Bruce Springsteen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Background information
Birth name Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen
Also known as "The Boss"
Born September 23, 1949 (1949-09-23) (age 57)
Freehold, New Jersey, U.S.
Genre(s) Rock
Heartland rock
Folk
Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter
Instrument(s) Vocals
Guitar
Harmonica
Piano
Drums
Years active 1965-present
Label(s) Columbia Records
Associated
acts E Street Band
The Castiles
Steel Mill
Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom
Bruce Springsteen Band
The Seeger Sessions Band
Website
http://www.brucespringsteen.net/
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an influential American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He has frequently recorded and toured with the E Street Band. 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 fifteen Grammy Awards and an Oscar, along with an international 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. He has sold over 60 million albums in the U.S. alone.[1]
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 stems from his concerts and marathon shows in which he and the E Street Band revolve amongst 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, as 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 and distributing it amongst his bandmates.[2]
Springsteen's music has long been intertwined with film. The song (Just Around the Corner to the) Light of Day was written for the early Michael J. Fox/Joan Jett vehicle Light of Day. His work has been used in films (winning him an Oscar for his song "Streets of Philadelphia"); and in turn, films have been inspired by his music, including "The Indian Runner," written and directed by Sean Penn, which Penn has specifically noted as being inspired by Springsteen's song Highway Patrolman. He was nominated for a second Oscar for "Dead Man Walkin'" from the movie Dead Man Walking. And "Lift Me Up" ran over the credits for the John Sayles film Limbo.
Biography
Early years
Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey[3]. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was a bus driver of Dutch and Irish ancestry. His mother, Adele Ann Zirilli, was a legal secretary of Italian ancestry.[4] He has an older sister, Virginia, and a younger sister, Pamela. Raised a Roman Catholic,[5] Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima parochial school in Freehold Borough, where he was at odds with both the nuns and other students,[6] 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.[7] He briefly attended Ocean County Community College, but dropped out.[6]
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 later memorialized in his song "The Wish". In 1965, he went to the house of Tex and Marion Vinyard, who sponsored young bands in town. They helped him become the lead guitarist of The Castiles, and later lead singer of the group. The Castiles recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township, New Jersey and 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.[8] His sister Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time.
Cities such as Asbury Park, New Jersey inspired the themes of ordinary life in Bruce Springsteen's music.From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed around New Jersey with guitarist Steve Van Zandt, organist Danny Federici and drummer Vini Lopez in a band called Child, later renamed Steel Mill. They went on to play at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, and also in California. During this time Springsteen also performed regularly at small clubs in Asbury Park and along the Jersey shore, quickly gathering a cult following. Other acts followed over the next two years, as Springsteen sought to shape a unique and genuine musical and songwriting style: Dr Zoom & the Sonic Boom (early-mid 1971), Sundance Blues Band (mid 1971), and The Bruce Springsteen Band (mid 1971-mid 1972). With the addition of pianist David Sancious, the core of what would later become the E Street Band was formed, with occasional temporary additions such as horns sections, "The Zoomettes" (a group of female backing vocalists for "Dr Zoom") and Southside Johnny Lyon on harmonica. Musical genres explored included blues, heavy metal, R&B, jazz, church music, early rock'n'roll, and soul. His profilic songwriting ability, with more words in some individual songs than other artists had in whole albums, brought his skill to the attention of two people who were about to change his life: new manager Mike Appel and legendary Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond, who, under Appel's pressure, auditioned Springsteen in May 1972.
Even after gaining international acclaim, Springsteen's New Jersey roots reverberated in his music, and 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 and Philadelphia venues and, 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 and other shore nightclubs over the years, becoming the foremost exponent of the Jersey Shore sound.
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 into the studio with him, thus forming the E Street Band (although it would not be formally named as such for a couple more years). His debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., released in January 1973, established him as a critical favorite,[9] though sales were slow. Because of his lyrics-heavy, folk rock-rooted music exemplified on tracks like "Blinded by the Light" and "For You," as well as the Columbia and Hammond connections, critics initially compared Springsteen to Bob Dylan. "He sings with a freshness and 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 and 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 and Van Morrison, sang like Van Morrison and Robbie Robertson, and led a band that sounded like Van Morrison's."[10] 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.
In September 1973 his second album, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle was released, again to critical acclaim but no commercial success. Springsteen's songs became grander in form and scope, with the E Street Band providing a less folky, more R&B vibe and the lyrics often romanticizing teenage street life. "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" and "Incident on 57th Street" would become fan favorites, and 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 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."[11] Landau subsequently became Springsteen's manager and 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 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.[12]) With the release of Born to Run on August 25, 1975, Springsteen finally found success: while there were no major hit singles, "Born to Run" (#23, Billboard Hot 100), "Thunder Road", "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out" and "Jungleland" all received massive FM radio airplay and remain perennial favorites on many classic rock stations to this day. With its panoramic imagery, thundering production and desperate optimism, some fans consider this among the best rock & roll albums of all time and Springsteen's finest work. It established him as a sincere and dynamic rock & roll personality who spoke for and in the voice of a large part of the rock audience. 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. Some 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 (#33, Billboard Hot 100). Other fans would prefer the work of the adventurous early Springsteen.[13] 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" (which Smith co-wrote) in 1978, while The Pointer Sisters hit No. 2 in 1979 with Springsteen's also-unreleased "Fire".
In September 1979, Springsteen and the E Street Band joined the Musicians United for Safe Energy anti-nuclear power collective at Madison Square Garden for two nights, playing an abbreviated setlist while premiering two songs from his upcoming album. The subsequent No Nukes live album, as well as the following summer's No Nukes documentary film, represented the first official recordings and filmings of Springsteen's fabled live act, as well as Springsteen's first tentative dip into political involvement.
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 Top Ten single as a performer, "Hungry Heart", but also included an intentionally paradoxical range of material from good-time party rockers to emotionally intense 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) and 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 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 widely misinterpreted as jingoistic, 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 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; a number of the videos for the album were made by noted film directors Brian De Palma or John Sayles.
During the "Born in the U.S.A." tour he met then model Julianne Phillips. Phillips met him in October 1984,[5] and they were married in Lake Oswego on May 13, 1985[5] surrounded by intense media attention.[5] Opposites in background, their marriage was not to be long-lived. Springsteen's 1987 album "Tunnel of Love" described some of his unhappinesses in the relationship and during the subsequent Tunnel of Love Express tour, Springsteen took up with backup singer Patti Scialfa, which Phillips found out by reading tabloids. [citation needed] Phillips and Springsteen filed for divorce in 1989. The divorce was finalized in 1990 and Springsteen finally married Scialfa in 1991.
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, 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". Despite its popularity, some fans and critics felt the album's song selection could have been better. 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, which only selectively used the E Street Band. 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, he dissolved the E Street Band, and he and Scialfa relocated to California.
1990s
Bruce Springsteen won an Academy Award and multiple Grammy Awards for his song "Streets of Philadelphia" on the Philadelphia soundtrack.Springsteen married Scialfa in 1991; they have three children Evan James (b. 1990), Jessica Rae (b.1991) and Sam Ryan (b.1994).[14]
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, (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 has continued ever since. An electric band appearance on the acoustic MTV Unplugged television program (that was later released as In Concert/MTV Plugged) was poorly received and further cemented fan dissatisfaction. Springsteen seemed to realize this 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.[15]
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, and didactic nature of most of the songs, although some praised it for giving voice to immigrants and others who rarely have one in American culture. 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.
Following the tour, Springsteen moved back to New Jersey with his family.[16] 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. The title track gained airplay in several radio formats, and the record became Springsteen's best-selling album of new material in 15 years. Kicked off by an early-morning Asbury Park appearance on The Today Show, The Rising Tour commenced, 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.[17] 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 by 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!.
Spingsteen and the Sessions Band performing in Milan in 2006In 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 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, 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.[18] 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 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. [19] 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 another radical departure, 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, 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 (and later shortened to the 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[20], but newspapers reported that a number of U.S. shows suffered from sparse attendance.[21][22][23] By the end of 2006, the Seeger Sessions tour toured Europe twice and toured America for only a short span. Bruce Springsteen with The Sessions Band: Live in Dublin, containing selections from three nights of November 2006 shows at the The Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, was released the following June.
Springsteen's upcoming album, entitled Magic, is due October 2, 2007. Recorded with the E Street Band, it features ten new Springsteen songs plus "Long Walk Home," performed once with the Sessions band. First single "Radio Nowhere" was made available for a free download on August 28. An accompanying tour with the E Street Band was also announced to begin with the album's release and visit North America and Europe.[24]
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.[25] 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, electronic glockenspiel, accordion, other 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,[26] 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)
Those sayings are hilarious Bob.
