Bruce Springsteen Biography

NAME: Bruce Springsteen

OCCUPATION: Singer

BIRTH DATE: September 23, 1949 (Age: 62)

PLACE OF BIRTH: Long Branch, New Jersey

ZODIAC SIGN: Libra

Rock musician. Born September 23, 1949, in Long Branch, New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen was raised in a working-class household in Freehold Borough. The future Boss's father, Doug Springsteen, had trouble holding down a steady job and worked at different times as a bus driver, millworker and prison guard. Adele Springsteen, Bruce's mother, brought in steadier income as a secretary in a local insurance office. Young Bruce and his father had a difficult relationship.

In 1965, he became the lead guitarist in the band "The Castiles", he would later become lead singer in the band. The Castiles recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township, New Jersey. From 1969 to 1971 he performed with Steve Van Zandt, Danny Federici and Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez in a band called "Child", that was renamed later to "Steel Mill" when guitarist Robbin Thompson joined the band.

In 1972, he signed a record deal with Columbia Records and released his debut album, "Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.", with his New Jersey-based colleagues, who would later be called "The E Street Band", In January, 1973. The album had critical success and so did their second album, "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle", released in September, 1973, but had little commercial success. In 1975, after more than 14 month of recording, their third album was released, "Born to Run", which had both critical and commercial success for Springsteen and the band.

Springsteen continued to consolidate his thematic focus on working-class life with the 20-song 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.

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, inspired by Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Dale Maharidge.

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.

In April 2006, Springsteen released 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. Springsteen performing with drummer Max Weinberg behind him, on the Magic Tour stop at Veterans Memorial Arena, Jacksonville, Florida, August 15, 2008.