Born to Run

Born to Run

by Bruce Springsteen
Born to Run

Born to Run

by Bruce Springsteen

Hardcover

$32.50 
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Overview

The revelatory and wildly bestselling memoir by legendary rock star Bruce Springsteen: “Glorious...a philosophically rich ramble through a rock ’n roll life...It’s the lyric he was born to write” (USA TODAY, 4 out of 4 stars).

Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life. The result is “an utterly unique, endlessly exhilarating, last-chance-power-drive of a memoir” (Rolling Stone) that offers the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs.

He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid the poetry, danger, and darkness that fueled his imagination, leading up to the moment he refers to as “The Big Bang”: seeing Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician, his early days as a bar band king in Asbury Park, and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor, he also tells for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work.

Rarely has a performer told his own story with such force and sweep. Like many of his songs (“Thunder Road,” “Badlands,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “The River” “Born in the U.S.A,” “The Rising,” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” to name just a few), Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography is written with the lyricism of a singular songwriter and the wisdom of a man who has thought deeply about his experiences.

“Both an entertaining account of Springsteen’s marathon race to the top and a reminder that the one thing you can’t run away from is yourself” (Entertainment Weekly), Born to Run is much more than a legendary rock star’s memoir. This book is a “a virtuoso performance, the 508-page equivalent to one of Springsteen and the E Street Band's famous four-hour concerts: Nothing is left onstage, and diehard fans and first-timers alike depart for home sated and yet somehow already aching for more” (NPR).

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781501141515
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: 09/27/2016
Pages: 528
Sales rank: 217,623
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Bruce Springsteen has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the New Jersey Hall of Fame. He is the recipient of twenty Grammy Awards, the Academy Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors. He lives in New Jersey with his family. His latest work, together with Barack Obama, is Renegades: Born in the USA, a candid and entertaining collection of conversations that expand on their groundbreaking Higher Ground podcast.

Read an Excerpt

FOREWORD
  
I come from a boardwalk town where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I. By twenty, no race-car-driving rebel, I was a guitar player on the streets of Asbury Park and already a member in good standing amongst those who “lie” in service of the truth . . . artists, with a small “a.” But I held four clean aces. I had youth, almost a decade of hard-core bar band experience, a good group of homegrown musicians who were attuned to my performance style and a story to tell.
This book is both a continuation of that story and a search into its origins. I’ve taken as my parameters the events in my life I believe shaped that story and my performance work. One of the questions I’m asked over and over again by fans on the street is “How do you do it?” In the following pages I will try to shed a little light on how and, more important, why.
   
Rock ’n’ Roll Survival Kit
 
DNA, natural ability, study of craft, development of and devotion to an aesthetic philosophy, naked desire for . . . fame? . . . love? . . . admiration? . . . attention? . . . women? . . . sex? . . . and oh, yeah . . . a buck. Then . . . if you want to take it all the way out to the end of the night, a furious fire in the hole that just . . . don’t . . . quit ... burning.
These are some of the elements that will come in handy should you come face-to-face with eighty thousand (or eighty) screaming rock ’n’ roll fans who are waiting for you to do your magic trick. Waiting for you to pull something out of your hat, out of thin air, out of this world, something that before the faithful were gathered here today was just a song-fueled rumor.
I am here to provide proof of life to that ever elusive, never completely believable “us.” That is my magic trick. And like all good magic tricks, it begins with a setup. So . . .
 

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Book 1 Growin' Up

1 My Street 3

2 My House 8

3 The Church 13

4 The Italians 19

5 The Irish 23

6 My Mother 33

7 The Big Bang (Have You Heard the News…) 38

8 Radio Days 44

9 The Second Coming 48

10 The Show Man (Lord of the Dance) 54

11 Workingman's Blues 58

12 Where the Bands Are 61

13 The Castiles 68

14 Once There Was a Little Steven 88

15 Earth 96

16 The Upstage Club 104

17 Tinker (Surfin' Safari) 114

18 Steel Mill 121

19 Homecoming 139

20 Endless Summer 147

21 Beatnik Deluxe 153

22 California Dreamin' (Take Two) 159

23 It's a Bar, You Idiots 165

24 Onward and Upward 170

25 Losing My Religion 179

26 Road Work 185

27 The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle 190

23 The Satellite Lounge 200

Book 2 Born to Run

29 Born to Run 207

30 Jon Landau 212

31 Thunder Road 219

32 Jackpot 223

33 The E Street Band 234

34 Clarence Clemons 241

35 New Contracts 246

36 Living with the Law 254

37 Darkness on the Edge of Tom 260

38 The Drop 263

39 Downtime 271

40 The River 275

41 Hitsville 286

42 Hello Walls 295

43 Nebraska 298

44 Deliver Me from Nowhere 301

45 California 308

46 Born in the USA 313

47 Buona Fortuna, Fratelio Mio 318

48 The Big Big Time 321

49 Going Home 338

50 Regresar a México 343

51 Tunnel of Love 343

52 Goin' Cali 358

Book 3 Living Proof

53 Living Proof 367

54 Redheaded Revolution 370

55 Changes 374

56 LA Burning 377

57 Going to the Chapel 379

58 Earthquake Sam 387

59 "Streets of Philadelphia" 396

60 The Ghost of Tom Joad 400

61 Western Man 406

63 Eastern Woman 415

63 King of New Jersey (Hollywood Days) 418

64 Bringing It All Back Home 421

65 Revival 423

66 The Rising 437

67 Wild East 444

68 The Seeger Sessions 449

69 Magic 455

70 Super Bowl Sunday 460

71 Moving On 465

72 Wrecking Ball 468

73 Losing the Rain 471

74 The Wrecking Ball Tour 476

75 Zero to Sixty in Nothing Flat 484

76 Garage Land 488

77 High Hopes 491

78 Home Front 497

79 Long Time Comin' 502

Epilogue 506

Acknowledgments 509

Photo Credits 611

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