baltimore orioles white and purple hats

baltimore orioles white and purple hats - Life and career


19491972: Early years


Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived off South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver; his surname is Dutch for stepping stone. His mother, Adele Ann (ne Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.


Raised a Roman Catholic, Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima Catholic school in Freehold Borough, where he was at odds with both the nuns and other students, even though much baltimore orioles white and purple hats of his later music reflects a deep Catholic ethos and included many rock-influenced, traditional Irish-Catholic hymns.


In ninth grade, he transferred to the public Freehold Regional High School, but did not fit in there, either. Old teachers have said he was a "loner, who wanted nothing more than to play his guitar." He completed high school, but felt so uncomfortable that he skipped his own graduation ceremony. He briefly attended Ocean County College, but dropped out.


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, as 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 lead guitarist and subsequently the lead singer of The Castiles. The Castiles recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township and played a variety of venues, including Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. Marion Vinyard said that she believed the young Springsteen when he promised he would make it big.


Called for induction when he was 19, Springsteen failed his physical examination and didn't serve in Vietnam. In an interview in Rolling Stone magazine in 1984, he said, "When I got on the bus to go take my physical, I thought one thing: I ain't goin'." He suffered a concussion in a motorcycle accident when he was 17, and this together with his "crazy" behaviour at induction and not taking the tests, was enough to get him a 4F.

New Jersey beach towns such as Asbury Park, New Jersey inspired the themes of ordinary life in Bruce Springsteen's music.


In the late 1960s, Springsteen performed briefly in a power trio known as Earth, playing in clubs in New Jersey. Springsteen acquired the nickname "The Boss" during this period as when he played club gigs with a band he took on baltimore orioles white and purple hats the task of collecting the band's nightly pay and distributing it amongst his bandmates. Springsteen, however, has never liked this nickname, due to his dislike of bosses. Lately, however, he seems to have accepted the nickname. Many recent concerts have audiences making up various signs on banners, license plates and so on saying, "Boss Time". Previously he had the nickname "Doctor". From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed with Steel Mill, which also featured Danny Federici, Vini Lopez, Vinnie Roslin and later Steve Van Zandt and Robbin Thompson. They went on to play the mid-Atlantic college circuit, and also briefly in California. In January 1970 well-known San Francisco Examiner music critic Philip Elwood gave Springsteen credibility in his glowing assessment of Steel Mill: "I have never been so overwhelmed by totally unknown talent." Elwood went on to praise their "cohesive musicality" and, in particular, singled out Springsteen as "a most impressive composer." 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 lyrical style: Dr Zoom & the Sonic Boom (earlyid 1971), Sundance Blues Band (mid 1971), and The Bruce Springsteen Band (mid 1971id 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 horn sections, "The Zoomettes" (a group of female backing vocalists for "Dr Zoom") and Southside Johnny Lyon on harmonica. Musical genres explored included blues, R&B, jazz, church music, early rock'n'roll, and soul. His prolific songwriting ability, with more words in some individual songs than other artists had in whole albums, brought his skill to the attention of several people who were about to change his life: new managers Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, and legendary Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond, who, under Appel's pressure, auditioned Springsteen in May 1972.


Even after Springsteen gained international acclaim, his New Jersey roots showed through in his music, and he often 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. 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.


19721974: Initial struggle for success


Springsteen signed a record deal with Columbia Records in 1972, with the help of John Hammond, who had signed Bob Dylan to the same label a decade earlier. Springsteen brought many of his New Jerseyased 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, though sales were slow. Because of Springsteen's lyrical poeticism and folk rockooted 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. (Springsteen and the E Street Band acknowledged by giving a private performance at the Crawdaddy 10th Anniversary Party in New York City in June 1976.) 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." 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 and "Growin' Up" his first take on the recurring theme of adolescence.


In September 1973 his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & 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)" continues to 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 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." 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. All in all the album took more than 14 months to record, with six months alone spent on the song "Born To Run." During this time Springsteen battled with anger and frustration over the album, saying he heard "sounds in [his] head" that he could not explain to the others in the studio. It was during these recording sessions that "Miami" Steve Van Zandt would stumble into the studio just in time to help Springsteen organize the horn section on "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" (it is his only written contribution to the album), and eventually led to his joining the E Street Band.[citation needed] Van Zandt had been a long-time friend of Springsteen, as well as a collaborator on earlier musical projects, and understood where he was coming from, which helped him to translate some of the sounds Springsteen was hearing. Still, by the end of the grueling recording sessions, Springsteen was not satisfied, and, upon first hearing the finished album, threw the record into the alley and told Jon Landau he would rather just cut the album live at The Bottom Line, a place he often played.[citation needed]


The woman in his life during this time was part-time-live-in 20-year-old Karen Darvin of Dallas, Texas, who was in New York City pursuing a career in dance.


19751983: Breakthrough


On August 13, 1975, Springsteen and the E Street Band began a five-night, 10-show stand at New York's Bottom Line club. The engagement 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.) With the release of Born to Run on August 25, 1975, Springsteen finally found success. The album peaked at number 3 on the Billboard 200, and while there were no hit singles, "Born to Run" (Billboard #23), "Thunder Road", "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" (Billboard #83), and "Jungleland" baltimore orioles white and purple hats all received massive album-oriented rock airplay and remain perennial favorites on many classic rock stations. The songwriting and recording was more disciplined than before, while still maintaining an epic feel. With its panoramic imagery, thundering production and desperate optimism, Born to Run is considered by some fans to be among the best rock and roll albums of all time and Springsteen's finest work. It established him as a sincere and dynamic rock and 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 in Springsteen's career. Gone were the raw, rapid-fire lyrics, outsized characters and long, multi-part musical compositions of the first two 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 album rock radio airplay. Other fans would prefer the work of the adventurous early Springsteen. The cross-country 1978 tour to promote the album would become legendary for the intensity and length 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. number one pop hit with a heavily rearranged version of "For You" and 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 number two in 1979 with Springsteen's also unreleased "Fire".


Springsteen in concert on The River Tour. Drammenshallen, Drammen, Norway, May 5, 1981.


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 set 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 footage 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 20-song double album The River in 1980, which included an intentionally paradoxical range of material from good-time party rockers to emotionally intense ballads, and finally yielded his first hit Top Ten single as a performer, "Hungry Heart". This album marked a shift in Springsteen's music toward a pop-rock sound that was all but missing from any of his earlier work. This is apparent in the stylistic adoption of certain eighties pop-rock hallmarks like the reverberating-tenor drums, very basic percussion/guitar and repetitive lyrics apparent in many of the tracks. The title song pointed to Springsteen's intellectual direction, while a couple of the lesser-known tracks presaged his musical direction. The album sold well, becoming his first topper on the Billboard Pop Albums chart, 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.


The River was followed in 1982 by the stark solo acoustic Nebraska. 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 is about the murder spree of Charles Starkweather. According to Marsh, the album started as a demo tape for new work to be played with the E Street Band, but during the recording process Springsteen and producer Landau realized the songs worked better as solo acoustic numbers. Several studio sessions with the E Street Band led them to realize that the original recording, made in Springsteen's home on a simple, low-tech four-track tape deck, were the best versions they were going to get. However, those sessions were not all for naught, as the band recorded several new songs that Springsteen had written in addition to the Nebraska material, including "Born in the U.S.A." and "Glory Days". These new songs would not be released until two years later, when they formed the basis of Springsteen's next album.


While Nebraska did not sell 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.


19841991: Commercial and popular phenomenon


Springsteen probably is best known for his album Born in the U.S.A. (1984), which sold 15 million copies in the U.S. 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 lyrics in the verses were entirely unambiguous when listened to, but the anthemic music and the title of the song made it hard for many, from politicians to the common person, to get the lyricsxcept those in the chorus, which could be read many ways. 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 the Chrysler Corporation to use the song in a car commercial. (In later years, to eliminate the bombast and make the song's original meaning more explicitly clear, Springsteen performed the song accompanied only by acoustic guitar. 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 number 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's career. The song "Cover Me" was written by Springsteen for Donna Summer, but his record company persuaded him to keep it for the new album. A big fan of Summer's work, Springsteen wrote another song for her, "Protection". Videos for the album were made by noted film directors Brian De Palma and John Sayles. Springsteen was featured on the "We Are the World" song and album in 1985.


During the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, Springsteen met actress Julianne Phillips. They were married in Lake Oswego, Oregon, on May 13, 1985, surrounded by intense media attention. Opposites in background, their marriage was not 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, as reported by many tabloids, Springsteen took up with backup singer Patti Scialfa. Phillips and Springsteen filed for divorce in 1988. The divorce was finalized in 1989.


Springsteen performing on the Tunnel of Love Express at the Radrennbahn Weiensee in East Berlin on July 19, 1988.


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 (aided by the release of Arthur Baker's dance mixes of three of the singles). Live/197585, a five-record box set (also on three cassettes or three CDs), was released near the end of 1986 and became the first box set to debut at number 1 on the U.S. album charts. It is one of the most commercially successful live albums of all time, ultimately selling 13 million units in the U.S. Live/197585 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.


By the peak of Springsteen's international megastardom in the mid-'80s there were no less than five Springsteen fanzines circulating at the same time in the UK, and many others elsewhere. Gary Desmond's 'Candy's Room', produced in Liverpool, was the first in 1980, quickly followed by Dan French's 'Point Blank', Dave Percival's 'The Fever', Jeff Matthews' 'Rendezvous' and Paul Limbrick's 'Jackson Cage'. In the US, Backstreets Magazine started in Seattle and continues today as a glossy publication, now in communication with Springsteen's management and official website.


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 marriage to Julianne Phillips. Reflecting the challenges of love in Brilliant Disguise, Springsteen sang: