Like many young teenagers, Bruce started his own bands throughout high school and the following years. Through this experience, he met many young musicians who would eventually become factors in the Jersey Shore music scene. Bruce's early bands included, The Castiles, Earth and Steel Mill, the latter of which actually started to earn Bruce some real money.
By 1972, Springsteen had teamed up with local musicians Little Steven Van Zandt, Gary Tallent, Mad Dog Vini Lopez, Danny Federici and Vinny Roslyn to form Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. When it came time to record the first album, the record company wanted Bruce to ditch the band and perform solo like a new Bob Dylan, but Bruce resisted. The resulting album was a fusion of folk style storytelling and rock and roll called Greetings From Asbury Park. The record didn't sell much, but it caught the acclaim of the critics and the 20,000 people who did purchase it.
A mere six months later, Bruce and his cronies pumped out their second album, The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle. More successful than the first record, the record featured very long tracks and emphasized the storytelling aspect of Springsteen's style.
In 1975, Bruce truly hit it big. Propelled by the sensation of Born To Run, he appeared on the cover of both Time and Newsweek and went on his first large scale national tour. Bruce was a star now, and there was no turning back.
It was not until 1978 that Bruce published his follow up to Born To Run with a more brooding record, Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Neither quite as successful or as good as its predecessor, Darkness was considered a mild disappointment despite containing classic tracks in its own right.
In 1980, Bruce released The River, two double record the featured both peppy pop tracks like Hungry Heart and thought provoking slow burners like "Stolen Car."
The bleak, longing tracks on The River hinted at Bruce's next move, which was generally unexpected. The up and coming rock and roll sensation released a folk album. Nebraska was a stark record, a collection of tales of hopelessness and the American dream gone wrong. One rejected track from this album epotimized this sentiment, and would go on to become one of the most misinterpretted songs of all-time. Born In The U.S.A. was the song, a tale of a Vietnam veteran who suffered incredible loss for his country, only to come back unwanted.
Backed by a very un-Nebraska pop-rock sound, Born In The U.S.A., both the song and the album named for it, became incredibley successful. Mistaken for a patriotic anthem, "Born In The U.S.A." was co-opted by President Ronald Reagan's re-election campaign as a theme song until Springsteen (a democrat) demanded it no longer be used. Almost every track on the album would reach the Top 10 on the pop charts and tunes like the title track, "Dancing In the Dark", "Cover Me", and "My Hometown" turned Bruce from a star to the single largest star in show business.
Bruce and the band toured for years on the success of Born In The U.S.A., eventually releasing a box set of live recordings that sold incredibely well. But all the touring and other personal matters wore down Bruce's relationship with his new wife actress Julianne Phillips. In the midst of this personal crisis, Bruce released one of his most remarkable works, Tunnel Of Love. Darker and deeper than U.S.A., the new record still managed to captivate the mass audience Bruce had built up by now. After Tunnel, Bruce took some well needed downtime. In the midst of this haitus, Bruce divorced Juilianne and split with the E Street Band.
In 1992, Bruce finally released new work in the form of two new albums, Human Touch and Lucky Town. Backed by studio musicians for the first time rather than the E Street Band, the albums fail to resonate with both the mass audience and Springsteen loyalists.
After experiencing a degree of failure with his last two records, Bruce achieved a new level of critical success in 1994 with "Streets Of Philadelphia, a song he wrote for the Tom Hanks' film Philadelphia. Both the song and the film told a resonating tale of a man struggling to find himself again as his body decays from the AIDS virus. The song won Bruce a number of Grammy awards and even an Oscar.
In 1995, Bruce released a new record, The Ghost Of Tom Joad. A return to a folk style, Joad bore many similarities to Nebraska, but was a more professional and generally superior product. The record won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk album.
He would follow Joad up with the release a Greatest Hits record containing a few new songs (including "Secret Garden" of Jerry Maguire fame) and Tracks, which contained previously recorded though unreleased songs from all of Bruce's career, new Springsteen music has been very rare indeed. Rumors of a new Springsteen record swirled for years, with nothing coming to fruition.
Then came June 2002, and the rumors started up hotter than ever. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that Bruce would be releasing The Rising, his first record since Born In The USA that would be an official collaboration with the E Street Band. Like so many Americans, especially those from the New York Metro-area, Springsteen was deeply impacted by the events of September 11, 2001. The Rising channeled the emotions stirred in Bruce and the stories of some of those who fell that day, and the album became the first important work of art reflecting on the tragedy of 9/11.
Even if he never cuts another album or performs live again (highly unlikely!), The Boss has carved out a musical legacy for himself that can only be compared to a rare few artists. Long ago people stopped talking about him as the new Dylan or the new Elvis ... he long ago left those comparisions behind and he simply stands among those two giants as an equal and a legend.
--Chris Kivlehan
UNITED STATES