35 Facts About Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen—"The Boss," the patron saint of the working man, the protector of all that is holy and righteous on E Street—was born in Long Brach, New Jersey, on September 23, 1949. In the more than 70 years since, he has become a rock 'n' roll icon and living legend. Here are 35 things you need to know about the rocker and his E Street band.

1. Barack Obama is a big Bruce Springsteen fan.

Bruce Springsteen has fans in high places. Barack Obama has said that there are "a handful of people who enter into your lives through their music and tell the American people's story. Bruce Springsteen is one of those people." Obama also said that he ran for President because he couldn't be Bruce Springsteen.

2. Joe Strummer was also a fan.

Another major Springsteen fan was the late Joe Strummer. The Clash frontman was asked about the Boss for a TV documentary in the mid-1990s and responded with a fax that said, among other things, "Bruce is great ... If you don't agree with that, you're a pretentious Martian from Venus" and "The DJ puts on 'Racing in the Streets' and life seems worth living again."

3. Dr. Ruth had some songwriting advice for Bruce Springsteen.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer once visited Springsteen backstage at a show. She told him she liked what he said in his songs about love and sex, but she wished he would mention contraception once in a while. The Boss's reply? "Gee, it’s going to be tough to get the word contraception into a song."

4. Bruce Springsteen was close friends and collaborators with Warren Zevon.

The late Warren Zevon was Springsteen's friend, fan and collaborator. When Zevon was diagnosed with mesothelioma, he refused any treatment he thought would incapacitate him and headed to the studio—with plenty of friends in tow—to record his final album, The Wind. Springsteen provided background vocals and electric guitar for two songs, one of which won the Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal. Springsteen later appeared on a tribute album to Zevon, performing his song "My Ride's Here."

5. As a kid, Bruce Springsteen was not a great student.

Springsteen had a bit of a hard time in school. "In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged," Springsteen said. "I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass." Years later, at Ocean County College, legend has it that his fellow students petitioned the administration to have him expelled.

6. Bruce Springsteen had a bit of a following among his fellow students.

Of course, Springsteen had his fans, too. Some of the girls in his high school approached the administration with a petition demanding that Bruce's band at the time, the Castiles, be given more attention and respect.

7. Bruce Springsteen grew up surrounded by the sweet smells of chocolate.

When the Springsteens were living in Freehold, New Jersey, their house was near a Nestle's factory. When the wind was just right, they could smell chocolate and coffee all day long.

8. The first song Bruce Springsteen ever learned to play on the guitar was a Beatles song.

The first song Springsteen learned to play on the guitar was the Beatles' "Twist and Shout." He has played it hundreds more times over the years at concerts, often as an encore.

9. There really is an E Street.

It runs northeast through the New Jersey shore town of Belmar. According to Springsteen lore, the band took its name from the street because original keyboard player David Sancious' mother lived there and allowed the band to rehearse in her house.

The titular avenue of "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" is also in Belmar.

10. "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" was guitarist Steven Van Zandt's debut with the E Street Band.

Van Zandt came up with the idea for the horn intro and became the de facto arranger when he sang the line for the horn section.

11. The working title for Darkness on the Edge of Town was American Madness.

American Madness was also the title of a 1932 Frank Capra movie.

12. Bruce Springsteen originally wrote "Hungry Heart" for The Ramones.

In 1979, Springsteen saw the Ramones play at the Fast Lane in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He met the band and Joey Ramone asked Springsteen to write a song for them. Springsteen wrote "Hungry Heart" with the intention of giving it to them, but hung on to it at the urging of his manager.

13. Bruce Springsteen originally saw his first wife in a music video.

The first place Springsteen saw his first wife, Julianne Phillips? In one of .38 Special's music videos. She later appeared toward the end of Springsteen's video for "Glory Days." She appears in the video with Patti Scialfa, Springsteen's second (and current) wife.

14. Bruce Springsteen went home from the movies with a random fan to prove a point.

Springsteen lore has it that the musician was once spotted in a movie theater watching Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (which comments on artist/fan relations). The fan who saw him challenged the singer to prove he didn't regard his own fans with the contempt as the Allen stand-in in the movie by coming to meet his parents ... so he did. "And for two hours I was in this kid’s house, talking with these people," Springsteen recalled. "They were really nice. They cooked me up all this food, watermelon, and the guy gave me a ride back to my hotel a few hours later."

15. The "chicken man" Bruce Springsteen references in "Atlantic City" was a mob boss.

When Springsteen sings that "they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night" in "Atlantic City," he's referring to Phil Testa, the underboss of the Philadelphia crime family under Angelo Bruno. Bruno was killed in 1980, and Testa, who got his nickname from his involvement in a poultry business, succeeded him as don of the family. His nine-month reign ended when conspirators in the family placed a nail bomb under his porch and detonated it when he walked out the front door.

16. Bruce Springsteen caused a security scare at elvis presley's graceland.

After a 1976 concert in Memphis, a presumably inebriated Springsteen went to Graceland at three in the morning, jumped the wall, and ran to the front door. Security grabbed him before he could make it to the door and sent him packing. Knocking wouldn't have done much good, anyway. Elvis was in Lake Tahoe at the time.

17. Bruce Springsteen is a talented photographer.

According to Frank Stefanko, a photographer and friend Springsteen's, The Boss is a pretty talented photographer. "Riding in my car he'll notice unusual things—weird Jersey billboards, funny signs on the sides of diners—and it's all registering," Stefanko said. "A will just walk by and never see it. Bruce travels all over the world, taking pictures—it's quite a collection of work. Will he ever show it? I don't know. He doesn't make a fuss over it. But I know he has that artist's eye—his eyes, his brain, they're always working."

18. Bruce Springsteen has been heard in space.

In December 1999, the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery was woken up with Springsteen's song "Rendezvous" on the day they were scheduled to rendezvous with the Hubble Space Telescope.

19. Bruce Springsteen wrote "Fire" for Elvis Presley.

In May 1977, Springsteen and Van Zandt went to an Elvis Presley concert in Philadelphia. A few days later Bruce wrote "Fire," and allegedly sent a demo of the song to Presley that summer, hoping he might cover it. Whether the tape got sent or not, Presley died that August and Springsteen wound up giving "Fire" to Robert Gordon. Gordon's version of the song was covered by the The Pointer Sisters, who made it a hit in 1979.

20. Monmouth University is home to an archive of Bruce Springsteen artifacts.

New Jersey's Monmouth University is home to The Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music which, according to the website, "serves as the official archival repository for Bruce Springsteen’s written works, photographs, periodicals, and artifacts." There are more than 35,000 pieces in the collection, which is available to view by appointment only.

21. "Kitty's Back" was inspired by a jersey shore strip club.

The title for "Kitty's Back," from The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, was inspired by a neon sign Springsteen saw promoting the return of popular stripper a Jersey Shore club.

22. Someone paid a lot of money for what might have been Bruce Springsteen's screen door.

According to local legend, a fan bought the screen door of the house at 68 South Street in Freehold, New Jersey—a house Springsteen had once lived in—from the homeowner in the early '80s, thinking it was the screen door mentioned in "Thunder Road."

23. Bruce Springsteen played a concert in the gym of his former grammar school in 1996.

In November 1996, Springsteen played a benefit concert in the gymnasium of his former grade school, the St. Rose of Lima School in Freehold, New Jersey. Only Freehold residents were allowed to purchase tickets.

24. Bruce Springsteen has been the subject of a symposium for musicologists and educators.

In September 2005, and again in 2009, "Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium" drew a crowd of 330 educators, journalists, historians, musicologists, and fans to hear more than 100 presentations on Springsteen scholarship.

25. Bruce Springsteen turned Asbury Park's The Stone Pony into a tourist attraction.

Thanks to the Boss, the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey is one of the most famous music venues in the world. It's so closely associated with Springsteen that you might think he got his start at there, but the club only opened in 1974, when Springsteen already had two albums out.

26. Bruce Springsteen has a minor planet named after him.

It's technical designation is 23990 Springsteen.

27. The fortune teller in Bruce Springsteen's "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" is real.

Madam Marie, the fortune-teller in "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," is as real as E Street. Marie Castello told fortunes on the Asbury Park boardwalk from 1932 until her death in 2008 at age 93. The fortune-telling booth is still there and is run by Madam Marie's family.

28. There's a Muppet modeled after Bruce Springsteen.

Sesame Street has performed a couple of different Springsteen covers, including "Born to Add" and Barn in the USA." The tunes have been performed by a Muppet named Bruce Stringbean who is backed by the S Street Band.

29. The E Street Band made their live debut in 1974.

The live debut of the E Street Band, with Max Weinberg on drums and Roy Bittan on piano, occurred on September 20, 1974 at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. That show marked the first time that Springsteen earned $5000 for a night's work.

30. It took 16 hours to create Clarence Clemons' "Jungleland" sax solo.

When the band was recording, "Jungleland," the epic that closes Born to Run, it took 16 hours (with no bathroom breaks, at least according to Clemons) to work out and record Clarence Clemons' sax solo. When the Boss pointed this out to Clemons, he was surprised. He thought it had only been five.

31. Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons' first meeting is the stuff of legends.

According to Springsteen lore, Bruce first met Clarence "Big Man" Clemons while playing at a club in Asbury Park. “A rainy, windy night it was, and when I opened the door the whole thing flew off its hinges and blew away down the street," Clemons, who passed away in 2011, once recalled. "The band were onstage, but staring at me framed in the doorway. Bruce and I looked at each other and didn't say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other's lives. He was what I'd been searching for.”

Springsteen liked to use the story as proof that Clemons, the E Street Band's personal Paul Bunyan, could blow the doors off any room he was in.

32. One might consider October 19, 1984, "the night Rosalita died."

As far back as the song was written, almost every regular set at a Springsteen concert was closed with an extended version of "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)." But on that fateful night in Tacoma, Washington, Rosie was dropped from set list. Springsteen biographer Dave Marsh wrote that this was done to "disrupt the ritual expectations of the fanatic fans ... establishing through a burst of creativity just who was boss ... he'd liberated the show from an albatross, a song that was too long and had long since stopped breathing."

33. Ernest Carter made a memorable impact on "Born to Run."

Ernest "Boom" Carter doesn't have the same name recognition as some other E Streeters, but even if you're only a casual Springsteen fan, you've heard his work. Carter's only performance with Springsteen was his drum track on "Born to Run." Carter's successor to the drum throne, Max Weinberg, has said that he could never reproduce Carter's drum parts in concert and eventually stopped trying.

34. Max Weinberg isn't a fan of Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Weinberg isn't a fan of Darkness on the Edge of Town because his performance on "Something in the Night" bothers him. Toward the end of the song, the band cuts out and Bruce starts singing over Max's drums. A few seconds into it, Max loses the beat and noticeably slows down the song.

35. Stephen king thinks Bruce Springsteen would be perfect in The stand.

If you've ever read Stephen King's The Stand, you probably can't help but imagine Springsteen as the character Larry Underwood. Well, King felt the same way, saying the in the foreword for the reissue of the novel that Springsteen, based solely on his music videos, would've been a perfect choice for an adaptation of the book.

In related news: It was announced earlier this year that The Stand will be adapted into a TV series. The series' current working title? "Radio Nowhere," which is a track off Springsteen's 2007 album Magic.

A version of this story ran in 2019; it has been updated for 2021.