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When Bruce Springsteen finally broke through to national
recognition in the fall of 1975 after a decade of trying,
critics hailed him as the savior of rock & roll, the
single artist who brought together all the exuberance
of '50s rock and the thoughtfulness of '60s rock, molded
into a '70s style. He rocked as hard as Jerry Lee Lewis,
his lyrics were as complicated as Bob Dylan's, and his
concerts were near-religious celebrations of all that
was best in music. One critic became so enamored that
he quit reviewing to become Springsteen's manager. But
the hosannas, when piped through the publicity machine
of a major record company, were perceived as hype by
a significant part of the public as well as the mainstream
media -- Springsteen landed on the covers of Time and
Newsweek, but both magazines were covering the phenomenon,
not the music.
The Springsteen album, Born to Run, became a hit, and
he jumped to arena status as a live act, but as many
people were turned off by the press campaign as turned
on by the records and shows. Two decades later, however,
Springsteen remained an established star who could look
back on a career that had produced one of the best-selling
albums of all time, sold-out stadium shows, Grammy Awards
and an Oscar, and a group of imitators who constituted
their own subgenre of popular music. If he no longer
seemed divine, he remained popular enough for his Greatest
Hits album to enter the charts at number one, and he
had won over many of those skeptics from 1975.
Growing up in southern New Jersey, Springsteen turned
to rock & roll as a teenager and played in a series
of bands from the mid-'60s on, varying in style from
garage rock to power trio blues-rock. By the early '70s,
he was trying his hand at being a folky singer/songwriter
in Greenwich Village. But when he was signed to Columbia
Records in 1972, he brought into the studio many of
the New Jersey-based musicians with whom he'd played
over the years. The result was Greetings From Asbury
Park, NJ (January 1973), which went unnoticed upon initial
release, though Manfred Mann's Earth Band would turn
its leadoff track, "Blinded by the Light," into a number
one hit four years later. The Wild, the Innocent, and
the E Street Shuffle (September 1973) also failed to
sell initially, despite some rave reviews.
The following year, Springsteen revised his backup group
-- dubbed the E Street Band -- settling on a lineup
that included saxophone player Clarence Clemons, second
guitarist "Miami" Steve Van Zandt, organist Danny Federici,
pianist Roy Bittan, bassist Garry Tallent, and drummer
Max Weinberg. With this unit he barnstormed the country
while working on his third and last chance with Columbia.
By the time Born to Run (August 1975) was released,
the critics and a significant cult audience were with
him, and the title song became a Top 40 hit while the
album reached the Top Ten. What Springsteen needed to
do in the wake of the hype, of course, was to play and
record more to consolidate his position. He was prevented
at least from the latter by a former manager, who kept
him in court during the next couple of years.
Meanwhile, the musical world changed. Part of the reason
critics had welcomed Springsteen so enthusiastically
in 1975 was that he seemed a return to basic rock &
roll values in a world of soft rock, heavy metal, and
art rock. By the time Springsteen returned with his
fourth album, Darkness at the Edge of Town (June 1978),
however, the punk/new wave movement had outflanked him,
pushing him from the vanguard to the mainstream. Similar
sounding heartland rockers such as Bob Seger had appeared,
so that Springsteen sounded less like an innovator than
a member of an established genre. Nevertheless, he set
about winning fans with an album that found the lost
children of his early albums stuck in factory jobs,
still longing for some escape. The album was a hit,
though it did not match the success of Born to Run.
Springsteen returned with the double album The River
(October 1980), which topped the charts and featured
his first Top Ten hit, "Hungry Heart." Nobody was calling
him a hype anymore, but Springsteen retreated from his
expanding success, next recording the low-key album
Nebraska (September 1982), a virtual demo tape on vinyl.
(Springsteen did not tour to promote the album, and
in the interim E Street Band guitarist Van Zandt amicably
left the group for a solo career, to be replaced by
Nils Lofgren.)
But then came Born in the U.S.A. (June 1984) and a two-year
international tour. The album threw off seven hit singles
and sold over ten million copies, putting Springsteen
in the pop heavens with Michael Jackson and Prince.
After touring for more than a year, he released a five-LP/three-CD
concert album, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band/Live
1975-85 (November 1986), which topped the charts.
Characteristically, Springsteen returned with a more
introverted effort, Tunnel of Love (October 1987), which
presaged his divorce from his first wife. (He married
a second time to singer Patti Scialfa, who had joined
the E Street Band.) After another marathon tour, Springsteen
gave the E Street Band notice in November 1989, breaking
up a celebrated unit who had stayed together 15 years.
In March 1992, he simultaneously released Human Touch
and Lucky Town, and though the albums premiered near
the top of the charts, they were less successful with
fans than previous efforts. In the fall, Springsteen
taped an MTV Unplugged segment (though he plugged in
after one song), and the performance was released as
an album in Europe in 1993.
Springsteen continued to tour until July 1993. In the
fall, he wrote and recorded "Streets of Philadelphia"
for the soundtrack to the film Philadelphia, which concerned
a lawyer dying of AIDS. The song became a Top Ten hit
in 1994, winning the Academy Award for Best Song and
cleaning up at the Grammys the following year. At the
same time, Springsteen had readied his Greatest Hits
album (February 1995), reassembling the E Street Band
to record a few new tracks. The album was an immediate
best-seller. Springsteen followed it with The Ghost
of Tom Joad (November 1995), another low-key, downcast,
near-acoustic effort, and embarked upon a brief solo
tour.
In 1999, shortly after his induction into the Rock &
Roll Hall of Fame, Springsteen reunited with the E Street
Band (including both Lofgren and Van Zandt on guitars)
and embarked on a world tour that lasted until mid-2000,
its final dates resulting in the album Live in New York
City. He then made his first new full-length studio
album to feature the group as a whole since Born in
the U.S.A., and his first album of new studio recordings
since The Ghost of Tom Joad, The Rising, released in
July 2002. It was followed by another tour.
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