A $6-a-week rented guitar started Bruce Springsteen's career
After watching Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show, seven-year-old Bruce Springsteen got a guitar his mother rented for $6 a week, then quit lessons when they did not pay off instantly. Seeing the Beatles in 1964 sent him back. The Freehold loner went on to sell more than 140 million records.
Springsteen was born on September 23, 1949, in Long Branch, New Jersey, and raised Catholic in Freehold. His mother, a legal secretary from Brooklyn, was the main earner; his father, a Second World War veteran and bus driver, struggled with mental illness. The family's Dutch surname, from Groningen, means jump stone, a stepping stone on unpaved streets, and his Italian grandfather arrived through Ellis Island unable to read English yet became a lawyer.
He clashed with the nuns at his parish school, yet later said his Catholic upbringing shaped his music more than politics did. At Freehold High he was remembered as a loner who wanted only to play guitar, and he skipped his own graduation in 1967. A concussion from a motorcycle crash helped him fail his draft physical at 19, which likely kept him out of Vietnam. His mother took out a loan for a $60 Kent guitar, a gesture he later celebrated in the song The Wish.
Apprenticeship came through local bands such as the Castiles and Steel Mill, whose 1970 San Francisco show led critic Philip Elwood to say he had never been so overwhelmed by an unknown talent. His debut albums arrived in 1973, and Born to Run in 1975 made him a worldwide star. Born in the U.S.A., from 1984, became his biggest seller and one of the best-selling albums ever. Most of his records feature the E Street Band, his backing group since 1972.
The honours are vast: 20 Grammys, an Academy Award, a Special Tony Award, and, in 2016, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. With Letter to You in 2020 he became the first artist to reach the top five with albums in six consecutive decades.
Source: Bruce Springsteen
