Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

Report and Interview by Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, March 1974

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN was confined to the boardwalk life on New Jersey. He lived over a drug store "in all the craziness of downtown", prayed for ...

Bruce Springsteen: Talking To The Boss

Interview by Adam Sweeting, Vox, September 1992

FOLKLORE TELLS us there was a time, about 25 years ago, when meeting the stars was a simple matter. You just had to hang out ...

E Street Serenade: Bruce Springsteen, David Sancious and the E Street Shuffle

Retrospective and Interview by Rod Tootell, Rock's Backpages, December 2012

IN SEPTEMBER 1974, a Swedish journalist was interviewing a rock singer pretty much unknown in Sweden. His name was Bruce Springsteen. ...

Bruce Springsteen: Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. (Columbia)

Review by Dave Marsh, Creem, May 1973

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN has enough gall to actually commit suicide on stage of his own volition. Unlike Alice Cooper and David Bowie, who only yak about ...

Was Bob Dylan the Previous Bruce Springsteen?

Interview by Steve Turner, NME, October 1973

"RANDY NEWMAN is great but he’s not touched. Joni Mitchell is great but she’s not touched. Bruce is touched... he’s a genius!" Manager Mike Appel ...

Bruce Springsteen: The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (Columbia)

Review by Bruce Pollock, New York Times, December 1973

WHEN BRUCE Springsteen's first Columbia album, Greetings From Asbury Park, came out almost a year ago, it was met with the most extravagant and outrageous ...

Bruce Springsteen: Springsteen Turns On The Heat…

Profile by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, February 1974

HE STANDS there looking like a cross between Elvis Presley and a reject from Sha Na Na with faint Dylanesque overtones and a battered Fender ...

Bruce Springsteen: It's Hard to be a Saint in the City

Profile and Interview by Jerry Gilbert, ZigZag, August 1974

ALL DRESSED UP AND NO PLACE TO GO ...

Bruce Springsteen: Shouldn't He Be Famous?

Comment by Dave Marsh, Let It Rock, December 1974

IT WAS DIFFICULT to tell just when the stage caved in. It seemed to happen during 'Rosalita', the last song before the encore. But maybe ...

Casing The Promised Land: Bruce Springsteen at Hammersmith Odeon

Live Review by Simon Frith, Creem, 1975

So you’re scared and you’re thinkingThat maybe we aren’t that young anymore.Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night.You ain’t a beauty, but hey ...

Bruce Springsteen - The brilliant, the awful and the bumfluff shuffle

Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, February 1975

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN IS an excellent rhythm guitarist, which just about compensates for the fact that he grows a terrible beard. ...

Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run (Columbia import)

Review by Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, September 1975

THE VISIONARIES and rock and roll prophets who predicted that this album would be the making of Bruce Springsteen may have noted that while their ...

Bruce Springsteen: Hustling For Rock’s Record Machines

Report by Don Snowden, Pasadena Guardian, September 1975

HE STARTED HIS career as a solo performer and fronting New Jersey bar bands like the Steel Mill and Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom. ...

Bruce Springsteen: Little Egypt From Asbury Park

Profile by Dave Marsh, Creem, October 1975

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SITS cross-legged on his half-made bed, and surveys the scene. Records are strewn across the room, singles mostly, intermixed with empty Pepsi bottles, ...

Bruce Springsteen & The Street Band: Live At The Roxy Theatre

Live Review by Don Snowden, Pasadena Guardian, October 1975

"I’m gonna sit back right easy and laugh When Scooter and Big Man bust this city in half" (‘10th Avenue Freeze-Out’) ...

Bruce Springsteen: The Sprucing Of The Springbean

Report by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, October 1975

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Man, Myth or Monster? CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY reports from Houston, Texas ...

Bruce Springsteen: At the Roxy, Los Angeles

Live Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, November 1975

PEOPLE WHO who were clearly not accustomed to standing in line formed a reluctant column along Sunset Boulevard; hordes of photographers snapped at the famous ...

Bruce Springsteen

Report and Interview by Andrew Tyler, NME, November 1975

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN says he just writes down his impressions of stuff whereas here in Hollywood, Calif., there are people in from New York who believe ...

Bruce Springsteen: Hammersmith Odeon, London

Live Review by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, November 1975

WHEN THEY were good they were very very good, and when they were bad they were so-so. ...

Bruce Springsteen: The Palladium, New York

Live Review by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, November 1976

IT MAY rain or snow, and the temperature in New York might even drop below freezing-point this weekend, but so long as Bruce Springsteen is ...

Steve Van Zandt: Miami, Bruce, and Roots

Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Melody Maker, November 1976

LOS ANGELES: Miami Steve Van Zandt has been in Bruce Springsteen's band for over a year now, and also finds time these days to guide ...

Bruce Springsteen: Proceedings of Discovery

Comment by Bruce Pollock, Gannett Westchester Newspapers, 1978

WE ROCK PUNDITS, critics and reviewers, Rockwells of good taste, O'Neills of moral fervor, are in reality no better than the average slob on the ...

Bruce Springsteen & Dr. John: Fan Recalls First Close Encounter

Memoir by Don Snowden, Thunder, February 1978

WELL, IT WAS the summer of '74 and all in all life was reasonably comfortable but pretty boring. Home was the spacious second floor of ...

Bruce Springsteen: Reborn and Running Again

Report by Harvey Kubernik, Melody Maker, June 1978

EVEN BEFORE the two brilliant concerts at the Spectrum earlier in the week, Bruce Springsteen could have been the Mayor of Philadelphia if he had ...

Bruce Springsteen: Darkness On The Edge Of Town

Review by Paul Rambali, NME, June 1978

So where you been, Bruce? ...

Bruce Springsteen: Darkness On The Edge Of Town

Review by Peter Silverton, Sounds, June 1978

LET'S START with the obvious. It's impossible to approach this album without taking into heavy account the fortunes and misfortunes of this Crown Prince of ...

Bruce Springsteen: Darkness On The Edge Of Town; Mink DeVille: Return To Magenta

Review by John Tobler, ZigZag, July 1978

THE RETURN of the street people, which should be a good thing. First, Springsteen, whose scenario of misfortune has been so well publicised that there's ...

Bruce Springsteen: Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Columbia)

Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, September 1978

If I walk away from this, he thought, I'll be an old man – all ghosts and hangovers and mellow recollections. Fuck it, he thought, ...

Bruce Springsteen: The Springsteen Syndrome

Live Review by Paul Morley, NME, October 1979

Musicians United For Safe Energy: Madison Square Garden, NYC ...

Bruce Springsteen: The Last American Hero

Essay by Sandy Robertson, Sounds, January 1980

MUST BE some new kind of drug or somethin', 'cos even a 16-year-old don't do a graveyard shift of four hours and then dance on ...

Bruce Springsteen: The River

Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, October 1980

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN once said simply this: "I want it all." I've taken it out of context but, judging by the recent Dave Marsh biography, it ...

Bruce Springsteen: The River (CBS)

Review by Paolo Hewitt, Melody Maker, October 1980

LISTENING to Bruce Springsteen's The River is like taking a trip through the rock 'n' roll heartland as you've never experienced it. It's a walk ...

Bruce Springsteen: The Man, The Myth, The Magic

Live Review by Mark Cooper, Record Mirror, October 1980

MILWAUKEE IS up by the Great Lakes in the industrial badlands. Concrete freeways, steel chimneys, cloudy skies and breweries. The kind of place "where Mister ...

Bruce Springsteen: Los Angeles Sports Arena, California

Live Review by Sylvie Simmons, NME, November 1980

IT'S EASY to see why the girls go so much on him. You got the excitable adolescent of 'Rosalita', 'Crush On You' – hey hey ...

Bruce Springsteen: The River (Columbia)

Review by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, January 1981

A SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE sketch of a few seasons back poked fun at Roy Orbison by reducing him to a caricature: motionless stance and ever-present ...

Bruce Springsteen Takes It To The River: So Don’t Call Him ‘Boss’, OK?

Report and Interview by Dave DiMartino, Creem, January 1981

All things good come to he who waits; he who hesitates is lost. For every stupid cliché there’s another one out there equally stupid that ...

Bruce Springsteen

Interview by Dave Marsh, Musician, February 1981

A YEAR AGO, taking a respite from recording to play two nights of the M.U.S.E. anti-nuke concerts, Bruce Springsteen pared his normal three hour show ...

Bruce Springsteen: The Man Who Would Save Rock And Roll

Essay by Greil Marcus, New West, February 1981

LAST OCTOBER Bruce Springsteen released his fifth album, The River, which went swiftly to number one in the States, and began a tour that will ...

Bruce Springsteen: Not The Me-Me-Me-Me

Report and Interview by Paolo Hewitt, Melody Maker, May 1981

STACKED on the left of the typewriter are two blank cassettes which should contain the voice of Bruce Springsteen. But like Kevin Rowland and Elvis ...

Bruce Springsteen: A responsible rocker

Profile and Interview by Richard Williams, Sunday Times, May 1981

Bob Dylan arrives in Britain next month hoping to repeat his triumphant series of concerts of three years ago. Many observers feel that his timing ...

Bruce Springsteen: Brighton Centre

Live Review by Lynden Barber, Melody Maker, June 1981

TRYING TO WRITE about a Bruce Springsteen concert without reinforcing the man's reputation for scarcely believable stage performances is like trying to cross the Atlantic ...

Springsteen Forged Passports To A Promised Land

Comment by Nick Kent, NME, July 1981

"What my band and I are about is a sense of responsibility. If you accept it, that makes you responsible for everything that happens. People ...

Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska (Columbia)

Review by Jon Young, Trouser Press, January 1983

Starkness at the Edge of Town ...

Out In The Street: Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and the simple truths of blue-collar rock

Essay by Cynthia Rose, History of Rock, The, 1984

In the heyday of Elvis, Chuck Berry or the Beatles, radio was revered. It constituted rock’n’roll’s channel to the teen heart, and it struck out ...

Bruce Springsteen: Born in The USA (CBS)*****

Review by Sandy Robertson, Sounds, June 1984

IT TOOK me a long time to get to feel comfortable with Bruce Springsteen's music and then, an album or so after I'd overcome the ...

Bruce Springsteen: Born In The USA (CBS)

Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, August 1984

IN BRUCE Springsteen's 1984, America – the original big country where dreams stay with you – has contracted; it is now a very small country ...

Bruce Springsteen

Essay by Richard Cook, NME, December 1984

TO ANYONE who wasn't born in the USA, America is still defined by the clutter of images it sends us: television, cinema, music, cars, fast ...

Bruce Springsteen

Essay by Glenn O'Brien, Spin, 1985

Hey, it was the greatest show I’ve ever seen. It was like rock ‘n’ roll and a gospel meeting and a party and the World ...

Springsteen: Scruff As Superstar

Profile by Simon Frith, Observer, The, 1985

IF BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN didn’t exist rock critics would have had to invent him – which, in a sense, they did. His manager, ex-journalist Jon Landau, ...

Bruce Springsteen: Perfect Mastery Of The Beat

Live Review by David Sinclair, Times, The, June 1985

Bruce Springsteen: Slane Castle, Dublin ...

A Promise Fulfilled — But What Next?

Live Review by Richard Williams, Times, The, July 1985

Bruce Springsteen: Wembley Stadium, London ...

Nils Lofgren: Nils Desperandum

Interview by Ralph Traitor, Sounds, July 1985

On the eve of Springsteen’s London dates Ralph Traitor tracks down Nils Lofgren, the latest resident on E street. ...

Bruce Springsteen: At Wembley Stadium

Live Review by Biba Kopf, NME, July 1985

I HAVE seen the future cast as a rock'n'roll song. I do not much like what I see: Bruce Springsteen everywhere confirmed as the way ...

Nils Lofgren: The E Street Flip

Interview by Dave Zimmer, BAM, November 1985

NEW JERSEY – There he is, taking windmill swipes at his guitar with wild abandon, then doing a complete flip on the Meadowlands stage while ...

The Year Of The Boss

Essay by John Mendelsohn, Creem, 1986

LET’S ADMIT IT to one another – there are several things we don’t like so much about Bruce Springsteen. We’re not crazy, for instance, about ...

"My cousin saw Bruce down Fifth Avenue!"

Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, October 1986

"HI gang, this is Martha in Marietta, Georgia. I gotta lotta Springsteen bootlegs and I wanna trade... Hi, Howie in Boston again. My cousin in ...

Bruce Springsteen: Live/1975-85

Review by Gavin Martin, NME, November 1986

GAVIN MARTIN rummages through his pre-Christmas stocking and uncovers the heavyweight Broooce, a five-album set of Springsteen live, including mucho unreleased material. ...

Bruce Springsteen: The E Street Band Live/1975-85

Review by John Mendelsohn, Creem, March 1987

ON THE SUNNY, balmy Monday this was released the local deejays said, absenteeism in San Francisco broke all records, as tens of thousands of otherwise ...

The E Street Man: Clarence Clemons

Interview by Deborah Frost, Elle, August 1987

CLARENCE DEMONS is so big it's hard to imagine him standing in anyone's shadow. ...

Tougher Than Most: Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel of Love tour

Review by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore Sun, March 1988

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S 'Tougher Than the Rest' is a sombre, unforgiving song typical of his recent Tunnel of Love album. It describes love not as an ...

Bruce Springsteen: Into the Future

Live Review by Wayne Robins, Newsday, April 1988

THE "TUNNEL OF LOVE" tour is not rock-and-roll business as usual, or even Springsteen business as usual. This, after all, is a show that for ...

Bruce Springsteen: All Or Nothing

Retrospective by Richard Williams, Q, December 1989

"FILMS ABOUT America should be composed entirely of long and wide shots, as music about America already is," the German film director Wim Wenders wrote ...

Busman's Holiday: Bruce Springsteen 1987-1990

Overview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1990

When not touring the world's stadiums, was Bruce Springstreen to be found morosely grouting his bathroom tiles and ruefully reflecting upon his broken marriage? Indeed ...

Bruce Springsteen: Palais Des Sports, Lyons, France

Live Review by Paolo Hewitt, Melody Maker, May 1991

COME ELECTION time, even the President of France must sometimes have to make speeches. And when the President makes a speech, nothing gets in his ...

Charles R. Cross: Backstreets and Marc Eliot: Down Thunder Road

Book Review by David Sinclair, Q, September 1992

BACKSTREETS IS THE AMERICAN quarterly fanzine whose editors maintain a painstaking and uncritical log of the life of Bruce Springsteen. First published in November 1989, ...

Bruce Rocks the U.K - But He Can't Match His Own Impossibly High Standards

Live Review by David Sinclair, Rolling Stone, June 1993

"WHEN I WAS YOUNG, I truly didn't think music had any limitations," said Bruce Springsteen in an interview with New York Newsday last year. "I ...

Patti Scialfa: Red-Headed Woman

Profile and Interview by Ian Birch, Q, August 1993

ABOUT AN HOUR and a half from New York going south down the New Jersey Turnpike and then east on the Garden State Parkway is ...

“I Wanna Tell You A Story...”

Overview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1995

Bruce Springsteen, Rock Orator, on Life, Love, Art and everything ...

Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run

Retrospective by Ed Ward, MOJO, February 1995

LORD, WHAT DID I EVER SEE IN BRUCE Springsteen? But I did once see something, and even went on record as having seen it. In ...

Soul On Ice: Clarence Clemons

Interview by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, April 1995

HE'S HUGE, AS A LEGEND SHOULD BE. Solid as a monument. A big man, built like the American football player that be was before a ...

Bruce Springsteen: The Ghost Of Tom Joad

Review by Phil Sutcliffe, MOJO, December 1995

SPRINGSTEEN'S GOT HIS BOTTLE back. After the diverse dissatisfactions of Human Touch, Lucky Town, the point-defeating In Concert: MTV Plugged, and the unnecessary Greatest Hits, ...

Bruce Springsteen: Wiltern Theatre, Los Angeles

Live Review by Dave DiMartino, MOJO, January 1996

"I KNOW THIS IS LA," ANNOUNCED BRUCE Springsteen at the start of his concert, "so I hope I don't have to go out there and ...

Bruce Springsteen: Hey Joad, Don't Make It Sad... (Oh, Go On Then)

Interview by Gavin Martin, NME, March 1996

HE'LL BE REMEMBERED as the most unbounded performer in rock'n'roll history. His records took you inside a world of naked honesty and passionate conviction and ...

Bruce Springsteen: Le Palais des Congres, Paris

Live Review by Chris Roberts, Uncut, August 1997

BRUCE IS telling a story (and I am scribbling furiously). "This is a song about men and women. I didn't write about men and women ...

Bruce Springsteen

Profile by Philip Norman, Daily Mail, 1998

ROCK MUSIC in its 50-year history has inspired many degrees of love, adulation and awe. Yet among the ranks of legends and superstars, only two ...

The Greatest Band In The World?

Profile by Phil Sutcliffe, MOJO, January 1999

"With Bruce, you wind up treating those four hours on stage as if someone said, You’ve got four hours left on Earth. What are you ...

It's a Vet's Life: Bruce Springsteen and Born in the USA

Retrospective by Phil Sutcliffe, MOJO, January 1999

It was Springsteen's most epic moment – and his most misunderstood. Phil Sutcliffe uncovers the double life of Born In The USA. ...

Bruce Springsteen: Tunnel Of Love; Human Touch; Lucky Town; The Ghost Of Tom Joad,

Retrospective by Gavin Martin, Uncut, February 2000

DISILLUSIONED GROOM, LA-based newlywed and folk conscience of a nation – Springsteen after superstardom subsides ...

Bruce Springsteen: Live In New York City (Columbia 2CD)****

Review by Gavin Martin, Uncut, June 2001

SCINTILLATING DOCUMENT of The Boss reunited with His Gang last year at Madison Square Garden. ...

Various Artists: America: A Tribute To Heroes

Review by David Stubbs, Uncut, March 2002

Star-Spangled Bummer:  Record of benefit concert/telethon for victims of September 11 ...

Bruce Springsteen's Non-Event

Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, August 2002

He may be on the cover of Time again, but The Rising sure ain't Born to Run ...

Bruce Springsteen

Interview by Adam Sweeting, Uncut, September 2002

IF ALL YOU'VE ever seen of New Jersey is Newark airport or the bits they show you in the opening sequence of The Sopranos, you ...

Bruce Springsteen: The Rising

Review by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, September 2002

"BLOOD", "FIRE", "dust", "dark", "empty" – the same words keep recurring. Lights shutting out, black hole in the sun, buildings burning, that lonely desperation that ...

Bruce Blew My Cover: Pete Seeger

Report and Interview by Edward Helmore, Guardian, The, February 2007

ON THE FIRST Friday of the month, in fine weather and sometimes foul, you will find Pete Seeger, the folk-singing legend and pioneering environmentalist, in ...

Got Live If You Want It? Bruce Springsteen On Stage, 1968-2005

Essay by Rod Tootell, Rock's Backpages, July 2008

Rod Tootell asks how well-served the Boss has been by his official live recordings – and nominates his Top 20 tracks. ...

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Izod Center, East Rutherford, New Jersey

Live Review by Kris DiLorenzo, Rock's Backpages, May 2009

A SPRINGSTEEN HOMECOMING is always a big deal, and this time there were only two shows, in a smaller arena than last summer’s Giants Stadium ...

Bruce Springsteen: Wrecking Ball

Review by Phil Sutcliffe, MOJO, April 2012

THE WESTERN WORLD'S in economic grief and the poor get the dirty end of the stick. Er, Bruce? ...