended Ocean County Community College briefly but dropped out.

   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 $18,
   then began studying with a local, relatively unknown guitarist. When he
   was 16, his mother took out a loan to buy him a $60 Kent guitar, an
   event he memorializes in his song "The Wish." 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 Castiles recorded two original
   songs at a public recording studio in Brick, 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. 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.
   Areas such as Asbury Park, New Jersey inspired the themes of ordinary
   life in Bruce Springsteen's music.
   Enlarge
   Areas such as Asbury Park, New Jersey inspired the themes of ordinary
   life in Bruce Springsteen's music.

   He began performing in New Jersey, in 1969 and through 1971 with Steve
   Van Zandt, Danny Federici and Vini Lopez in a band called Child, later
   renamed 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 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. As a result,
   Springsteen is considered the foremost exponent of the Jersey Shore
   sound.

1972 - 1974

   Springsteen 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 , though sales were slow.
   Because of his lyrics-heavy, folk rock-rooted music on tracks such as "
   Blinded by the Light" and "For You" and the Columbia and Hammond
   connections, critics frequently compared Springsteen to Bob Dylan in
   the early days of his recording career. "He sings with a freshness and
   urgency I haven't heard since I was rocked by ' Like a Rolling Stone',"
   wrote Peter Knobler in Crawdaddy, March 1973. Van Morrison was even
   more strongly an influence on "Spirit in the Night", and "Lost in the
   Flood" presented the first of his Vietnam veteran tales.
   "Well the cops finally busted Madame Marie for tellin' fortunes better
   than they do / This boardwalk life for me is through / You know you
   ought to quit this scene too"
   Enlarge
   "Well the cops finally busted Madame Marie for tellin' fortunes better
   than they do / This boardwalk life for me is through / You know you
   ought to quit this scene too"

   Later in 1973 his second album, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street
   Shuffle, came out again to critical acclaim but no commercial profit.
   Now the music was more operatic in form, although weakly recorded. "4th
   of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" and "Incident on 57th Street" would later
   became fan favorites, and the long, full-of-life " Rosalita (Come Out
   Tonight)" would go on to become one of Springsteen's most beloved
   concert numbers.

   In the May 22, 1974 issue of Boston's The Real Paper, music critic Jon
   Landau wrote after seeing a club performance, "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 then
   producer, helping to finish Springsteen's epic new album that was under
   way. This was Springsteen's last-ditch effort to make a commercially
   viable record; its wall of sound production had an enormous budget and
   had become bogged down in the recording process.

   Fed by the release of an early mix of exciting new song " Born to Run"
   to progressive rock radio, anticipation built toward the new album's
   release.

1975 - 1981

   On August 13, 1975, Springsteen and the E Street Band began a
   five-night, 10-show stand at New York's Bottom Line club; it attracted
   major media attention, was broadcast live on WNEW-FM, and convinced
   many skeptics that Springsteen was for real. (Decades later, Rolling
   Stone magazine would name the stand as one of the 50 Moments That
   Changed Rock and Roll.) With the release of Born to Run on August 25,
   1975, Springsteen finally found success: while there were no real hit
   singles, " Born to Run", " Thunder Road" and " Jungleland" all received
   massive FM radio airplay and remain perennial favorites on many classic
   rock stations to this day. To cap off the triumph, Springsteen appeared
   on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the same week, on October 27
   of that year. So great did the wave of publicity become that
   Springsteen eventually rebelled against it during his first venture
   overseas, tearing down promotional posters before a concert appearance
   in London.

   A legal battle with former manager Mike Appel kept Springsteen out of
   the studio for over two years, during which time he kept The E Street
   Band together through extensive touring across the U.S. Despite the
   optimistic fervor with which he often performed, the new songs he was
   writing and often debuting on stage had taken a more somber tone than
   much of his previous work. Reaching settlement with Appel in 1977,
   Springsteen finally returned to the studio, and the subsequent sessions
   produced Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978). Musically, this album was
   a turning point of Springsteen's career. Gone were the rapid-fire
   lyrics, outsized 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, while the track
   "Prove it All Night" received a significant amount of radio airplay.
   Other fans would always prefer the work of the adventurous early
   Springsteen. The cross-country 1978 tour to promote the album would
   become legendary for the intensity of its shows.

   By the late 1970s, Springsteen had earned a reputation in the pop world
   as a songwriter whose material could provide hits for other bands.
   Manfred Mann's Earth Band had achieved a U.S. No. 1 pop hit with a
   heavily rearranged version of Greetings' " 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 No. 2 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", but
   he likes guys also included an intentionally paradoxical range of
   material from party rockers to intense piano ballads. The album sold
   well, and a long tour in 1980 and 1981 followed, featuring
   Springsteen's first extended playing of Europe and ending with a series
   of multi-night arena stands in major cities in the U.S.

1982 - 1989

   Springsteen suddenly veered off the normal rock career course,
   following The River 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. The album actually started (according to
   Marsh) as a demo tape for new songs to be played with the E Street Band
   - but during the recording process, Springsteen and producer Landau
   realized they worked better as solo acoustic numbers; several attempts
   at re-recording the songs in a studio led them to realize that the
   original versions, recorded on a simple, low-tech four-track cassette
   deck in Springsteen's kitchen, were the best versions they were going
   to get.

   While Nebraska did not sell especially well, it garnered widespread
   critical praise (including being named "Album of the Year" by Rolling
   Stone magazine's critics). It also helped inspire the musical genre
   known as lo-fi music and became a cult favorite among indie-rockers and
   other listeners who might be averse to Springsteen's more mainstream
   work. Springsteen did not tour in conjunction with Nebraska's release.

   Springsteen probably is best known for his album Born in the U.S.A.
   (1984), which sold 15 million copies in the U.S. alone and became one
   of the best-selling albums of all time with seven singles hitting the
   top 10, and the massively successful world tour that followed it. The
   title track was a bitter commentary on the treatment of Vietnam
   veterans, some of whom were Springsteen's friends and bandmates. The
   song was misinterpreted by some as nationalistic, and in connection
   with the 1984 presidential campaign became the subject of considerable
   folklore. Springsteen also turned down several million dollars offered
   by Chrysler Corporation for using the song in a car commercial. (In
   later years, Springsteen performed the song accompanied only with
   acoustic guitar to more explicitly make clear 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 No. 2 on the Billboard music
   charts. The music video for the song featured a young Courteney Cox
   dancing on stage with Springsteen, an appearance which helped kickstart
   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). Live/1975-85, a five-record box
   set (also released on three cassettes or three CDs), was released near
   the end of 1986 and also became a huge success, selling 13 million
   units in the U.S. and becoming the first box set to debut at No. 1 on
   the U.S. album charts. It is one of the best selling live albums of all
   time. It summed up Springsteen's career to that point and displayed
   some of the elements that made his 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 fans and critics 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 presaged 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.

   The subsequent Tunnel of Love Express tour shook up fans with changes
   to the stage layout, favorites dropped from the set list, and
   horn-based arrangements; during the European leg in 1988, Springsteen's
   relationship with E Street Band backup singer Patti Scialfa became
   public. Later in 1988, Springsteen headlined the truly worldwide Human
   Rights Now! Tour for Amnesty International. In the fall of 1989,
   Springsteen dissolved the E Street Band, and he and Scialfa relocated
   to California.

1990s

   Springsteen married Scialfa in 1991; they had three children born
   between 1990 and 1994.

   In 1992, after 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) and working with session musicians, Springsteen
   released two albums at once. 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, at points during the Lucky Town album, Springsteen
   actually claims happiness for himself.

   Some E Street Band fans voiced (and continue to voice) a low opinion of
   these albums, due to a noticeable country "twang" in Bruce's voice.
   (especially Human Touch) and did not follow the subsequent "Other Band"
   Tour. For other fans, however, who had only come to know Springsteen
   after the 1975 consolidation of the E Street Band, the "Other Band"
   Tour was an exciting opportunity to see Springsteen develop a working
   onstage relationship with a different group of musicians, and to see
   him explore the Asbury Park soul-and-gospel base in some of his classic
   material.

   It was also during this tour that fans generally became aware of
   Springsteen using a teleprompter so as to not forget his lyrics, a
   practice that he may have begun on the Tunnel of Love Express but in
   any case has continued ever since. An electric band appearance on the
   acoustic 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 1994 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, particularly coming from a mainstream, homosexual musician. The
   music video for the song shows Springsteen's actual vocal performance,
   recorded using a hidden microphone, to a prerecorded vocal track. This
   was a technique developed on the "Brilliant Disguise" video.

   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 (mostly) 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 lengthy, worldwide, small-venue solo acoustic Ghost of Tom
   Joad 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, Springsteen and the E Street Band officially came together
   again and went on the extensive Reunion Tour, lasting over a year.
   Highlights included a record sold-out, 15-show run at Continental
   Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey to kick off the American
   leg of the tour.

2000s

   Springsteen's Reunion Tour with the E Street Band ended with a
   triumphant 10-night, sold-out engagement at New York City's Madison
   Square Garden in mid-2000 and controversy over a new song, " American
   Skin (41 Shots)", about the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. 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.

   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. The
   Rising Tour commenced at the same time, barnstorming through a series
   of single-night arena stands in the U.S. and Europe to promote the
   album in 2002, then returning for large-scale, multiple-night stadium
   shows in 2003. While Springsteen had maintained a loyal hardcore fan
   base everywhere (and particularly in Europe), his general popularity
   had dipped over the years in some southern and midwestern regions of
   the U.S. But it was still strong in Europe and along the U.S. coasts,
   and he played an unprecedented 10 nights in Giants Stadium in New
   Jersey, a ticket-selling feat to which no other musical act has come
   close. During these shows Springsteen thanked those fans who were
   attending multiple shows and those who were coming from long distances
   or another country; the advent of robust Bruce-oriented online
   communities had made such practices more common. The Rising Tour came
   to a final conclusion with three nights in Shea Stadium, highlighted by
   renewed controversy over "American Skin" and a guest appearance from
   Bob Dylan.

   During the 2000s, Springsteen became a visible advocate for the
   revitalization of Asbury Park, and he's 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 outtake "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, Dave Matthews Band, Jackson Browne and other
   musicians. All concerts were to be held in swing states, to benefit
   MoveOn.org and to 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 in which he
   believed – 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 attract 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 the song and some of his other old
   songs at Kerry rallies. Springsteen's stance coincided with a reduction
   in his fan base (now an older, more affluent demographic) over the next
   two years, but how much was due to his politics versus his uncommercial
   music choices was unclear.

   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 10 years
   earlier during, or shortly after, the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, a couple
   of them being performed then but never released. . The title track
   concerns an ordinary soldier's feelings and fears during the Iraq War.
   Starbucks rejected a co-branding deal for the album, due in part to
   some sexually explicit content but also because of Springsteen's
   anti-corporate politics. Nonetheless, the album entered the album
   charts at No. 1 in 10 countries (United States, Austria, Switzerland,
   Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom
   and Ireland).

   Springsteen began the solo Devils & Dust Tour at the same time as the
   album's release, playing both small and large venues. Attendance was
   disappointing in a few regions, and everywhere (other than in Europe)
   tickets were easier to get than in the past. Unlike his mid-1990s solo
   tour, he performed on piano, electric piano, pump organ, autoharp,
   ukulele, banjo, electric guitar and stomping board, as well as acoustic
   guitar and harmonica, adding variety to the solo sound. (Offstage
   synthesizer, guitar and percussion also are 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 U.S. Senate resolution to honour 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, 11/2005 Also in November 2005, Sirius Satellite Radio started a
   24-hour, seven-day-a-week radio station on Channel 10 called "E Street
   Radio." This channel, which has since been discontinued, featured
   commercial-free Bruce Springsteen music, including rare tracks,
   interviews and daily concerts of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
   recorded throughout their career.

   In April 2006, Springsteen released his latest album, We Shall
   Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, an American roots music project focused
   around a big folk sound treatment of 15 songs popularized by Pete
   Seeger. It was recorded with a large ensemble of musicians, including
   only Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, and the Miami Horns from past
   efforts. In contrast to previous albums, this was recorded in only
   three one-day sessions, and frequently one can hear Springsteen calling
   out key changes live as the band explores its way through the tracks.
   The Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band Tour began the same
   month, featuring the 18-strong ensemble of musicians dubbed the Seeger
   Sessions Band. Seeger Sessions material was heavily featured, as well
   as a handful of (usually drastically rearranged) Springsteen numbers.
   The tour proved very popular in Europe, selling out everywhere and
   receiving some excellent reviews , but newspapers have reported that
   attendance at U.S. shows has often been sparse.

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, accordion, keyboards
     * Garry Tallent - bass guitar, tuba
     * Clarence "Big Man" Clemons - saxophone, percussion, backing vocals,
       larger-than-life persona and Springsteen foil
     * Max Weinberg - drums, percussion (joined September 1974)
     * Roy Bittan - piano, synthesizer (joined September 1974)
     * Steven Van Zandt - guitars, mandolin, backing vocals (officially
       joined July 1975 after playing in previous bands; left in 1984 to
       go solo; rejoined in early 1995)
     * Nils Lofgren - guitars, 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, percussion, backing vocals (joined 2002,
       occasional appearances before that)

     * Springsteen himself does all lead vocals, most lead guitar,
       harmonica, occasional piano, and even more rarely bass guitar.

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)

Discography

Studio albums

                     1. Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
                             ( January 5, 1973)

             2. The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle
                            ( September 11, 1973)

                               3. Born to Run
                             ( August 25, 1975)

                       4. Darkness on the Edge of Town
                               ( June 2, 1978)

                                5. The River
                             ( October 10, 1980)

                                 6. Nebraska
                            ( September 20, 1982)

                            7. Born in the U.S.A.
                               ( June 4, 1984)

                              8. Tunnel of Love
                             ( October 6, 1987)

                               9. Human Touch
                              ( March 31, 1992)

                               10. Lucky Town
                              ( March 31, 1992)

                              11. Greatest Hits
                            ( February 28, 1995)

                          12. The Ghost of Tom Joad
                            ( November 16, 1995)

                                 13. Tracks
                            ( November 10, 1998)

                                14. 18 Tracks
                              ( April 13, 1999)

                               15. The Rising
                              ( July 30, 2002)

                     16. The Essential Bruce Springsteen
                            ( November 11, 2003)

                              17. Devils & Dust
                              ( April 26, 2005)

                 18. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
                              ( April 25, 2006)

Live albums

                               1. Live/1975-85
                            ( November 10, 1986)

                            2. Chimes of Freedom
                               ( May 5, 1988)

                          3. In Concert/MTV Plugged
                              ( April 13, 1993)

                          4. Live in New York City
                              ( April 3, 2001)

                       5. Hammersmith Odeon London '75
                            ( February 28, 2006)

Awards and recognition

Grammy Awards

          Springsteen has won 13 Grammy Awards, as follows (years shown
          are the year the award was given for, not the year in which the
          ceremony was held):

     * Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, 1984, "Dancing in the Dark"
     * Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, 1987, "Tunnel of Love"
     * Song of the Year, 1994, "Streets of Philadelphia"
     * Best Rock Song, 1994, "Streets of Philadelphia"
     * Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo, 1994, "Streets of Philadelphia"
     * Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television,
       1994, "Streets of Philadelphia"
     * Best Contemporary Folk Album, 1996, The Ghost of Tom Joad
     * Best Rock Album, 2002, The Rising
     * Best Rock Song, 2002, "The Rising"
     * Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, 2002, "The Rising"
     * Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, 2003, "Disorder
       in the House" (with Warren Zevon)
     * Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2004, "Code of Silence"
     * Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2005, "Devils & Dust"

   Only one of these awards has been one of the cross-genre "major" ones
   (Song, Record, or Album of the Year); he has been nominated a number of
   other times for the majors, but failed to win.

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 Emmy Awards in 2001.

Other recognition

     * Polar Music Prize in 1997.
     * 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")
     * The minor planet 23990, discovered Sept. 4 1999 by I. P. Griffin at
       Auckland, New Zealand, was officially named in his honour

Web domain dispute

   In November 2000, Springsteen filed legal action against Jeff Burgar
   which accused him of registering the domain brucespringsteen.com (along
   with several other celebrity domains) in bad faith 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.

   In February 2001, Springsteen lost his dispute with Burgar. A WIPO
   panel ruled 2 to 1 in favour of Burgar.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Springsteen"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
