Bruce Springsteen

Children, with Patti Scialfa : Evan Springsteen , Jesse Springsteen and Sam Springsteen.

Says his favorite film as a kid was The Searchers .

1999: Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where Bono of U2 gave the induction speech. When U2 was inducted in 2005, Springsteen gave their induction speech, returning the favor.

1997: Awarded the Polar Music Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music Award.

10/27/75: Has appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek magazines simultaneously. Previously this only happened to world leaders.

Considered becoming a baseball player prior to devoting himself to music.

Many of his earlier songs make reference to the New Jersey shore, where he spent his youth.

Paul Schrader asked Springsteen to write a title song for a movie he had written called "Born in the USA". After Springsteen wrote it, he liked the song so much, he used it for his multi-platinum album of the same name instead. As a replacement, Springsteen wrote another song and that song title became the films new title, Light of Day . That is why Springsteen thanks Schrader in the liner notes of the album.

Father, Douglas "Dutch" Springsteen, died in 1998. Mothers name is Adele. Has two sisters, Virginia and Pamela Springsteen.

Frequently works with director John Sayles , a fellow Jerseyite who shares a similar social conscience.

His song "The Ghost of Tom Joad" was inspired by the John Ford film The Grapes of Wrath .

For all his musical success, he has never recorded a #1 hit in the United States. "Hungry Heart" (believed to be a #1 by some) only hit #5. The closest he came was #2, with "Dancing in the Dark". However, he did write "Blinded by the Light", which hit #1 when recorded by Manfred Mann s Earth Band. The closest he came to a UK #1 was "Streets of Philadelphia", which peaked at #2 in 1994.

He refused to play "The Angry Game" with Kristian Luuk when he appeared on "Sen kvll med Luuk" , a Swedish talk-show. The game is a staring contest, during which the contestants are not allowed to laugh.

Originally wrote his classic single "Hungry Heart" for Ramones , but recorded himself at the insistence of his manager.

His Oscar-winning song "Streets of Philadelphia" from Philadelphia was ranked #68 on The American Film Institutes list of "The 100 Years of The Greatest Songs".

2004: He participated in the Vote for Change concert tour organized to encourage the defeat of George W. Bush in the U.S. presidential election, an effort that ultimately fell short as Bush was re-elected on November 2, 2004.

Father was of Dutch and Irish extraction; mother is of Italian extraction.

2004: Radio station 88.5 WXPN performed the 885 greatest songs ever, though they mostly just did rock (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wasnt on the list) and Springsteen won first place with "Thunder Road", "Born to Run" following at #6 and then many other songs scattered throughout.

He was voted the 23rd Greatest Rock n Roll Artist of all time by Rolling Stone.

One of his most famous songs, "Thunder Road", was inspired by the Robert Mitchum movie of the same name, Thunder Road . Cappy Van Dien has the same birthday as Springsteen and is named after his great-grandfather Robert Mitchum and his father Casper Van Dien - Casper Robert Mitchum Van Dien.

His concerts are known as marathons for lasting multiple hours.

Was occasionally confused with Bob Seger in the 1970s and 1980s. They have similar raspy singing voices, utilize saxophone players in their music, and often write songs about the working-class common man.

Born on the same day as the late rhythm and blues singer Ray Charles and actor Jason Alexander.

Sean Penn wrote and directed his first movie, The Indian Runner , loosely based on Springsteens song, "Highway Patrolman", from his "Nebraska" album from 1982, which was practically a demo tape made in Springsteens house.

1986: Winner of the British Phonographic Industry Award for International Solo Artist following the success of his multi-million selling album "Born in the USA".

Inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2007 for his services to music and entertainment (inaugural election). Official induction ceremonies held in May 2008.

Ranked #27 on VH1s 100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll.

Ranked #59 on VH1s 100 Sexiest Artists.

The title for the film Streets of Fire came from the song written and recorded by Springsteen on his album "Darkness on the Edge of Town". Original plans were for the song to be featured on the films soundtrack, but when Springsteen found out it would be rerecorded by other vocalists, he withdrew permission for the song to be used.

Is a huge fan of Elvis Presley.

1999: Inducted into the American Songwriters Hall of Fame.

He inspired and is referred to in the Prefab Sprout song "Cars and Girls" (from their 1988 album "From Langley Park to Memphis").

Good friends with former WWE / AWA superstar Jim Brunzell , Tom Hanks and Edward Norton.

His music was a partial influence on the new direction The Killers chose to take when writing and producing songs for their sophomore album "Sams Town".

His late cousin, Lenny Sullivan , was the assistant road manager for his band for the last 10 years [October 27, 2009].

One of the five winners of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors. Other 2009 honorees were Robert De Niro , Dave Brubeck , Mel Brooks and Grace Bumbry.

While he was composing the song "Fire" in the mid 1970s, in his mind he was imagining it being sung by Elvis Presley. Elvis died a few years later, having never heard the song. It became a huge hit for The Pointer Sisters in 1979.

Is a huge fan of "The Daily Show" and has even anonymously been in the audience during tapings of the show as well as being a guest himself.

Springsteens album "Nebraska" was famously recorded in his home studio on a Tascam 4-track tape recorder using a pair of Shure SM57 mics.

Of the twelve tracks on "Born in the U.S.A.", seven of them, when released as singles, reached the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100.

His song "Its Hard to Be a Saint in the City" was covered by David Bowie during his "Station to Station" sessions and has appeared on some Bowie compilation albums. In 1985, while he was in recording sessions for his single "Absolute Beginners", Bowie was also recorded doing an impression of Springsteens singing voice (this surfaced following Bowies death in 2016).

Has suffered from clinical depression since the mid 1980s, a condition that almost crushed him by his early sixties.

In common with other rock stars in the 1980s such as U2 , Sting and Peter Gabriel , Springsteen was a prominent supporter of the human rights organization Amnesty International.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian award, by President Barack Obama , in a live televised ceremony held in the East Room of the White House, on November 22, 2016, along with twenty other recipients, the the largest, and final Medal of Freedom ceremony of Obamas presidency. At this ceremony, the twenty-one recipients, in alphabetical order, included: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar , Elouise Cobell (posthumous award given to her son), Ellen DeGeneres , Robert De Niro , Richard Garwin , Bill Gates , Melinda Gates , Frank Gehry , Margaret Hamilton (as Margaret H. Hamilton), Tom Hanks , Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (posthumous award given to her niece), Michael Jordan , Maya Lin , Lorne Michaels , Newton Minow , Eduardo Padron (as Eduardo Padrn), Robert Redford , Diana Ross , Vin Scully , Bruce Springsteen , and Cicely Tyson.

Has his voice insured for six million dollars.

Actress Courteney Cox appeared in his video for Dancing In The Dark when she was a teenager. She was in the front row at his concert with some friends when Bruce offered her his hand, pulled her up on stage, and started dancing with her.

He became a big fan of the Harry Potter novels after reading Them to his kids and even wrote a ballad about Harry, and tried to get it into the movies, being unsuccessful only because of Harry Potter creator JK Rowlings contractual stipulation that no commercial songs of any type be used in the Harry Potter film series.

When it comes to luck, you make your own.

[During his Oscar acceptance speech]: Thanks for inviting me to your,party.

He showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean,that it was anti-intellectual. He had the vision and the talent to make,a pop record that contained the whole world.

When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my,house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.

[on cancellation of a performance in North Carolina over transgender,bathroom issues] Some things are more important than a rock show.

That makes for ripe ground for demagoguery. He has a very simple answer,to all these very, very complex problems.

Don’t take yourself too seriously. Take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don’t worry. Worry your ass off. Have iron-clad confidence, but doubt. It keeps you alive and alert! Believe you are the baddest ass in town – and [that] you suck! It keeps you honest. Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy, it will make you strong. And when you walk on stage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it’s all we have – and then remember it’s only rock’ n’ roll.

All I do know is that as we age the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier. . . much heavier. With each passing year, the price of our refusing to do that sorting rises higher and higher.

There is no evidence of the soul except in tis sudden absence. A nothingness enters, taking the place where something was before. A night without stars falls and for a moment covers everything in the room.

The primary math of the real world is one and one equals two. The layman (as, often, do I) swings that every day. He goes to the job, does his work, pays his bills and comes home. One plus one equals two. It keeps the world spinning. But artists, musicians, con men, poets, mystics and such are paid to turn that math on its head, to rub two sticks together and bring forth fire. Everybody performs this alchemy somewhere in their life, but it’s hard to hold on to and easy to forget. People don’t come to rock shows to learn something. They come to be reminded of something they already know and feel deep down in their gut. That when the world is at its best, when we are at our best, when life feels fullest, one and one equals three. It’s the essential equation of love, art, rock ’n’ roll and rock ’n’ roll bands. It’s the reason the universe will never be fully comprehensible, love will continue to be ecstatic, confounding, and true rock ’n’ roll will never die.

First, you write for yourself. . . always, to make sense of experience and the world around you. It’s one of the ways I stay sane. Our stories, our books, our films are how we cope with the random trauma-inducing chaos of life as it plays.

The best music. . . is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

Talk about a dream,try to make it real,I would spend my life on the road logging hundreds of thousands of miles and my story was always the sameman comes to town, detonates; man leaves town and drives off into the evening; fade to black. Just the way I like it.

The blues don’t jump right on you. They come creeping. Shortly after my sixtieth I slipped into a depression like I hadn’t experienced since that dusty night in Texas thirty years earlier. It lasted for a year and a half and devastated me. When these moods hit me, usually few will notice—not Mr. Landau, no one I work with in the studio, not the band, never the audience, hopefully not the children—but Patti will observe a freight train bearing down, loaded with nitroglycerin and running quickly out of track. During these periods I can be cruel: I run, I dissemble, I dodge, I weave, I disappear, I return, I rarely apologize, and all the while Patti holds down the fort as I’m trying to burn it down. She stops me. She gets me to the doctors and says, “This man needs a pill. ” I do. I’ve been on antidepressants for the last twelve to fifteen years of my life, and to a lesser degree but with the same effect they had for my father, they have given me a life I would not have been able to maintain without them. They work. I return to Earth, home and my family. The worst of my destructive behavior curtails itself and my humanity returns. I was crushed between sixty and sixty-two, good for a year and out again from sixty-three to sixty-four. Not a good record.

You lay claim to your stories; you honor, with your hard work and the best of your talent, their inspirations, and you fight to tell them well from a sense of indebtedness and thankfulness. The ambiguities, the contradictions, the complexities of your choices are always with you in your writing as they are in your life. You learn to live with them. You trust your need to have a dialogue about what you deem important.

One problem with the way the educational system is set up is that it only recognizes a certain type of intelligence, and it’s incredibly restrictive - very, very restrictive. There’s so many types of intelligence, and people who would be at their best outside of that structure get lost.

Aging is scary but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways.

(talking about his father) 230 pounds of nickels in Sears slacks.

Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry — which is happening as I write — is one of them. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards.

As you, my fans, know I’m scheduled to play in Greensboro, North Carolina this Sunday. As we also know, North Carolina has just passed HB2, which the media are referring to as the ‘bathroom’ law. HB2 — known officially as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act — dictates which bathrooms transgender people are permitted to use. Just as important, the law also attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their human rights are violated in the workplace. No other group of North Carolinians faces such a burden. To my mind, it’s an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress. Right now, there are many groups, businesses, and individuals in North Carolina working to oppose and overcome these negative developments. Taking all of this into account, I feel that this is a time for me and the band to show solidarity for those freedom fighters. As a result, and with deepest apologies to our dedicated fans in Greensboro, we have canceled our show scheduled for Sunday, April 10th. Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry — which is happening as I write — is one of them. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards.

The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

I think that is what film and art and music do they can work as a map of sorts for your feelings.

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

When it comes to luck, you make your own.

My image had always been very heterosexual, very straight. So it was a nice experience for me, a chance to clarify my own feelings about gay and lesbian civil rights.

There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.

Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.

I do a lot of curiosity buying; I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination.

I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.