Born in the U.S.A. - Bruce Springsteen | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic Born in the U.S.A. google+ AllMusic Review by William Ruhlmann Bruce Springsteen had become increasingly downcast as a songwriter during his recording career, and his pessimism bottomed out with Nebraska . But Born in the U.S.A. , his popular triumph, which threw off seven Top Ten hits and became one of the best-selling albums of all time, trafficked in much the same struggle, albeit set to galloping rhythms and set off by chiming guitars. That the witless wonders of the Reagan regime attempted to co-opt the title track as an election-year campaign song wasn't so surprising: the verses described the disenfranchisement of a lower-class Vietnam vet, and the chorus was intended to be angry, but it came off as anthemic. Then, too, Springsteen had softened his message with nostalgia and sentimentality, and those are always crowd-pleasers. "Glory Days" may have employed Springsteen 's trademark disaffection, yet it came across as a couch potato's drunken lament. But more than anything else, Born in the U.S.A.

marked the first time that Springsteen 's characters really seemed to relish the fight and to have something to fight for. They were not defeated ("No Surrender"), and they had friendship ("Bobby Jean") and family ("My Hometown") to defend. The restless hero of "Dancing in the Dark" even pledged himself in the face of futility, and for Springsteen , that was a step. The "romantic young boys" of his first two albums, chastened by "the working life" encountered on his third, fourth, and fifth albums and having faced the despair of his sixth, were still alive on this, his seventh, with their sense of humor and their determination intact. Born in the U.S.A. was their apotheosis, the place where they renewed their commitment and where Springsteen remembered that he was a rock & roll star, which is how a vastly increased public was happy to treat him.

Track Listing 10 best lyrics from Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ album 10 best lyrics from Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ album EMAIL This week marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Bruce Springsteen”s “Born In The U.S.A.” The album, which sold more than 15 million copies in the U.S. alone, is not only his best-selling title, it is likely his most misunderstood. The title track, about the disillusionment of the American Dream as seen through the eyes of a soldier returning from Vietnam, became a controversial lightning rod after then-president Ronald Reagan and other conservatives embraced it as a patriotic anthem. The album boasted a staggering seven top 10 singles (a record shared with Michael Jackson”s “Thriller” and Janet Jackson”s “Rhythm Nation 1814”) and catapulted Springsteen from star to stadium-filling superstar. Here”s a look back at the 10 best lyrics from the album.

Share This By: HistoryofMatt 06.06.2014 @ 1:26 AM Just a nitpick… Reagan wasn’t a presidential candidate in 1984. He was President, running a campaign for re-election. Huge distinction. ;-) By: KristopherTapley Is it “just a nitpick” or is it a “huge distinction.” I think we all get it. :) By: melinda 06.06.2014 @ 2:26 AM You’re absolutely right…My mistake and will fix. I agree it’s a huge distinction! By: HistoryofMatt Nah, Kris… it’s just the history guy being “that guy.” By: HistoryofMatt Kris, I’m right there with you on “I’m on Fire.” That song haunts my soul. And I cannot believe it’s only seconds longer than 2 and a half minutes. The song is beautiful, with a complete economy of words.

By: smreyno 06.06.2014 @ 5:49 PM I was replaying “Born in the U.S.A” today and I was struck that the track is only 2:34 minutes long, which I’d never really noticed before. It is lovely and haunting, and I think part of what makes it so effective is the economy of it. By: HistoryofMatt And next year… Born to Run is 40 years old. Damn. Before my time, but all time. By: ymchm 06.06.2014 @ 5:51 PM I was a teenager when this album came out, loved it and fell in to a life long obsession. It didn’t remain my favorite, someone at a part introduced me to what he called ‘the real Bruce’ Darkness on the Edge of Town, but my gosh, that sealed the deal. My favorite song from this album is Never Surrender, but Dancing is close…whenever I need to get something done and I’m bitching about it, that song reminds me to just do it…can’t start a fire, without a spark.

By: melinda Bruce Springsteen - Biography - IMDb Bruce Springsteen Biography Showing all 74 items Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (2) | Trade Mark (7) | Trivia (45) | Personal Quotes (15) Overview (4) 5' 9½" (1.77 m) Mini Bio (1) Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen was born September 23, 1949 in New Jersey, USA. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, worked as a bus driver, and was of Irish and Dutch ancestry. His mother, Adele Ann (Zerilli), worked as a legal secretary, and was of Italian ancestry. He has an older sister, Virginia, and a younger sister Pamela Springsteen . Bruce was raised as a Catholic. He was inspired to take up music when he, at the age of seven, saw Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948). When he was 13 he bought his first guitar for 18 dollars. His mother took out a loan when Bruce was 16 and bought him a Kent guitar for 60 dollars.

In 1965, he became the lead guitarist in the band "The Castiles", he would later become lead singer in the band. The Castiles recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township, New Jersey. From 1969 to 1971 he performed with Steven Van Zandt , Danny Federici and Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez in a band called "Child", that was renamed later to "Steel Mill" when guitarist Robbin Thompson joined the band. In 1972, he signed a record deal with Columbia Records and released his debut album, "Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.", with his New Jersey-based colleagues, who would later be called "The E Street Band", In January, 1973. The album had critical success and so did their second album, "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle", released in September, 1973, but had little commercial success. In 1975, after more than 14 month of recording, their third album was released, "Born to Run", which had both critical and commercial success for Springsteen and the band.

In 1977, he returned to the studio, after a two-year legal battle with former manager Mike Appel, and produced the album, "Darkness on the Edge of Town", released in 1978 and became a turning point musically for his career. In 1980 came the release of "The River", the album sold well and he followed up with the album "Nebraska" which had critical success but had little commercial success. Springsteen came back with a bang with the release of the album "Born in the U.S.A." in 1984, which sold 15 million copies in the U.S. alone and had seven top ten singles. It became one of the best-selling albums of all time. After the huge success of the "Born in the U.S.A." album he released a more calm and sedate album in 1987, "Tunnel of Love", which included songs about love lost and the challenges of love, after the break-up with first wife, Julianne Phillips .

The albums released in 1992, "Lucky Town" and "Human Touch" were also popular, Human Touch being the most popular of the two, hitting the number one spot of the best-selling albums in the UK. In 1994 he won an academy award for the song "Streets of Philadelphia" featured in the film Philadelphia (1993). In 1995, he released the album "The Ghost of Tom Joad", which was mostly a solo guitar album and was inspired by "Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass," a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Dale Maharidge . After being apart from the E Street Band for several years they reunited with a successful tour which ended in Madison Square Garden in New York in the year 2000. In 2002 he released the first studio album with the full band in over 18 years, "The Rising", and it became a critical and commercial success.

In 2005 he released his third folk album (after "Nebraska" and "The Ghost of Tom Joad"), "Devils & Dust" It was followed by "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" in 2006 and "Magic" in 2007. His 16th album will be released on January 27, 2009 and is called "Working on a Dream". He married for the first time at the age of 35 to actress Julianne Phillips . The marriage helped boost her acting career, but his traveling took it's toll on the marriage and the final blow came when she found out his affair with the American singer/songwriter/guitarist Patti Scialfa . Their marriage ended in 1989. He then married Patti Scialfa on June 8th, 1991, They had lived together since the separation between him and his first wife and they had a child before they married.

They have three children together: Evan James Springsteen (born July 25, 1990), Jessica Rae (born December 30, 1991) and Sam Ryan Springsteen (born January 5, 1994). - IMDb Mini Biography By: Anna G. Spouse (2) Children, with Patti Scialfa : Evan Springsteen , Jesse Springsteen and Sam Springsteen . Says his favorite film as a kid was The Searchers (1956). 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 film's new title, Light of Day (1987). That is why Springsteen thanks Schrader in the liner notes of the album. Father, Douglas "Dutch" Springsteen, died in 1998. Mother's 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 (1940). 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 kväll med Luuk (1996), 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 (1993) was ranked #68 on The American Film Institute's 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 wasn't 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 (1958). 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 (1991), loosely based on Springsteen's song, "Highway Patrolman", from his "Nebraska" album from 1982, which was practically a demo tape made in Springsteen's 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 VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll. Ranked #59 on VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists. The title for the film Streets of Fire (1984) 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 film's 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 "Sam's 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 (1996) and has even anonymously been in the audience during tapings of the show as well as being a guest himself. Springsteen's album "Nebraska" (1982) 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 "It's 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 Springsteen's singing voice (this surfaced following Bowie's 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. Bruce Springsteen Tweet Bruce Springsteen US singer, songwriter Bruce Springsteen was born on 23rd Sept 1949. His most successful studio albums, Born in the U.S.A. and Born To Run, showcase a talent for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily American life; he has sold more than 65 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide Here we bring you some facts on 'The Boss'. Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived on South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry (his surname in Dutch means jumping stone). Springsteen had been inspired to take up music at the age of seven after seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show.

At 13, his mother bought him his first guitar for $18; later, she took out a loan to buy the 16-year-old Springsteen a $60 Kent guitar, as he later memorialized in his song "The Wish". The first song a young Bruce learned play on the guitar was The Beatles' ï¿½Twist and Shoutï¿½ which he has frequently played the song at live shows - it oftens forms part of the encore. In 1965, he went to the house of Tex and Marion Vinyard, who sponsored young bands in town. They helped him become the lead guitarist and subsequently the lead singer of The Castiles. Springsteen signed a record deal with Columbia Records in 1972, with the help of John Hammond, who had signed Bob Dylan to the same label a decade earlier. His debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., released in January 1973.

In the May 22, 1974, issue of Boston's The Real Paper, music critic Jon Landau wrote after seeing a performance at the Harvard Square Theater, "I saw rock and roll's future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time." Landau subsequently became Springsteen's manager and producer, helping to finish the epic new album, Born to Run. His 1984 album Born in the U.S.A. has sold over 15 million copies in the U.S. alone and became one of the best-selling albums of all time. The title track was a bitter commentary on the treatment of Vietnam veterans, some of whom were Springsteen's friends and bandmates. 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 Sanciousï¿½ mother lived there and allowed the band to rehearse in her house.

The working title of Darkness on the Edge of Town was American Madness, also the title of a 1932 Frank Capra movie. Early copies of the album were mistakenly released inside covers for Barbra Streisandï¿½s Songbird. Springsteen bought a 1950 Corvette with his first royalty cheque from 'Born To Run'. It's the first car he ever owned, and now resides in a Rock N' Roll Hall Of Fame exhibition. Test pressings of 'Born To Run' have a sepia tint and the title printed in a handwritten-style font. A rare Springsteen collectable can change hands for $1000 plus. In 1979, Bruce saw the Ramones play at the Fast Lane in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He met the band and Joey Ramone asked Bruce to write a song for them. Springsteen wrote ï¿½Hungry Heartï¿½ and considered giving it to them, but hung on to it at the urging of his manager.

Springsteen has never had a No.1 single in the US, although the Manfred Mann's Earthband cover of Asbury's Park 'Blinded By The Light' hit the top spot in early 1977. Astronauts on a 1999 voyage of space shuttle 'Discovery' were played 'Redezvous' as a wake-up call, before docking with the Hubble telescope. The Boss had a planet named after him that same year Springsteen's music has been used in many films and he has also written and performed several works specifically for films, examples are Philadelphia, Dead Man Walking, Jerry Maguire, and The Wrestler. Springsteen made his first on-screen appearance in a brief cameo as himself in High Fidelity in 2000 and it was voted "Best Cameo in a Movie" at the MTV Movie Awards. After a 1976 concert in Memphis, a most certainly 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 wouldnï¿½t have done much good, anyway.

Elvis was in Lake Tahoe at the time. Bruce has fans in high places. Barack Obama has said that there are ï¿½a handful of people who enter into your lives through their music and tell the American peopleï¿½s story. Bruce Springsteen is one of those people.ï¿½ Heï¿½s also said that he ran for President because he couldnï¿½t be Bruce Springsteen. How Ronald Reagan Changed Bruce Springsteen’s Politics - POLITICO Magazine POLITICO Magazine Sign up for POLITICO Magazine's weekly email: The Friday Cover Email How Ronald Reagan Changed Bruce Springsteen’s Politics By Marc Dolan Print B orn in the U.S.A., which turns 30 this week, is Bruce Springsteen’s best-selling album to date, and that should come as no surprise. Its songs—“I’m On Fire,” “Glory Days,” “Darlington County” and others—are FM radio staples, their foursquare drum, piano, base and guitar parts perfectly at home in either a Jersey Shore bar or an East Texas roadhouse. If you hear a Springsteen song at your local supermarket, nine times out of 10 it comes from this album. Born in the U.S.A.

is also the Springsteen album whose songs have had the longest half-life in U.S. political discourse, from President Ronald Reagan’s attempt to co-opt Springsteen’s popularity right after the album’s release to John Kerry’s ploddingly literal use of “No Surrender” in his presidential campaign 20 years later. Even Barack Obama, probably the most broadly appreciative music fan ever to occupy the Oval Office, chose a Born in the U.S.A. track (“I’m On Fire”) for a 2008 playlist of favorite songs. Story Continued Below But the greatest political impact of Born in the U.S.A. was undeniably on Springsteen himself—turning him from a relatively apolitical performer from an avowedly working-class background to a passionate advocate for the rights of the disenfranchised—and that was all thanks to Reagan. *** In 1984, President Reagan was running for his second term. Early on, his team had decided that the president’s core supporters would vote for him no matter what. The reelection campaign would therefore be more about wooing moderate and independent voters than about shoring up the committed Republican base.

It would be about images rather than issues and would attempt to co-opt as much of mainstream U.S. culture as it could. If rock ‘n’ roll had been anathema to an earlier Republicans like former vice president Spiro Agnew—or even to then-current, musically clueless Secretary of the Interior James Watt—it was perfectly fine with most of the Reagan re-election team, particularly if the music in question could be viewed as inspirational. “If we allow any Democrat to claim optimism or idealism as his issue,” one adviser noted very early in the campaign’s planning, “we will lose the election.” In late August, just after the Republican National Convention, conservative columnist—and unofficial Reagan campaign adviser—George Will attended a Springsteen concert in Largo, Maryland, and was highly impressed.

“If all Americans,” Will would later write in his column about his backstage experience, “in labor and management, who make steel or cars or shoes or textiles—made their products with as much energy and confidence as Springsteen and his merry band make music, there would be no need for Congress to be thinking about protectionism.” Perhaps significantly, Will’s fervent ode to the Springsteen work ethic did not appear until two weeks after the concert, when the presidential campaign was in full swing. Six days after the column appeared, President Reagan made a campaign appearance in Hammonton, New Jersey, and as usual his staff slipped a few local references into his standard stump speech. “America’s future,” Reagan told the small-town audience, “rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts. It rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire—New Jersey’s own, Bruce Springsteen.” WATCH: How Born in the U.S.A. Made Bruce Springsteen a Political Figure When asked about the president’s compliment between concerts that week, Springsteen tried to shrug it off. But when you have the No. 2 album in the country, publicity tends not to go away.

By the time the singer next took the stage, two days after the president’s Hammonton name check, it was clear that Springsteen would have to address it head-on and in the only place where he totally controlled the message: onstage. “Well, the president was mentioning my name in his speech the other day,” Springsteen told his Friday-night audience in Pittsburgh, “and I kind of got to wondering what his favorite album of mine must’ve been, you know? I don’t think it was the Nebraska album. I don’t think he’s been listening to this one.” He then launched into “Johnny 99” from Nebraska, his last album before Born in the U.S.A.—much lower profile and much less “poppy.” It’s an austere set of songs about loners and criminals that Springsteen recorded himself in an empty rented house over a single night in the dead of winter. The song begins: Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late that month Ralph went out lookin’ for a job but he couldn’t find none He came home too drunk from mixin’ Tanqueray and wine He got a gun shot a night clerk now they call ‘m Johnny 99.

This was a big change for Springsteen—one of the first times he had really acknowledged his songs’ political roots—perhaps even to himself. Aside from a small fundraiser for George McGovern at a New Jersey drive-in in 1972, months before he even released his first album, Springsteen had never declared his support for a political candidate. In fact, he revealed in an interview published in December 1984 that he might only have voted once, perhaps in that election 12 years earlier. Bruce Springsteen – Born In The U.S.A. (1984/2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] High Definition 24 Bit Music Download Browse: Home » Bruce Springsteen – Born In The U.S.A. (1984/2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Bruce Springsteen – Born In The U.S.A. (1984/2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] April 10, 2016 Bruce Springsteen – Born In The U.S.A.

(1984/2014) FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 46:54 minutes | 1,00 GB | Genre: Rock Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Front cover | Source: HDTracks | @ Columbia Born in the U.S.A. was American rock musician Bruce Springsteen’s seventh studio album. It quickly became Springsteen’s biggest album and was the best selling album of 1985 in the United States. Born in the U.S.A. was extremely inspirational, the lyrics are viewed as a sign of hope for citizens working towards the American Dream. The record produced seven top ten singles, including the title track, “Dancing in the Dark”, and “Cover Me”. Born in the U.S.A. hit number 1 in eleven countries and received numerous awards. The title track is self-described as one of his best songs. Reasonably regarded as the turning-point album in Bruce’s career. Bruce Springsteen had become increasingly downcast as a songwriter during his recording career, and his pessimism bottomed out with Nebraska.

But Born in the U.S.A., his popular triumph, which threw off seven Top Ten hits and became one of the best-selling albums of all time, trafficked in much the same struggle, albeit set to galloping rhythms and set off by chiming guitars. That the witless wonders of the Reagan regime attempted to co-opt the title track as an election-year campaign song wasn’t so surprising: the verses described the disenfranchisement of a lower-class Vietnam vet, and the chorus was intended to be angry, but it came off as anthemic. Then, too, Springsteen had softened his message with nostalgia and sentimentality, and those are always crowd-pleasers. “Glory Days” may have employed Springsteen’s trademark disaffection, yet it came across as a couch potato’s drunken lament. But more than anything else, Born in the U.S.A. marked the first time that Springsteen’s characters really seemed to relish the fight and to have something to fight for. They were not defeated (“No Surrender”), and they had friendship (“Bobby Jean”) and family (“My Hometown”) to defend.

The restless hero of “Dancing in the Dark” even pledged himself in the face of futility, and for Springsteen, that was a step. The “romantic young boys” of his first two albums, chastened by “the working life” encountered on his third, fourth, and fifth albums and having faced the despair of his sixth, were still alive on this, his seventh, with their sense of humor and their determination intact. Born in the U.S.A. was their apotheosis, the place where they renewed their commitment and where Springsteen remembered that he was a rock & roll star, which is how a vastly increased public was happy to treat him. Tracklist: 01 – Born in the U.S.A.

02 – Cover Me 04 – Working on the Highway 05 – Downbound Train 06 – I’m on Fire 07 – No Surrender 09 – I’m Goin’ Down 10 – Glory Days 11 – Dancing in the Dark 12 – My Hometown Bruce Springsteen – lead vocals, lead guitar, acoustic guitar Roy Bittan – piano, synthesizer, background vocals Clarence Clemons – saxophone, percussion, background vocals Danny Federici – organ, glockenspiel, piano Garry Tallent – bass guitar, background vocals Steven Van Zandt – acoustic guitar, mandolin, harmony vocals Max Weinberg – drums, background vocals Additional Personnel: Richie “La Bamba” Rosenberg – background vocals Ruth Davis – background vocals Production: Producers: Jon Landau, Chuck Plotkin, Bruce Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt Recording engineers: Bill Scheniman, Toby Scott, John Davenport (assistant), Jeff Hendrickson (assistant), Bruce Lampcov (assistant), Billy Straus (assistant) and Zoe Yanakis (assistant) Mixing engineer: Bob Clearmountain Mastering engineer: Bob Lugwig This remastered version was remastered by acclaimed engineer Bob Ludwig, working

 directly with Springsteen and longtime engineer Toby Scott, newly transferred from the original analogue masters using the Plangent Process playback system.

Download: Bruce Springsteen releases “Pink Cadillac” - May 04, 1984 - HISTORY.com Bruce Springsteen releases “Pink Cadillac” Share this: Bruce Springsteen releases “Pink Cadillac” Author Bruce Springsteen releases “Pink Cadillac” URL Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1984, New Jersey rocker Bruce Springsteen releases “Pink Cadillac” as a B-side to “Dancing in the Dark,” which will become the first and biggest hit single off “Born in the U.S.A.,” the best-selling album of his career. Springsteen, who got his start playing in bar bands on the New Jersey shore, won a contract with Columbia Records in 1972. With the release of his third album, “Born to Run” (1975), Springsteen was touted as the new face of rock ‘n’ roll in America, and he appeared on the cover of both Time and Newsweek that year. Though “Born to Run” contained no breakout hits, tracks such as “Thunder Road,” “Tenth Avenue Freezeout” and the title track all got heavy radio airplay.

In 1980, Springsteen scored his first real hit single, “Hungry Heart,” off his fourth album, “The River.” Outside the recording studio, he had become known for playing marathon live shows with his E Street Band. The success of 1984’s “Born in the U.S.A.” would propel Springsteen to international stardom and secure his image as the iconic rock ‘n’ roller of the era. “Dancing in the Dark” was the first of 10 hit singles off the album. “Pink Cadillac” had first been recorded in an acoustic version during the 1982 sessions that became the album “Nebraska.” It was considered for inclusion on “Born in the U.S.A.” but didn’t make it, and was released as a B-side instead. “Pink Cadillac” was Springsteen’s second song to reference the classic car brand created in the first years of the 20th century by Henry Leland.

(The first, “Cadillac Ranch,” was included on “The River.”) Elvis Presley, whom Springsteen (and countless other rockers) looked to as an early inspiration, famously bought a blue Cadillac Fleetwood in 1955 and had it painted a special shade of pink dubbed “Elvis Rose.” He then gave it as a gift to his mother, who didn’t drive. That same year, Elvis and his band got into a serious accident in the car in Texarkana, Texas. The King’s pink Caddy–which he mentioned in the 1955 song “Baby Let’s Play House”–was repaired, and today remains on display at the Elvis Automobile Museum at his Memphis, Tennessee mansion, Graceland. Though Springsteen played “Pink Cadillac” live over the years, it was not included on an album until 1998, when it appeared in the box set “Tracks,” a collection of outtakes from the rocker’s long career. In 1988, the R&B singer Natalie Cole scored a hit with her up-tempo version of “Pink Cadillac,” which rose to No. 5 on the Billboard pop music chart and to the top of the dance charts.

Related Videos Bruce Springsteen ‘Born In The USA’ | Classic Tracks | Meet The New Boss The Power Station on West 53rd Street in Manhattan. It was in 1981 that writer‑director Paul Schrader asked Bruce Springsteen to write the title track for a movie about a blue‑collar bar band. This had the working title Born In The USA, and Springsteen came up with the song of the same name while working on a track called 'Vietnam'. Schrader would eventually rename his film Light Of Day after Springsteen, who turned down the lead role that subsequently went to Michael J Fox, provided him with a replacement song in the form of '(Just Around The Corner To The) Light Of Day', recorded by Joan Jett. "'Born In The USA' didn't sound like the Bruce Springsteen that I had mixed on his previous two records,” says Toby Scott.

"I didn't know what Bruce wanted the track to sound like, but what the producers and I definitely knew was that it sounded sensational.” In addition to serving as an engineer on 18 Springsteen albums and numerous live performances, Scott has also recorded artists ranging from Bob Dylan, Natalie Merchant and Steve Perry to Manhattan Transfer and Little Steven & The Disciples Of Soul. Musically inspired by the Ed Sullivan Show TV appearances of both Elvis Presley in 1956 and the Beatles in 1964, Scott taught himself to play guitar as a high‑school student in Santa Barbara, California, during the mid‑'60s. Then, after playing bass in some local garage bands, managing a couple of them, studying music theory and orchestration in college, and working for concert lighting and production companies in conjunction with acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Blind Faith, he began engineering, recording his own songs with a TEAC 3340S simul‑sync four‑track tape recorder and six‑channel Sony mixer. In 1975, two six‑week engineering courses led to Scott securing a job at LA's Clover Studios, owned by A&R/producer Chuck Plotkin.

There, in the course of assisting on an album by Robert Palmer and recording others by Booker T & The MGs and Harry Chapin, he honed his craft by learning from the likes of Steve Cropper, producers Tom Dowd and Steve Smith, and engineers Phill Brown and Richard Digby‑Smith. It was quite an education, yet Scott still had plenty to learn about Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen when, in the spring of 1978, he first encountered the man with whom he would forge his most prized professional relationship. "I had heard of Bruce some time earlier as being 'the next Bob Dylan', but that was about it,” Scott now recalls. "Then, when Chuck Plotkin came in with this kid, I quickly realised he was about the same age as I was, about the same size, about the same everything — we were like two peas in a pod. We both weighed about 130lbs; I'm 5'11”, Bruce is 5'10”, and he was very down‑to‑earth.

Chuck needed to mix one of the songs for the Darkness [On The Edge Of Town] record, and after we spent one or two days on it we sequenced the record and mastered it.” Working The Room The layout for 'Born In The USA' in the Power Station's (now Avatar Studios) Studio A. Following this assignment, Toby Scott became Clover's manager and chief engineer, and just over a year later he began combining these roles with independent work at other studios. In 1980, he assisted Chuck Plotkin on the mix of Bruce Springsteen's album The River. This was after Neil Dorfsman and Bob Clearmountain had already tried their hand at it. "I went into Clover on a Monday and put up a mix,” Scott recalls, "and Bruce, who would always stay in the upstairs lounge, came down to listen and said, 'It sounds pretty good, but it sounds funny. It doesn't sound right.' I said, 'Well, what's wrong?' and he walked behind the console and said, 'The drums.

Didn't we use some room mics?' I said, 'Yeah, they're on these two faders.' I had them all the way down, about an inch from the bottom, and Bruce took them and jammed them all the way up to the top. Immediately, the sound was all room, and so I said, 'Oh, OK... Well, now that I've got the concept of what you're looking for, let me just rebalance stuff.' "I can't remember which song it was, but clearly he wanted the room in there, and that was fine — I roll with the punches. So, I rebalanced it for the room, readjusting stuff to account for the drums sounding like they were coming from the other end of a basketball court, and when Bruce came back down and listened he went, 'That's it! Great! Good deal!' The next day, we did another song.

At that point, Neil [Dorfsman] was coming in, looking over my shoulder for the first 10 or 15 minutes and going, 'Now, this is the saxophone that we use, and then you use the guitar on this track for the first part of the solo and the guitar on that track for the second part of the solo...' This was how we worked on the Monday and Tuesday, and then on the Wednesday, after a couple of hours working on another song, I took a break, saw [Springsteen's manager/producer] Jon Landau out in the hallway, and when I asked him where Neil was he told me Neil was in New York. 'You're doing fine,' he said. 'Don't change anything, just do what you do.' Whatever the differences were in our mixing, they apparently liked my style.” A Focused Mix Point The track sheet from a safety copy of 'Born In The USA'. A couple of months later, Toby Scott found himself using the Record Plant's remote truck to record some Bruce Springsteen concerts.

Then, after mixing Gary 'US' Bonds' On The Line album in March 1982 — for which Springsteen wrote seven of the songs, co‑producing them with Steven Van Zandt — Scott was asked to fly to New York to not only mix Van Zandt's own Men Without Women, but also to record Springsteen's Born In The USA at the Power Station. "From noon until six, I was working at the Hit Factory, mixing Steve Van Zandt, and then from seven until one in the morning I was with Bruce at the Power Station, recording basic tracks,” Scott explains. "Eventually, Steve was so excited by the mixes and the perspective, he wrote four more songs that I recorded and mixed, and in all I ended up spending about four months in New York. "Bruce had recorded The River at the Power Station, which he liked because of the ambience of the main room, but I had never worked in a control room like that. Most all of the control rooms in Los Angeles were of the dead variety, or acoustically treated so that anything by the speakers was live while the back of the room was dead [or, later, the other way around].

It was therefore strange being in the Power Station environment where everything was very live. "The floor in the control room was wood, all of the walls were wood, the ceiling was wood, and the ceiling was not sloped whatsoever, whereas Los Angeles studios in the '70s and early '80s had gotten into this design that had a focused mix point. The Altec 604E monitors would be up on the wall above the control-room glass, pointed at an angle down towards a focused mix point. From there, the ceiling would be sloped down to about six or seven feet above the head of the focused mix point, and it was like sitting at the cone of a big speaker. The Power Station was just a rectangular room, with the speakers actually hanging from cables or track on the ceiling, and it was fabulous. To this day, I will declare the best rooms I have ever worked in are those that are either designed or run by active engineers: not people who used to do it, not people who think about doing it, but people who are doing it.

"Tony Bongiovi designed the Power Station, having worked at Media Sound for a long time with Bob Clearmountain as one of the assistants, and the whole place was set up for an engineer, or, more likely, an engineer/producer. It was ergonomically very functional and Tony had gone to extremes to get the main Studio A [live] room right, building multiple sides of unequal lengths that went into a pyramid shape and, after being dissatisfied with the initial sound, adjusting the distances between the vertical panelling boards of the walls. By the time I got in there, it was just a great‑sounding room — provided you used a little bit of sense, the drums sounded incredible.” Troubleshooting Toby Scott today. On the first day of Born In The USA sessions all was far from well, as Scott explains: "nothing came together... the sound was just a mish-mash.” Determined that this experience would not be repeated on day two, he therefore re‑analysed the main studio area for musician/instrument placement, including that of E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg.

Utilising the drum‑miking setup that Scott had perfected with Jeff Porcaro, Weinberg enjoyed a bigger sound courtesy of Neumann U87 room mics that were on huge boom stands at the far end of the room, pointing up towards the ceiling. "Neil [Dorfsman]'s recording of the room mics had been one of my problems when I mixed The River,” Scott explains. "There was so much cymbal in those room mics, I had to recreate the room by using the Clover studio and piping some of the drums back out over speakers into the studio to have them reverberate around, while also using reverb units.

On the other hand, for Born In The USA I was somehow able to find a spot where the cymbals were at an even volume with the tom‑toms and things like that, so you merely got the effect of a room.” While bassist Garry Tallent was in the main room with Max Weinberg and recorded with a DI and an amp miked with an Electro‑Voice RE20, saxophonist/percussionist Clarence Clemons was in the lounge, looking through the porthole of the studio loading door so that he could see Tallent and Weinberg, as well as Bruce Springsteen who sang and played his guitars in an iso booth to the right of the control room, adjacent to the mic closet. Steve Van Zandt was in his own booth to the right of the control room, and both his and Springsteen's guitar amps were in another booth across from the control room on the right‑hand side. Keyboardist Danny Federici, meanwhile, played his Hammond B3 through a Leslie.

This was miked with a Neumann U87 on the top speaker and an RE20 on the bottom in a booth directly across from the control room on the left‑hand side, separated by a divider from yet another booth which housed Roy Bittan, who played the grand piano as well as a Yamaha CS80. The Words Are The Song "The entire E Street Band played live,” says Toby Scott. "Bruce sang into a U87, and while he may have redone his vocal, as a general rule he has always been very confident. He just sings his part and that's it, and usually the only reason we will do a second take is if he wants to impart a different inflection, sing with a fuller voice, whisper something a little bit more or change the words. After I'd started out recording him with a U87, he used a U67 for a little while because it was fuller and smoother. However, it was not quite as clear, and so I then miked him with a dual‑capsule Sanken CU41. "As far as I'm concerned, the words are the song, so I want to hear them.

Bruce is the most eloquent guy that I know, but his enunciation isn't always the greatest, so I try to do everything I can to make it really easy to hear his words clearly. The CU41 was really clear, and he used that up until about four years ago when he spotted a Telefunken [ELAM] 251 next to his mic in the studio. I go back and forth, recording both Bruce and his wife [singer‑songwriter Patti Scialfa], and back in the late '90s, after we'd experimented with several microphones, she decided that the 251 was the one that she loved. So, I found one and bought it for her, and I used to have both that and the CU41 sitting side-by-side in the little vocal area of their home studio setup.

Well, one day Bruce asked what the mic was, and when I told him it was Patti's he asked, 'Why don't you use it on me?' I said, 'Because the one I'm using on you sounds fine.' He said, 'Can we try it?' I said, 'Sure,' and he said, 'OK, just open a track and I'll experiment.' "You have to understand, Bruce and I hardly ever experiment. I pick the microphone that, in my estimation, is the one that will work, and I also have a philosophy that I don't want to waste an artist's time while I figure out how to do my job. However, in this case Bruce sang into the CU41 and into the Telefunken, and in the end he pointed to the 251 and said, 'Gee, I kind of like it. Can I use this one?' I said, 'Sure,' he said, 'OK,' and that certainly simplified my life. I now use the same microphone and the same chain for him and his wife.

Since I'm not a close‑miking person, I usually start Bruce off at least six inches from the mic, with a windscreen about an inch or two in front of it. Then, for his acoustic guitar, I use an AKG 460, whereas back in 1982 I would have used a 451.” Broken Reverb "The tape machine in the Power Station's Studio A was a Studer A80, the console was a 44‑input Neve 8048, and that facility must have had around 10 reverbs. One of them was a five‑storey stairway that had been blocked off, where you could move the microphones and speakers up and down. Then there was the Ladies' Room, formerly the ladies' bathroom, which was an all‑tiled room that they used for very good drum reverb. Additionally, they had about five EMT 140 stereo plates, along with a Scandinavian knock‑off of the 140.

"The assistant there told me, 'We have this other plate, but it's broken.' I said, 'What's wrong with it?' and he said, 'The motor on the decay adjust is shot.' I said, 'Let's hear it,' and so he plugged it in, I ran a drum into it, and the decay boomed and rattled and kept on going for about three or four seconds. When I was told it was broken and nobody wanted to use it, I said, 'Perfect, I'll take it! Put my name on it for the duration of this project!' I wanted stuff that nobody else was going to screw with. "You know, if you've got an EMT plate it's real critical, especially in a mix, and I would just dump every instrument on a tape full‑on into the reverb unit, into an EMT plate, so it was reverberating like mad. Then I would adjust the decay time on the plate, and I'd stop every so often to hear how stuff sounded, tuning it so that the decay time and the tempo of the song sort of correlated.

After a few minutes you could actually listen to it and go, 'Well, jeez, it doesn't sound that bad,' even though all of the echo knobs were fully turned up on everything. If you get it to the point where a ton of echo is almost believable, you can then pare it down to a normal level and it'll just blend in so that you won't even realise there is echo on anything. However, that takes time and I didn't want to do that every night. So, when I tried the knock‑off plate I said, 'I'll use that. Just patch it in and don't even fix it.' "I took the output of that plate and ran it through what at that time was the only gate, a Kepex. I set the Kepex for an external input of the bottom snare mic and I set it to close in about a second. Then, I fed the top snare drum mic into that reverb unit — it was the only thing that went in there — and that created the explosive snare drum sound that you hear on the album.

A combination of Max hitting the snare, the physical sound of the drum, the room mics from the Power Station and then this four‑second plate reverb created this really tremendous drum sound, and the first song we recorded with that was 'Born In The USA'.” Out Of Order "In those days, Bruce had a particular way of teaching the band a new song. He wouldn't play it for them from the beginning to the end; he would teach them the different parts of the song, and not necessarily in the order that they appeared. So, he might start off by saying, 'Well, there's this part,' and play them a little bit of the chorus, showing them the chord changes. After that, he might say, 'Then there's this part,' and play them the bridge, and follow this with 'And then there's this part,' and play them a verse. While the guys would be making notes, he might say, 'Then there's this part, which is like an intro‑instrumental thing,' and if there was any other part, such as a solo, he'd teach them that, too.

Then he'd ask, 'Everybody got that?' and if they did, he'd say, 'OK, we're going to start with the second part I showed you and then go to part number four. We'll play that twice, and then we'll go to part number one before going back to part number four, then on to part number three, back to part number four, back to part number one, then part number three again, then part number four, and then number one, number one and we'll ride out on one...' They'd be like, 'Huh?' and he'd go, 'All right, you want to run through it?' while the guys were scrambling to understand exactly how the song should be laid out.” For his part, Toby Scott was able to understand Springsteen's modus operandi when the latter explained that, were he to teach the musicians a song from beginning to end, they'd immediately know all the chord changes as they transitioned from one section to another, probably resulting in contrived licks and less spontaneity. What he wanted to capture were those moments of inspiration that might emerge during the early takes, and such was the case with 'Born In The USA'.

After explaining the structure, Springsteen went to his booth and set the tempo while his fellow musicians played through their parts. Then, once everybody was ready, Scott rolled tape and take one was recorded. "I was in the control room, listening through my Yamaha NS10s at a reasonable volume, and then Chuck asked me to put it up through the big speakers,” Scott recalls. "So, that's what I did, and I remember listening to it and going, 'Wow!' Right from the start, the snare drum was exploding, and you have to remember this was 1982, when we were in the middle of disco‑land there in New York. There were no exploding snare drums in New York — there were no exploding snare drums anywhere — and then, what with Danny's synthesizer playing that grand intro, the song was just cracking away and I turned to Chuck Plotkin and Jon Landau and said, 'I don't know whether it's Bruce, but man, it sounds good to me!' They agreed. "I'd gotten a good cue mix for everybody, so they all could hear it, and the takes were like 10 minutes long.

On the final cut there's a rather long ride‑out, but it was even longer and we cut it down by three or four minutes. The band just kept playing. There were eight takes of the song, take six was the master — thanks to Max perfecting his bass-drum pattern — and when the band members came into the control room after the first couple of takes and heard the track, they too were going, 'My God, we've never heard anything like this before!' It was totally, revolutionarily different-sounding to anything else at that time.” All Systems Go Thereafter, with a sound perspective that Toby Scott could return to every night, the sessions proceeded quickly, with Springsteen delivering a steady stream of new songs, and in less than a month he and the band had recorded all of the material he felt he needed. About a week was then spent on overdubs before, in mid‑1982, Scott began mixing the album on an SSL console in the Power Station's Studio C. "My perception was that the whole thing was moving a little too fast for Bruce,” Scott remarks. "All of a sudden, we were mixing a rock record that we had only started to work on a few weeks before.

Normally, he'd spend several months on each record, and so in the middle of mixing he had us re‑enter Studio A to work on some other songs. He had demoed a few of these on a little TEAC four‑track back in January, and while some were for the band, others were more pared-down, maybe for him to play with just a couple of the guys, and one of those — not recorded on the TEAC — was 'I'm On Fire'.” Recorded with Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan, this moodily atmospheric, synth‑based rockabilly track would be added to the album and released as its fourth single. However, many of the other songs that Springsteen had demoed on the TEAC were now given the full band treatment, before he quickly opted to go with the original four‑track cassette recordings and issue them on the Nebraska album. Released in September 1982, this had been completed a couple of months earlier while Born In The USA remained in limbo. It wasn't until February 1983 (by which time Toby Scott had quit Clover Studios to become a freelancer) that the sessions were revived for a week at New York's Hit Factory.

They then resumed that May, when Springsteen cut 'My Hometown', and continued sporadically through the beginning of 1984, when 'No Surrender' and 'Bobby Jean' were both completed. At this point, after Scott did some rough mixes at the Power Station, Bob Clearmountain was recruited to add his magic touch, and while Scott was retained as a consultant and sounding board, he considered his job largely done until, that May, Jon Landau persuaded Springsteen to compose an upbeat "here‑and‑now song” that could serve as the album's lead-off single. That song, written overnight and recorded the following day at the Hit Factory, was 'Dancing In The Dark'. To date, it is the most successful single of his career. Born To Run & Run Released on 4th June, 1984, Born In The USA was not only the best‑selling album of 1985 in the United States, but also the one to spend the most ever weeks — including its first 84 — on the Billboard top 10.

In total, it was on the Billboard 200 for more than two and a half years, during which it shared another record — having topped the chart for four weeks from July 7th to August 4th, 1984, it actually spent 18 weeks at number two while Prince's Purple Rain resided at number one, marking the longest period with a fixed top two in the history of the Billboard 200. In January 1985, Born In The USA replaced Purple Rain atop the chart for another three weeks. In the process, Bruce Springsteen elevated his status as the all‑American everyman, and while the title track may have misled those who paid no attention whatsoever to its lyrics, the iconic album cover that it inspired proved to be equally ambiguous. Shot by Annie Leibovitz, this depicted Springsteen from behind in a white muscle shirt and blue jeans, set against the backdrop of the US flag. This prompted some to assume that he was peeing on the Stars & Stripes, yet the man himself firmly denied this, explaining, "We took a lot of different types of pictures, and in the end, the picture of my ass looked better than the picture of my face...

I didn't have any secret message.”

Question: A best-selling album by Bruce Springsteen was "Born in ..." what?
Answer: The USA