Bruce springsteen

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (Long Branch, New Jersey, September 23, 1949) is an American singer, musician, and songwriter. Often nicknamed the Boss —in Spanish: El jefe—, Springsteen is widely known for his work with the E Street Band and considered one of the most successful artists in the rock music, with sales of more than 64.5 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide, and a total of ten number one albums, a record surpassed only by The Beatles and Jay-Z.

Springsteen began his musical career in the late 1960s playing with groups like Steel Mill and Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom. In 1972 he signed a recording contract with Columbia Records and released Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., his first studio album backed by the E Street Band, his main backing group on subsequent albums. Throughout his musical career, which spans more than five decades to the present, he has published works such as Born to Run (1975), Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) and The River (1980), valued by music critics as three of the best rock albums of all time.

In addition to his facet as a rock musician, Springsteen recorded several works oriented to folk such as Nebraska (1982), The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) and Devils & Dust (2005).

His popularity was consolidated with the release of Born in the U.S.A. (1984), an album that sold more than fifteen million copies in the United States and reached number one in several countries, including United States and the United Kingdom. Since then, and despite not working with the E Street Band on works such as Human Touch and Lucky Town, most of their albums They have obtained high commercial support, with a total of six number ones in their native country between the release of Tunnel of Love (1987) and Wrecking Ball (2012).

In general, Springsteen's songs reflect lyrics with autobiographical aspects, primarily sentiments centered on Asbury Park or New Jersey, or accounts of fictional or fictional characters facing challenges or turning points in their lives. He also frequently includes economic, social and political concerns in compositions such as "Born in the U.S.A.", "American Skin (41 Shots)", "Devils & amp; Dust" and "Jack of All Trades," among others. He has also been one of the artists most critical of his country's foreign policy in relation to the invasion and subsequent war in Iraq, and participated in the Vote for Change tour to ask for a vote for John Kerry.

Springsteen's musical career has been recognized with several awards, including 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Oscar, and in 1999, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed him at number 23 on the list of the best artists of all time, and four years later, at position 36 on the list of the best singers of all time. the times.

His most recent work, Letter to You, was released on October 23, 2020, marking his first work with the E Street Band since 2014 after several years of solo projects.

Biography

Early years and musical beginnings (1949-1969)

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen spent his childhood and school years in Freehold Borough, New Jersey. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was a bus driver of Dutch and Irish descent. His mother, Adele Ann Zirilli, was a secretary of Italian ancestry. In 2018, he stated that his father's paranoid schizophrenia had affected his mental health throughout his life, having required medication since 1982. Raised in a Catholic environment, Springsteen attended St. Rose of Lima Parochial School in Freehold Borough, where his early temperament clashed both with the strict morals of the school and with other students. In the ninth year, he transferred to the Freehold Regional Secondary Public School, where his dissatisfaction, despite finishing his studies, would become apparent to many. over the past few years, even avoiding his own graduation ceremony. For a few months, he attended Ocean County College, but eventually dropped out.

He was inspired to pursue music when he saw Elvis Presley perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. At the age of 13, he bought his first guitar for $18, and at 16 his mother got a loan to buy him a Kent guitar for $60, an event he would recall years later in his song "The Wish." ».

In 1965, he became a guitarist for the group The Castiles, in which he would later assume the role of lead vocalist as well. The Castiles recorded two songs in a public recording studio in Brick Township, New Jersey, and performed various concerts, including the local Cafe Wha? from Greenwich Village.

In the late 1960s, Springsteen briefly participated in a musical trio known as Earth, playing clubs in New Jersey. During this period, Springsteen acquired the nickname "The Boss" due to his work in collecting payment at concerts and distributing it among his peers.

Between 1969 and 1971, Springsteen performed in concerts around New Jersey accompanied by guitarist Steve Van Zandt, organist Danny Federici, drummer Vini López, and bassist Vinnie Roslin in a band known as Child, though later renamed as Steel Mill (with the addition of guitarist Robbin Thompson). In January 1970, San Francisco Examiner music critic Philip Eldwood gave Springsteen and his band Steel Mill media coverage, writing, "Never have I been so overwhelmed by totally unknown talent." Elwood praised his "cohesive musicality" and, in particular, singled out Springsteen as a "very impressive songwriter".

During this time, Springsteen also played concerts in Asbury Park clubs, gradually building a cult following. With the addition of pianist David Sancious, the nucleus of what would later become the E Street Band was already formed, with occasional contributions from a horn section, an all-female vocal group known as The Zoometes, and Southside Johnny Lyon on harmonica.. On the other hand, his prolific songwriting ability served to attract the attention of several people who would come to change his life from now on: Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, his later managers, and Columbia Records producer John H. Hammond, who, under pressure from Appel, he called Springsteen in for an audition in May 1972.

Contract with Columbia Records and first albums (1972-1974)

On the night of May 2, 1972, talent scout John H. Hammond was at the Gaslight; this Greenwich Village venue hosted a performance by a twenty-two-year-old boy who was risking his future before the representative of the largest record company in the country, Columbia Records. The boy amazed everyone, and first of all the New York producer: «“I was completely shocked. Even more than with Bob Dylan because Bruce had an integrity that hit you as soon as he opened his lips. […] Hammond was fascinated by the magnetism of that folk troubadour, whose youthful rebellion coexisted with melodramatic stories and sarcastic Catholic imagery».

Their debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., released in January 1973, garnered critical acclaim, despite modest sales figures.

Due to his lyrical influence and folk rock-oriented music on tracks like "Blinded by the light" and "For you", Springsteen began to be compared to Bob Dylan. In this regard, Crawdaddy! magazine editor-in-chief Peter Knobler wrote in March 1973: "[Bruce] sings with a freshness and urgency I haven't heard since I was knocked out by Like a Rolling Stone." For his part, Lester Bangs wrote in 1975 in Creem that when Springsteen released his first album "many of us dismissed him: he wrote like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, he sang like Van Morrison and Robbie Robertson and he was leading a band that sounded like Van Morrison's." The track "Spirit in the night" especially showed Morrison's influence, while "Lost in the flood" was the first of many portraits of Vietnam veterans.

In September 1973, their second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, was again released and praised by music critics, although its commercial reception was lukewarm. Springsteen's songs began to adapt in shape and scope, with the E Street Band providing a sound closer to R&B at the expense of folk.

On May 22, 1974, music critic Jon Landau wrote in The Real Paper after seeing Springsteen in concert at the Harvard Square Theater: "I saw the future of rock and roll, and his name was Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the first time." Landau would become Springsteen's manager and music producer, helping him finish his new work, Born. to run.

Despite a large budget in order to create a commercially viable album, Springsteen began to stall in the recording process. This lasted 14 months, six of which were dedicated to the title track "Born to run." During this time, Springsteen became frustrated, going so far as to say that he was hearing "sounds in his head" that he was unable to explain to the other musicians in the studio. His main help was Steve van Zandt, who helped him organize the sound, especially the horn section on "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out", and he ended up joining the cast of the E Street Band.

Born to Run and success (1975-1981)

On August 13, 1975, Springsteen and the E Street Band kicked off ten concerts in five nights at the Bottom Line club in New York. The concerts attracted the media, being broadcast on WNEW-FM and serving as proof to many skeptics of the favorable music reviews. (Decades later, the music magazine Rolling Stone named the concerts one of the 50 Moments That Changed Rock and Roll.)

With the release of Born to Run on August 25, 1975, Springsteen finally found success. Despite not producing particularly successful singles, the songs "Born to Run", "Thunder Road", "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Jungleland" were heavily promoted on North American radio networks. With its panoramic imagery and lyrical optimism, many of his fans consider Born to Run one of Springsteen's best works with the E-Street Band. To capitalize on the win, Springsteen appeared on the cover of both Time and Newsweek magazines in the same week, October 27.

A legal battle with his previous manager, Mike Appel, kept Springsteen away from the recording studio for two years, at which time he took the opportunity to embark with the E Street Band on an extensive tour of the United States in promotion of Born to Run. Despite his optimism, the new songs he began to compose and occasionally perform live took a more somber direction. After the dispute with Appel in 1977, who renounced possession of the rights to Springsteen's songs and his work as manager in exchange for financial compensation, Springsteen returned to the studio, where the recording sessions resulted in Darkness on the Edge of Town. Musically, the album marks a turning point in Springsteen's career, making room for lighter, better prepared songs that reflected Springsteen's growing political and moral awareness and in which the musician described stories of struggle and survival carried out by individuals who lived on the margins of the American dream.

Springsteen concert on the promotion tour The River in Drammen, Norway, on 5 May 1981.

By the late 1970s, Springsteen had gained enough of a reputation as a songwriter to provide songs for other groups. In this sense, Manfred Mann's Earth Band reached number 1 on the US charts with a version of "Blinded by the Light". For her part, Patti Smith peaked at number 13 with a cover of the previously unreleased song "Because the Night," while The Pointer Sisters had a hit with the previously unreleased "Fire."

In September 1979, Springsteen and the E Street Band joined the anti-nuclear collective Musicians United for Clean Energy for two concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Springsteen continued to cement working-class life as the theme of his songs with the double album The River in 1980, which ultimately gave him his first hit single, "Hungry Heart". Sales of the album were remarkable, and its release was followed by a promotional tour that took Springsteen to Europe for a second time.

Return to folk roots and international recognition (1982-1989)

When a continuity in his music was expected, Springsteen released Nebraska in 1982, an intimate, acoustic album recorded by Springsteen himself with a four-track machine in a room in his house and where once again the bitterest side of deep America came to light in a work of strong social denunciation. According to Dave Marsh's biography, Springsteen was going through a state of depression at the time, which affected the outcome of the album. In this sense, Nebraska was started as an album of demos that would later be performed by the E Street Band; however, during the recording process, Springsteen and producer Landau found that the songs worked better acoustically.

Acclaimed by critics (it was named album of the year by the critics of the music magazine Rolling Stone) but with more discreet sales than his previous work due to its limited commercial vocation, Nebraska Over the years it has become a reference piece for other artists, including U2 during the recording of The Joshua Tree, and a cult piece among its most staunch followers.

In the mid-1980s, Bruce Springsteen achieved international star status and American pop culture idol thanks to his 1984 album Born in the U.S.A., which sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. The album's title track was a bitter comment on the treatment of Vietnam veterans, some of whom shared friendships with Springsteen; however, the song was misinterpreted and used in the 1984 presidential campaign.

On the other hand, "Dancing in the Dark" achieved great success as a single, reaching number 2 on the Billboard singles chart, while "Cover Me", initially composed for Donna Summer, was included on the album at the request of the record label itself. Instead of "Cover Me", and due to Springsteen's fondness for Summer's music, he composed the song "Protection" for the artist.

During the tour promoting Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen met actress Julianne Philips, whom he married in Lake Oswego, Oregon, on May 13, 1985. The couple divorced. in 1988. This fact inspired the theme of some songs on the 1987 album Tunnel of Love.

Springsteen during tour Tunnel of Love Express at the Radrennbahn Weißensee in Berlin on 19 July 1988.

The post-release period of Born in the U.S.A. represented one of Springsteen's peak periods, in which he achieved his greatest visibility in American popular culture. In this context, Live/1975-85, a five-disc box set (later reduced to three compact discs), was released at the end of 1986, with unprecedented success, selling 13 million copies worldwide. the United States and becoming the first box set to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. Live/1975-85 summarizes Springsteen's musical career up to that date and shows some of the most important elements. attractive and powerful to their fans, like the long spoken introductions to the songs or the instrumental prowess of the E Street Band.

After his commercial peak, Springsteen released Tunnel of Love, a more contemplative album in which the musician is interested in exploring the ins and outs of relationships and personal fears and shortcomings, and in which for the first time he dispenses with the E Street Band, sporadically calling some members of the group to participate individually in the songs. The subsequent tour promoting Tunnel of Love brought modifications to the usual Springsteen concerts, with changes in the layout, the absence of some classical themes, and arrangements based on a horn section. During the European leg of the tour, in 1988, Springsteen's relationship with E Street Band backing vocalist Patti Scialfa became public. In late 1988, Springsteen headlined the Human Rights Now! of Amnesty International. In the fall of 1989, Springsteen disbanded the E Street Band and moved with Scialfa to California.

Without the E-Street Band (1990-1998)

In 1991, Springsteen married Scialfa, with whom he had three children: Evan James (born 1990), Jessica Rae (born 1991), and Sam Ryan (born 1994). In an attempt to reflect the stability and The happiness achieved with his new marriage and his recent fatherhood, and accompanied by session musicians, Springsteen published two joint albums: Human Touch and Lucky Town. Both were criticized by followers of the E Street Band style, conspiring to ignore Springsteen's subsequent promotional tour with what was dubbed The "Other" Band. On the other hand, for other fans who had known Springsteen after the consolidation in 1975 of the E Street Band, the new tour was an opportunity to see the development of Springsteen with a new line-up. An appearance on the electric television show MTV Unplugged, published under the name In Concert/MTV Plugged, garnered unfavorable reviews relative to previous works.

A year later, Springsteen won an Academy Award for the song "Streets of Philadelphia," included on the soundtrack of Jonathan Demme's film Philadelphia, thereby restoring the prestige placed on doubt in his last musical stage.

In 1995, after temporarily reorganizing the E Street Band to record several songs included in Greatest Hits (sessions later recovered for the documentary Blood Brothers), Bruce released his second album in acoustic format, The Ghost of Tom Joad, inspired by John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath and awarded a Grammy for best contemporary folk album. The album was generally less well received than Nebraska, due largely to its minimal melody and the political nature of the songs, though it was also praised for giving a voice to immigrants and other neglected sectors. in American culture. The subsequent promotional tour, developed in theaters worldwide, included a good part of his old repertoire modified and adapted to the acoustic format.

After the tour, Springsteen returned to New Jersey with his family. In 1998, he released Tracks, a four-disc box set of songs outtakes from the past few years. In 1999, the return of Springsteen and the E Street Band to the stages became official, carrying out a new tour that, under the title of Reunion Tour, covered a good part of the geography for a year world.

E Street Band reunion and later works (1999-2007)

Bruce Springsteen's reunion tour with the E Street Band ended with ten sold-out concerts at New York's Madison Square Garden and controversy surrounding the song American Skin (41 Shots), composed after the death of Amadou Diallo at the hands of the New York police in a case of police brutality and racism in the eyes of public opinion. The last concerts at Madison Square Garden were recorded and released on CD and DVD under the title Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live In New York City and aired as a television documentary on HBO.

Much of the album The Rising was influenced by the 11-S attacks.

In 2002, Springsteen released The Rising, his first studio album with the E Street Band in 18 years. The album, largely a reflection of the 9/11 attacks, was met with critical and sales success. In this regard, The Rising became the best-selling album of his career in 15 years. Some of the songs were influenced by telephone conversations Springsteen had with relatives of those killed in the terrorist attacks, in which they mentioned the importance of his music in their lives. After appearing on NBC's Today, Springsteen kicked off The Rising Tour, playing 10 nights at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. tour, Springsteen published the DVD Live in Barcelona with the concert offered on October 16, 2002 at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona.

At the 2003 Grammy Awards, Springsteen performed The Clash's "London Calling" alongside Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl and E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt in a tribute to Joe Strummer.

In 2004, Springsteen announced his participation in the Vote for Change tour with the E Street Band and other musicians and groups such as John Mellencamp, John Fogerty, Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and Jackson Browne. The concerts were scheduled in "key states" to benefit American Coming Together and to encourage people to exercise their right to vote. While Springsteen had previously given concerts for charitable causes such as anti-nuclear power or Vietnam veterans, his participation in Vote for Change marked the first time Springsteen had openly declared your vote for the Democratic Party, and especially for Presidential candidate John Kerry. During the electoral campaign, Kerry used Bruce's theme "No Surrender" as the main song, even going so far as to count on Bruce's participation in the last electoral acts.

Devils & Dust, released on April 26, 2005 and recorded without the E Street Band, returns to the acoustic format in a style very similar to Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad i>, although with more instrumentation. The song that gives the album its name reflects the feelings and fears of a soldier during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Starbucks rejected a marketing agreement to promote the new album due, in part, to the sexually explicit content of the lyrics of one of the songs, but also to Springsteen's anti-corporate policy. Despite everything, Devils & Dust reached number one on the charts in the United States, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.

Springsteen kicked off his solo tour Devils & Dust Tour at the same time as the album's release, playing both large venues and small venues. In some places there were not a large number of people, so, except in Europe, it was easier to get the tickets compared to other occasions. Unlike the solo tour following the release of "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" in the mid-'90s, Bruce played piano, electric piano, organ, autoharp, ukulele, banjo, electric guitar, and bass guitar. pedal steel, as well as acoustic guitar and harmonica, which brought variety to the solo sound. (Some songs made use of a synthesizer, other acoustic guitar, and percussion, though without appearing onstage.) The prodigious renditions of "Reason to Believe," "The Promised Land," and "Dream Baby Dream" (from the band Suicide) shook the public, while the rarities, the frequent unexpected songs and their desire to continue experimenting, including mistakes on the piano, satisfied their most loyal fans by providing a spontaneity factor to the concerts.

In November 2005, New Jersey Senators Frank Lautenberg and Jon Corzine led a resolution to the United States Senate to honor Springsteen to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the album Born to Run. Despite the fact that a large majority of Native American awards are approved by a traditional ballot system, the resolution was defeated by a committee. The same month, Sirius Satellite Radio created E Street Radio, a radio network that included music of Springsteen, daily interviews and concerts 24 hours a day.

Bruce Springsteen at a concert offered in Milan, Italy, on May 12, 2006 on the tour The Seeger Sessions Band Tour.

After finishing the tour, Springsteen became involved in recording a folk album tribute to Pete Seeger and the American tradition, released in April 2006 under the title We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. The album was recorded with a long list of musicians, including members of The Miami Horns, violinist Soozie Tyrell and his own wife, Patti Scialfa, forming The Seeger Sessions Band. In contrast to previous works, We Shall Overcome was recorded in three unique sessions, with Bruce himself being able to be heard shouting out chords as the group improvised. The Bruce Springsteen with the Seeger Sessions Band Tour began the same month, obtaining good results in Europe, where it garnered good reviews and notable sales in connection with several concerts in the United States, where several newspapers were published. echoed poor sales at several concerts. In July, Bruce Springsteen with The Sessions Band: Live in Dublin, a selection of songs performed during three concerts at the Point Theater in Dublin, Ireland, was released..

After the tour with The Sessions Band, on December 2, 2006, he participated in the Light Of Day charity festival, a foundation for Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, where he performed with Joe Grushecky and Jorge Otero, singer and Stormy Mondays guitarist.

Bruce's first work with the E Street Band in five years, Magic, was released on October 2, 2007. The first single, "Radio Nowhere", was released as a free download on August 28. On October 7, Magic debuted at number one in Ireland and the UK, while Greatest Hits re-entered the Irish Albums Chart at number 57. Sirius Satellite Radio resumed broadcasting of E Street Radio on channel 10 from September 27.

Following the release of Magic, Springsteen and the E Street Band embarked on the Magic Tour, which kicked off at the Hartford Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut. During the tour, organist Danny Federici was forced to leave in November 2007 when he was diagnosed with melanoma.

Death of Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons (2008-2011)

Federici returned to play with the E Street Band on January 20, 2008 during a brief appearance at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. However, on April 17, he passed away at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York after suffering from melanoma for three years.

Springsteen supported Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign by appearing in various speeches and performing songs acoustically. During a speech, the musician discussed "the importance of truth, transparency and integrity in government, the right of any American to have a job, a decent wage, to be educated in a decent school, to a full life." with the dignity of work, the promise and the sanctity of a home... But today those liberties have been damaged and cracked by eight years of a thoughtless and reckless Administration adrift". On November 2, during a rally of Obama, performed "Working on a Dream" for the first time as a duet with his wife, Patti Scialfa. The song served as a precedent for the launch of a new studio work, Working on a Dream, released on January 27, 2009 and dedicated to the memory of Danny Federici. Following Obama's election victory on November 4, Springsteen performed the song "This Land Is Your Land" with Pete Seeger and "The Rising" at the inauguration before 40,000 people.

The song "The Wrestler," featured on the album Working on a Dream and in the Mickey Rourke film of the same name, won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song at the 66th Annual awards, held on January 11, 2009. Just a month later, he performed at the Superbowl XLIII intermission performing "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out", "Born to Run", "Working on a Dream" and "Glory Days"..

Bruce Springsteen in 2008, with the Max Weinberg battery in the background.

The album Working on a Dream, dedicated to the memory of Danny Federici, was released in January 2009 and followed by a promotional tour between April and November 2009. During the tour, Springsteen and the E Street Band participated in various music festivals, and headlined the Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands, the Glastonbury Festival in England, and the Festival de Vieilles Charrues in France, among others. In several concerts, Springsteen included full-length albums such as Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and Born in the U.S.A. The group also played five concerts at Giants Stadium before its demolition, in which he premiered the song "Wrecking Ball". The tour, part of which featured Jay replacing his father Max Weinberg on drums, ended in Buffalo, New York in November 2009. A DVD of the Working on a Dream Tour titled London Calling: Live in Hyde Park was released in 2010.

In addition to touring, Springsteen participated in various benefit concerts throughout the year, including The Clearwater Concert, in commemoration of Pete Seeger's 90th birthday, at the Hall of of Rock and Roll Fame and at a benefit concert for the support group Autism Speaks at Carnegie Hall. On January 22, 2010, he participated in Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief, a telethon hosted by George Clooney to raise funds for the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Springsteen also received the Kennedy Award for his contribution to American culture in December 2009, along with Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck, Grace Bumbry and Robert De Niro. In addition, he was featured as one of eight artists of the decade according to Rolling Stone magazine, and became the fourth highest earning artist of the decade from touring since 2000.

In September 2010, the Toronto International Film Festival premiered The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, a documentary about the making of the album Darkness on the Edge of Town later included in the box set The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story, released in November 2010. Also airing on HBO, the documentary explored the making of the album as well like the role of Springsteen in the musical production and in the evolution of the songs.

Clarence Clemons, saxophonist with the E Street Band and one of its founding members, died on June 18, 2011 of complications following a stroke. In a statement released after his death, Springsteen wrote: "He carried with him a love for people that made people love him. He created a wonderful extended family. He loved the saxophone, he loved our fans and he gave it everything he had every night he went on stage."

Wrecking Ball, High Hopes, The River Tour 2016 (from 2012 onwards)

In March 2012, Springsteen released Wrecking Ball, a studio album produced by Ron Aniello and dedicated to the memory of Clarence Clemons. The album, described by the Hollywood Reporter as the "album of an angry Springsteen directed at economic justice", reached number one on the best-seller lists in numerous countries, including the United States. and the United Kingdom. The album, along with the single "We Take Care of Our Own", was nominated for three Grammy Awards, including Best Rock Album. Wrecking Ball the best album of 2012.

On March 18, Springsteen opened the Wrecking Ball Tour in Atlanta, Georgia. During the tour, his first with a horn section since the Tunnel of Love Express Tour to replace Clarence Clemons, Springsteen offered a total of 133 concerts in 26 countries in North America, South America, Europe, Oceania. During the stage in Oceania, Tom Morello replaced guitarist Steve Van Zandt due to his commitment in the filming of the series Lillyhammer . The tour, which ended in September 2013, was the second highest grossing after Madonna with $33.4 million.

On November 2, 2012, she participated in the telethon Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together performing "Land of Hope and Dreams" to raise funds for the victims of Hurricane Sandy, one of the He also participated in the concert 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief organized at Madison Square Garden and broadcast on television channels such as HBO and AMC.

In parallel with the development of the Wrecking Ball Tour, Springsteen was honored with the MusiCares award in recognition of his creative achievements, as well as his charitable work and his philanthropic activities, during a ceremony organized on February 8, 2013 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles (California). In addition, in June the documentary Springsteen & I with a simulcast in more than 2,000 theaters in 50 countries, and in October, the musician was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences along with other artists such as Pete Seeger, Sally Field and Robert De Niro.

After the Wrecking Ball Tour ended, Springsteen wrote a letter thanking the public for their support and posted a video with a cover of the Suicide theme "Dream Baby Dream", produced by Ron Aniello. The song was included on High Hopes, a new album released in January 2014 that included new compositions and re-recordings of previously unreleased tracks, with parts recorded by Clemons and Federici in the past. The first single was "High Hopes", a Tim Scott McConnell song that Springsteen first recorded in 1995.

On December 4, 2015 The Ties That Bind: The River Collection was published, a special edition to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the publication of the mythical album The River, the same day it went on sale, a 9-week tour of America was announced that would begin on January 16 in Pittsburgh. What would begin as a small tour to promote and commemorate the collection, The River Tour 2016. It would end up becoming an extensive tour that would reach Europe with more than 70 performances and a return to American lands. This tour was characterized, in his American sleeve, by playing completely and in order (very unusual for Bruce) the two albums that make up The River and also the release of the song Meet me in the city. Once the tour reached Europe, he returned to his characteristic setlist where there was no established order, but songs from the album The River predominated. On September 7, 2016, Springsteen performed for 4 hours and 4 minutes at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This show, which was part of The River 2016 Tour, stands as his longest running show in the US The River 2016 tour was the highest-grossing world tour of 2016; it grossed $268.3 million globally and was the highest-grossing tour since 2014 for any artist headlining Taylor Swift's 2015 tour, which grossed $250.1 million.

On September 23, 2016, Chapter and Verse, a compilation of Springsteen's entire career dating back to 1966, was released. On September 27, 2016, Simon & Schuster published his 500-page autobiography, Born to Run. The book quickly rose to the top of the NY Times bestseller list.

Springsteen supported Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign by performing an acoustic set of "Thunder Road", "Long Walk Home" and "Dancing in the Dark" at a rally in Philadelphia on November 7, 2016. On November 22, 2016, he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by Barack Obama. On January 12, 2017, Springsteen and Patti Scialfa performed a special acoustic set of 15 songs for President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama in the East Room of the White House two days before the president delivered his farewell address to the nation.

Springsteen on Broadway, an eight-week run at the Walter Kerr Theater on Broadway in New York City in the fall of 2017, was announced in June 2017. The show featured Springsteen reading excerpts from his 2016 autobiography Born to Run and performing other spoken reminiscences. Originally scheduled to run from October 12 to November 26, the show was extended three times; the last run occurred on December 15, 2018. For Springsteen's Broadway production of Springsteen, he was honored with a special award at the 2018 Tony Awards.

On December 14, 2018, the live album Springsteen on Broadway was released. The album reached the top 10 in more than 10 countries and #11 in the United States.

Springsteen's nineteenth studio album, Western Stars, was released on June 14, 2019.

It was announced on July 23, 2019, that Springsteen would premiere his film, Western Stars, at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2019. He co-directed the film with his collaborator Thom Zimny. The film features Springsteen and his backing band performing the music of Western Stars before a live audience in his New Jersey ranch barn. The film opened in theaters on October 25. of 2019 and the film's soundtrack, Western Stars - Songs from the Film, was also released on the same day.

On September 10, 2020, Springsteen announced an album with the E Street Band, Letter to You, which is his 20th studio album and was released on October 23, 2020. The title track "Letter to You" was released as the album's lead single and music video that same day. The album's second single, "Ghosts", was released on September 24, 2020. The album incorporates three tracks that were composed at the same time. beginning of his career and that to date had never officially seen the light of day due to legal discrepancies with his first manager Mike Apple. Said songs would be "Song For Orphans", with a very Dylanite style; "If I Was The Priest" and "Janey Needs a Shooter", which at the time he gave to Warren Zevon, adapting it to his style. Bruce has told in interviews that the entire recording of the album was carried out in his ranch studio of New Jersey throughout only 5 working days in which the entire band played simultaneously as if it were a live show. The album's central theme is the longing that Bruce feels for those colleagues and friends who have died throughout his extensive career, both in the E Street Band and his first steps in The Castiles. Additionally, the recording process for this album has been reflected in the documentary Bruce Springsteen's Letter to You, directed by Thom Zimny for the streaming platform Apple TV+.

E Street Band

The E Street Band has been Springsteen's primary backing band since his musical beginnings in the early 1970s. His early lineup included Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, Vini Lopez, David Sancious, and Garry Tallent, with whom Springsteen recorded their first two albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Except for a small change with the departure of López and the entry of Ernest Carter on drums, the main reshuffle of the group took place in 1975, at which time Roy Bittan, Max Weinberg and Steve Van Zandt joined the group in replacing Sancious and Carter.

This formation remained intact during the 1970s and 1980s, except for the departure of Van Zandt in 1983 and the entry of Nils Lofgren and Patti Scialfa. In 1989, after the Tunnel of Love Express tour, Springsteen dissolved the group, and although he recorded sporadically with some of its members on the sessions for Human Touch and Lucky Town, the E Street Band didn't get back together until 1995, at which time Springsteen filmed the documentary Blood Brothers. The E Street Band, made up of Bittan, Clemons, Federici, Lofgren, Scialfa, Van Zandt and Tallent, reunited with Springsteen in 1999 for their first tour in 12 years, and throughout the 2000s has performed studio as The Rising (2002), Magic (2007) and Working on a Dream (2009).

Despite the deaths of Federici and Clemons, both founding members of the group, in 2008 and 2011 respectively, Springsteen has continued to record and tour with the E Street Band, replacing Federici with Charles Giordano and Clemons with a section consisting of his nephew Jake Clemons and Ed Manion, Curt Ramm, Clark Gayton and Barry Danielian. Live, the group has been completed with vocalists such as Cindy Mizelle, Curtis King, Michelle Moore and Everett Bradley, and has occasionally included guests such as Tom Morello, especially substituting for Van Zandt.

Timeline

Discography

Springsteen at the movies

Bruce Springsteen's music has been widely used in film. His first film foray came with the John Sayles film Baby, It's You, which used several songs from Born to Run as its soundtrack. The relationship between Springsteen and Sayles would resurface years later with Sayles' collaboration on music videos for the songs "Born in the U.S.A." and "Tunnel of Love." His hit "Hungry Heart" was used in the film "The perfect storm" directed by Wolfgang Petersen.

Several of his songs were also used in feature films, and he even won an Oscar for his song "Streets of Philadelphia" for the Jonathan Demme film Philadelphia. Springsteen was also nominated for a second Oscar for the song "Dead Man Walkin'", from the film Dead Man Walking. He also worked actively on the song from the Jerry Maguire soundtrack, called "Secret Garden".

In turn, several films have served as inspiration for Springsteen's music, such as The Indian Runner, written and directed by Sean Penn, about which Penn himself admitted to being inspired by the Springsteen song "Highway Patrolman".

Springsteen made his first screen appearance with a cameo in the film High Fidelity, voted "Best Cameo in a Motion Picture" by the MTV Movie Awards. Springsteen also composed the song "The Wrestler" for Darren Aronofsky's eponymous film, which was awarded a Golden Globe for Best Original Song.

In 2019, the film Blinded by the Light directed by Gurinder Chadha, tells the story of Javed, a British teenager of Pakistani descent, who learns to live and understand his family through the music of Bruce Springsteen in the England of 1987, during the austere years that Margaret Thatcher was in power.

Awards and recognitions

The main prizes and awards that Bruce Springsteen obtained throughout his musical career with albums or songs are detailed in the following table chronologically, with a total of 21 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, an Oscar, a BFCA award, a Brit and a Juno Award won to date:

In addition to the awards described above, Springsteen's musical career as a whole was honored with a Polar Music Award in 1997. He is also inducted into several halls, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the of Fame and the New Jersey Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 1997, 1999 and 2007 respectively.

The magazine Rolling Stone also ranked him 23rd in the list of the hundred greatest artists of all time. In addition, the planet 23990, discovered on September 4, 1999 by I.P. Griffin in Auckland, New Zealand, was named Bruce Springsteen in his honor.