A Biography of Bruce Springsteen ( A site written in June 2007 )
Birth name Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen
Also known as " The Boss "
Born September 23, 1949, Long Branch,
New Jersey, New Jersey, USA
Genre (s) Rock Heartland rock Folk Arena Rock
Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter
Guitarist
Instrument(s) Voice
Guitar
Harmonica
Piano
Years active 1969–present
Label(s) Columbia Records
Associated
acts
E Street Band
The Castiles
Steel Mill
Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom
Bruce
Springsteen Band
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen is an American rock singer-songwriter & guitarist, born in Long Branch, New Jersey.
Through his career, Springsteen has won fifteen Grammys, an Oscar, an induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, & a large, devoted & long-lasting fan base. His best-known albums, such as Born to Run & Born in the U.S.A., epitomize his penchant for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily life.
Musical
style
Springsteen's lyrics often concern people struggling to make ends meet.
He has gradually become identified with progressive politics, various charitable
causes, & his response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, on which his album
The Rising reflects.
In recent years Springsteen's recordings tended to alternate between mainstream rock & more sombre, topical, folk-oriented music. Much of Springsteen's iconic status stems from his concert performances: marathon shows up to four hours in length, in which he & the E Street Band energetically perform intense ballads, rousing anthems, & rock & roll party songs, interspersed with Springsteen's whimsical or deeply personal stories.
Early years
Springsteen
was born in Long Branch, New Jersey & grew up in Freehold, New Jersey. His
father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was a bus driver of Dutch & Irish ancestry.
His mother, Adele Ann Zirilli, was a legal secretary of Italian ancestry. Raised
a Catholic, Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima parochial school in Freehold
Borough, where he was at odds with both the nuns & other students, In ninth
grade he transferred to the public Freehold Borough High School, but did not fit
in there either. He completed high school but felt so uncomfortable that he skipped
his own graduation ceremony. He briefly attended Ocean County Community College,
but dropped out. Some say he was bullied by both students and nuns there. On the
bright side he is another bullied person made good showing the bullied how life
is great at times.
Springsteen had been inspired to take up music at the age of seven after seeing Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show. At 13, he bought his first guitar for $18; later, his mother took out a loan to buy the 16-year-old Springsteen a $60 Kent guitar, an event he memorializes in his song "The Wish." In 1965, he went to the house of Tex & Marion Vinyard, who sponsored young bands in town. They helped him become the lead guitarist of The Castiles, & later lead singer of the group. The Castiles recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township, New Jersey & played a variety of venues, including Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. Marion Vinyard said that she believed Springsteen when, as a young man, he said he was going to make it big. Bruce's sister, Pamela Sue Springsteen, had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue her still photography career full time.
From 1969 through 1971, Springsteen performed around New Jersey with Steve Van Zandt, Danny Federici & Vini Lopez in a band called Child, later renamed Steel Mill. They went on to play at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA, & also in California. During this time Springsteen also performed regularly at small clubs in Asbury Park & along the Jersey shore, quickly gathering a cult following.
Even after gaining international acclaim, Springsteen's New Jersey roots reverberated in his music, & he routinely praised "the great state of New Jersey" in his live shows. Drawing on his extensive local appeal, he routinely sold out consecutive nights in major New Jersey & Philadelphia venues & , much like the Grateful Dead, his song lists varied significantly from one night to the next. He also made many surprise appearances at The Stone Pony & other shore nightclubs over the years, becoming the foremost exponent of the Jersey Shore sound.
Springsteen seems to have come to terms with his longstanding nickname "The Boss," which he was initially reported to dislike—he sometimes jokingly refers to himself as such on stage. The nickname originated when a young Springsteen, playing club gigs with a band in the 1960s, took on the task of collecting the band's nightly pay & distributing it amongst his bandmates.
1972 - 1974
Springsteen signed a 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
colleagues, including Van Zandt, into the studio with him, thus forming the E
Street Band. His debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., released in January
1973, established him as a critical favorite, though sales were slow. Because
of his lyrics-heavy, folk rock-rooted music exemplified on tracks like "Blinded
by the Light" & "For You," as well as the Columbia & Hammond
connections, critics initially compared Springsteen to Bob Dylan. "He sings
with a freshness & urgency I haven't heard since I was rocked by 'Like a Rolling
Stone'," wrote Crawdaddy magazine editor Peter Knobler in Springsteen's first
interview/profile, in March, 1973. Crawdaddy "discovered" Springsteen
in the rock press & was his earliest champion. Famed music critic Lester Bangs
wrote in Creem, 1975, that when Springsteen's first album was released....."many
of us dismissed it: he wrote like Bob Dylan & Van Morrison, sang like Van
Morrison & Robbie Robertson, & led a band that sounded like Van Morrison's."
The track "Spirit in the Night" especially showed Morrison's influence,
while with "Lost in the Flood" Springsteen presented the first of his
many portraits of Vietnam veterans.
"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"In September 1973 his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, came out again to critical acclaim but no commercial success. Springsteen's songs became grander in form & scope, with the E Street Band providing a less folky, more R&B vibe & the lyrics often romanticizing teenage street life. "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" & "Incident on 57th Street" would become fan favorites, & the long, rousing "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" would rank among 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 performance at the Harvard Square Theater, "I saw rock & roll's future, & its name is Bruce Springsteen. & 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 & producer, helping to finish the epic new album, Born to Run. Given an enormous budget in a last-ditch effort at a commercially viable record, Springsteen became bogged down in the recording process while striving for a wall of sound production. But, fed by the release of an early mix of "Born to Run" to progressive rock radio, anticipation built toward the album's release.
1975 - 1981
On August 13, 1975, Springsteen
& 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,
& 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
& 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", "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out" & "Jungleland"
all received massive FM radio airplay & remain perennial favorites on many
classic rock stations to this day. With its panoramic imagery, thundering production
& desperate optimism, some fans consider this among the best rock & roll
albums of all time & Springsteen's finest work. It established him as a sincere
& dynamic rock & roll personality who spoke for & in the voice of
a large part of the rock audience. To cap off the triumph, Springsteen appeared
on the covers of both Time & 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 & 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, & 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 & long, multi-part musical compositions of the first three albums; now the songs were leaner & more carefully drawn & began to reflect Springsteen's growing intellectual & political awareness. Some fans consider Darkness Springsteen's best & most consistent record; tracks such as "Badlands" & "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 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".
In the fall of 1979, Springsteen & the E Street Band joined the "Musicians United for Safer Energy" (M.U.S.E. organization) at Madison Square Garden for two nights. They played an abbreviated setlist, which hit all the big hits of his career up to that point & even premiered two songs from his upcoming album, "The River." All five M.U.S.E. concerts were recorded & the following summer "No Nukes-The Movie" was released, containing the first film of a Springsteen performance.
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 also included an intentionally paradoxical range of material from good-time party rockers to emotionally intense ballads. The album sold well, & a long tour in 1980 & 1981 followed, featuring Springsteen's first extended playing of Europe & 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, & 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 & 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) & influenced later significant works by other major artists, including U2's album, The Joshua Tree. It helped inspire the musical genre known as lo-fi music, becoming a cult favorite among indie-rockers. 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 & became one of the best-selling albums of all time with seven singles hitting the top 10, & 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 & bandmates. The song was widely misinterpreted as nationalistic, & 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 make the song's original meaning more explicitly clear. An acoustic version also appeared on Tracks, a later album.) "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 the actress' career.
The Born in the U.S.A. period represented the height of Springsteen's visibility in popular culture & 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 & also became a huge success, selling 13 million units in the U.S. & 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 & displayed some of the elements that made his shows so powerful to his fans: the switching from mournful dirges to party rockers & back; the communal sense of purpose between artist & audience; the long, intense spoken passages before songs, including those describing Springsteen's difficult relationship with his father; & the instrumental prowess of the E Street Band, such as in the long coda to "Racing in the Street". Despite its popularity, some fans & critics felt the album's song selection could have been better. Springsteen concerts are the subjects of frequent bootleg recording & trading among fans.
After this commercial peak, Springsteen released the much more sedate & contemplative Tunnel of Love (1987), a mature reflection on the many faces of love found, lost & 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, & they fall in love. But the house
is haunted, & 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, & 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, he dissolved the E Street Band, & he & Scialfa relocated
to California.
1990s
Bruce Springsteen won an Academy Award & multiple
Grammy Awards for his song "Streets of Philadelphia" on the Philadelphia
soundtrack.Springsteen married Scialfa in 1991; they had three children born 1991,
1993 & 1995.
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) & working with session musicians, Springsteen released two albums at once. Human Touch & 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, & 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, (especially Human Touch), & 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, & to see him explore the Asbury Park soul-and-gospel base in some of his classic material.
An electric band appearance on the acoustic MTV Unplugged television program (that was later released as In Concert/MTV Plugged) was poorly received.
Springsteen seemed to realize this dissatisfaction a few years hence when he spoke humorously of his late father during his Rock & 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 – & I tried it in
the early '90s & 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. The music video for the song shows Springsteen's
actual vocal performance, recorded using a hidden microphone, to a prerecorded
instrumental 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 generally less well-received than the similar Nebraska, due to the minimal melody & twangy vocals. 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 1995 Springsteen sang a duet with Elliott Murphy on "Everything I Do (Leads Me Back To You)" from Murphy's album Selling The Gold.
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 & the E Street Band officially came together again & 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 & 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 &
resulted in an HBO Concert, with corresponding DVD & 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 & popular success. The title track gained airplay in several radio formats, & the record became Springsteen's best-selling album of new material in 15 years. Bruce & the band played multiple songs on "The Today Show" from his hometown of Asbury Park in August 2002, thereby setting the stage for his new tour.The Rising Tour commenced at the same time, barnstorming through a series of single-night arena stands in the U.S. & 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 & midwestern regions of the U.S. But it was still strong in Europe & along the U.S. coasts, & 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 & 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" & a guest appearance from Bob Dylan He also performed "Born in the USA" at the end of the night.
During the 2000s, Springsteen became a visible advocate for the revitalization of Asbury Park, & he's played an annual series of winter holiday concerts there to benefit various local businesses, organizations & 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, & E Street Band member Steven van Zandt in tribute to the late Joe Strummer; Springsteen & the Clash had once been considered multiple-album-dueling rivals at the time of the double The River & the triple Sandinista!.
In 2004, Springsteen announced that he & 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 & other musicians. All concerts were to be held in swing states, to benefit MoveOn.org & 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 & 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 & 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 & some of his other old songs at Kerry rallies. Springsteen's stance coincided with a reduction in his fan base over the next two years, but how much was due to his politics versus his noncommercial music choices was unclear.
Devils & Dust was released on April 26, 2005, & was recorded without the E Street Band. It is a low-key, mostly acoustic album, in the same vein as Nebraska & 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 & 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 & Ireland).
Springsteen began the solo Devils & Dust Tour at the same time as the album's release, playing both small & large venues. Attendance was disappointing in a few regions, & 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 & stomping board, as well as acoustic guitar & harmonica, adding variety to the solo sound. (Offstage synthesizer, guitar & percussion also are used for some songs.) Unearthly renditions of "Reason to Believe", "The Promised Land", & Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" jolted audiences to attention, while rarities, frequent set list changes, & 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 & Jon Corzine sponsored a U.S. 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. 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 & 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 the radical musical activism of Pete Seeger. It was recorded with a large ensemble of musicians, including only Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, & The Miami Horns from past efforts. In contrast to previous albums, this was recorded in only three one-day sessions, & 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 & receiving some excellent reviews, but newspapers reported that attendance at U.S. shows was occasionally sparse. By the end of 2006, the Seeger Sessions tour toured Europe twice & toured America for only a short span. By January 2007, rumors surfaced on the Internet suggesting that Springsteen is recording in his home studio with members of the E Street Band, with the goal of releasing a new record & touring. On April 3 of 2007, Billboard magazine announced Springsteen's intention to release a live CD/DVD documenting his Fall 2006 Seeger Sessions Band tour of Europe. The album was recorded from a 3-night set of shows at the Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland & contains songs such as "This Little Light of Mine," "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times & Live," "American Land," & "When the Saints Go Marching In," as well as a few Springsteen originals that appeared on his earlier albums. The record was released on June 5, 2007.
In March of 2007, E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt suggested that Bruce & the E Street Band could have a new album out soon. He said that, though Bruce had not yet called them, they record quickly & could record the album & release it within 3 months of getting the call. He also suggested that Bruce might want to take 2007 off because of the Seeger Sessions tour that took much of the previous year, but he added "we'll be back." Bruce has said that he wants to release more material at a faster pace because he has been recording long enough that he doesn't have to think about the process as much.
E
Street Band
The E Street Band is considered to have started in October 1972,
even though it wasn't officially billed & 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 & Springsteen foil
Max Weinberg - drums, percussion (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 in early 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
& duet vocals, guitar (joined June 1984; became Springsteen's wife in 1991;
they have a daughter & two sons)
Soozie Tyrell - violin, percussion, backing
vocals (joined 2002, occasional appearances before that)
Springsteen himself
does all lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, occasional piano, & 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
1976)
Awards & recognition
Grammy Awards
Springsteen has won
15 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"
Best Traditional Folk Album, 2006, The Seeger Sessions: We
Shall Overcome
Best Long Form Music Video, 2006, "Wings For Wheels: The
Making Of Born to Run"
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.
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
& 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 favor of Burgar.
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A Hilarious bunch of songs about money, & statements in Medieval joke
Forest comedy Comedy Trolley mobile phones accessories
Def Leppard - some fact, so more Music facts
Stock exchange comedy . Comedy about Porsche .Comedy about Exclusive London Clubs
Budgie's budget tips & advice on the budget Alternatives to mobile phone
Jokes about the Yeti Humour filled ideas about the Yeti,
Animal mobile phone: What mobile phone would an animal have?
Mr Lonympics the Comedy Billionaire, biography
April Fools day jokes Planet Jokes .Planet Jokes 2
Why
did the Chicken Cross the road Jokes
Police Squad - the facts Cheers - just the facts The movie, the Goonies - just the facts The facts on Frasier Saturday Night Live the facts
Monty
Python the facts South Park -
just the facts
Somebody's view on the origins of comedy
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrghhh, more of our great jokes
Underwater cities on the south east coast of England
Comedy Chess, one of our best pages
100s of Websites http://www.lonympics.co.uk/
If you would like to see some true facts about whoppee cushions, you can have a look about this site
The official Webpage of the Abominable Snowman Internet Resource Study Group. Reams of facts, views, history & fun on the elusive creature, Where you need to go, if you are interested in the Yeti
Most people's fave album of Bruce is the album born in the usa His name is not spelt Bruce Springstein or Bruce Springstean, though they sound familiar. and some people are called that anyway.