Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

By Tom Kirvan

Nicknamed “The Boss,” American singer and songwriter Bruce Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, some 35 years after beginning a musical career that now spans six decades and includes 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, and an Academy Award in 1993 for Best Original Song – “Streets of Philadelphia” from the hit movie “Philadelphia” starring Tom Hanks.

Born September 23, 1949 in New Jersey, Springsteen attended Catholic schools through junior high before switching to the public high school in ninth grade where a teacher there described him as “a loner who wanted nothing more than to play his guitar.”

And play he did, launching his career in the early 1970s with a pair of critically acclaimed albums before hitting it big with the release of “Born to Run” in 1975 and a solo acoustic album, “Nebraska,” in 1982. Two years later, Springsteen became a worldwide phenomenon, releasing “Born in the U.S.A.,” in which seven singles from the album reached the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Bruce Springsteen*

Springsteen, who has two younger sisters, is the product of a working-class household in which his father was a bus driver, and his mother was employed as a legal secretary.

“I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream,” Springsteen said, noting that “when it comes to luck, you make your own.”

The recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, Springsteen has remained a force on the concert circuit, performing before sell-out crowds across the U.S.

“Getting an audience is hard,” he said. “Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.”

Over the past decade, Springsteen has used his musical platform to express himself politically, labeling the current presidential administration “an American tragedy” playing out on a worldwide stage.

“We’re living through a terrible moment in history, where Congress has neutered itself and the boundaries that once curtailed this type of leadership have disintegrated.”

*Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons