Bruce Springsteen has sold 65 million albums in the US alone. And the dream of all rock and pop musicians (Grammy Award) he received 20 times. For six decades (from the 1970s to the 2020s), his songs have not left the top 5 of the Billboard charts. His popularity in the United States, especially among workers and the intelligentsia, can be compared with the popularity of Vysotsky in Russia (someone loves, someone scolds, but everyone has heard and knows).
Bruce Springsteen: Not the most musical youth
Bruce (real name - Bruce Frederick Joseph) Springsteen was born September 23, 1949 in the old resort town of Long Branch on the East Coast (New Jersey). He spent his childhood in the bedroom New York suburb of Freehold, where many Mexicans and African Americans lived. Father, Douglas, is half-Dutch-half-Irish.
He could not hold on to any job for a long time - he tried himself as a bus driver, a handyman, a prison guard, but his mother, secretary Adele-Anne, supported a family with three children.
Bruce went to a Catholic school, but there he, lonely and withdrawn, was not very friendly with his peers and did not get along with the teachers. One day a nun teacher sat him (a third grader) in a trash can under the teacher's desk.
Bruce was 7 or 8 years old when he saw Elvis Presley on the famous TV show Ed Sullivan (Presley performed on this show three times - once in 1956 and twice in 1957). And Elvis was a turning point - Bruce fell in love with the sound of rock and roll. And his passion did not pass over the years, but only intensified.
Adele-Anne had to take out a loan to give her son a $16 Kent guitar for his 60th birthday. Later, Bruce never played Kent guitars. The father did not like his son's hobby: "There were two unpopular subjects in our house - me and my guitar." But in 1999, when he was in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Bruce said that he was grateful to his father.
Young Springsteen didn't go to prom due to embarrassment. But there was just a call to the military enlistment office in 1967 and the guys were sent to Vietnam. And an 18-year-old white American had to go there.
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, he admitted that his only thought was: “I won’t go” (to the service and to the Vietnamese jungle). And the medical record showed a concussion after a motorcycle accident. College did not work out either - he entered, but dropped out. He was exempted from military service, higher education and could only deal with music.
Road to Glory Bruce Springsteen
Bruce often sang about roads and called human life "the highway that leads to dreams." He talked about this topic: the road can be easy, or maybe sad, but the main thing is not to lose your head and learn from the mistakes of everyone who has already crashed on this highway.
In the late 1960s, Bruce played in various bands that "hung out" in Asbury Park, creating his own style. Here he met people who later became members of his E Street Band. When the band's performances were paid, he personally collected the money and divided it equally among all. Therefore, he received the unloved nickname Boss.
Springsteen managed to establish a collaboration with Columbia Records. His first studio album, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, was released in 1973. The collection was well received by critics, but it sold poorly. Next album The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle suffered the same fate. Bruce, along with the musicians, recorded compositions in the studio until 1975. And the third album Born to Run "exploded" like a bomb, immediately taking 3rd position on the Billboard 200 chart.
Today, it sits at number 18 on Rolling Stone's 500 Famous Albums list. In 2003, he was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Photos of the artist appeared on the covers of reputable publications - Newsweek and Time. The artist, performing with concerts, began to collect stadiums. The critics were ecstatic.
Criticism of the artist
According to critics, the performer returned rock and roll to the American listener against the background of hard rock (Robert Plant's piercing vocals, long Deep Purple instrumentals shocked many) and progressive rock (King Crimson and Pink Floyd with concept albums and incomprehensible Critics were also shocked by the texts).
Springsteen was clearer - both to them and to the audience. He even had twins. But few of them found their own style and became famous.
The albums Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), 2LP River (1980) and Nebraska (1982) developed his former themes. Nebraska was "raw" and sounded very provocative to please true music lovers. And the next resounding success he found in 1985 thanks to the album Born in the USA
Seven singles hit the top 10 of the Billboard 200 at once. Then it was topped by a live recording with the hits of this album. Springsteen went on an uninterrupted two-year tour of the United States and European countries.
Bruce Springsteen's career in the 1990s
Returning from tours, Bruce changed his life dramatically - he divorced his wife, model Julianne Phillips (the divorce inspired his dark album Tunnel of Love (1987)), and then parted ways with his team. True, leaving backing vocalist Patti Skelfa to herself, she became his new wife in 1991.
The couple moved to Los Angeles. Their first child, Evan James, was born before their marriage, in 1990. A year later, in 1991, Jessica Ray appeared, and in 1994, Samuel Ryan.
But as it seemed to the fans, family well-being and a quiet life influenced Bruce as a musician - nerve and drive disappeared from his new albums. "Fans" even felt that he "sold out to Hollywood." There is some truth here: in 1993, Bruce won an Oscar for the song Streets of Philadelphia, written for the movie Philadelphia.
The film could not fail to attract the attention of the American Film Academy, it turned out to be very relevant. Its protagonist, played by Tom Hanks, is a gay man with AIDS who was illegally fired from his job and fought against discrimination. But the song, regardless of the film, was beautiful - in addition to the Oscar, she won the Golden Globe and Grammy awards in four categories.
And Bruce's "fall" as a musician was an illusion. In 1995 he recorded the album The Ghost of Tom Joad. It was inspired by John Steinbeck's famous epic The Grapes of Wrath and one of the new Pulitzer Prize-winning novels, "the saga of the new underclass."
It is for the problematics of the oppressed minority, whoever is included in it, that listeners still love Springsteen. He does not contradict himself - his public activity testifies to this.
He fought against South African apartheid, defended the rights of women and LGBT people (the latter - not only with a song from the movie "Philadelphia", he even starred in social advertising in support of same-sex marriage and canceled a concert in North Carolina, where the rights of transgender people were limited).
Creative activity of Bruce Springsteen in the 2000s
Since the early 2000s, Bruce has released very successful albums. In 2009, the musician again received the Golden Globe Award for The Wrestler's song for the film of the same name. In 2017, he made his debut in a solo show on Broadway, and a year later received a Tony Award for it. The latest album was released on October 23, 2020 and is called Letter to You. It peaked at number 2 on Billboard and received excellent reviews from critics.
Bruce Springsteen in 2021
The Killers and Bruce Springsteen in the middle of the first summer month pleased music lovers with the release of the track Dustland. Flowers had been wanting to record with the artist for a long time, and in 2021 they managed to meet in a recording studio to record the aforementioned track.
