Bruce Springsteen was born on this day in 1949 in Long Branch, New Jersey. The son of a bus driver who held other jobs and held little regard for his rambunctious son's musical aspirations and a mother that worked as a legal secretary and was more understanding and supportive of Bruce's ambitions. Enrolling him a Catholic school served only to spark more rebellion in their son. Watching Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan showc onvinced Bruce to go all-in on becoming a musician. His mother rented him a guitar and allowed him to go to public school in Freehold, where he managed to scrape by academically and earn a diploma. A concussion he suffered when he dumped a motorcycle at 17 resulted in a draft deferment. His parents moved to the west coast in 1969, but Bruce and his sister elected to stay in New Jersey.
After seeing the Beatles on the Sullivan Show, Bruce bought his first guitar and worked himself into a band named the Rogues before moving into a co/lead singer spot in the Castiles, a band with a significantly bigger regional following. After a short stint in a band named Earth, Bruce hooked up with future E Street Band members Vini Lopez, Danny Federici and, eventually, Steve Van Zandt in the band Steel Mill. That group gained more traction playing frequently in Jersey clubs including the Stone Pony, and developed a following along the eastern seaboard that helped punch their ticket into bookings in larger markets in Tennessee, Virginia and other states. The group also landed a gig at the Matrix, the San Francisco club operated by Jefferson Airplane member Marty Balin. In attendance that night was music critic Phillip Elwood, whose review in the San Francisco Examiner proclaimed of Springsteen, "I have never been so overwhelmed by a totally unknown talent."
After a couple of years fronting other bands, Bruce elected to put his name out front, forming the Bruce Springsteen Band in 1971. Springsteen's solo audition for John Hammond in the spring of 1972 and his subsequent signing by Columbia Records changed everything for Bruce. Columbia wanted a singer-songwriter album out of him, but Springsteen insisted on his debut being a fully band backed rock record. That October, the lineup that would become the E Street Band came together to record the sessions that would become the Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. album.
Neither of the group's first two albums were big sellers, but live performances of the songs on Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle were just blowing people away in concert. The opening set Bruce and the band did at Bonnie Raitt's May 1974 Harvard Square Theater concert in Boston was so compelling and powerful that critic Jon Landau's review gushed, "I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen", and adding, "...he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time".
Within the following few months, awareness and interest in Bruce and the E Street Band sky rocketed, but the band was bogged down trying to capture the right sound for a record that would impress fans as much as their live performances did. The struggle to nail it down was solved when Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes guitarist Steve Van Zandt was invited in to harness the horn section arrangement on Tenth Avenue Freeze-out. The result impressed Bruce so much that he added Van Zandt to the E Street Band lineup. The band did a 10 night run of shows at The Bottom Line in New York City leading up to the August 25th release release of Born to Run. It included a live radio broadcast on WNEW-FM and select other FM rock stations that had been early supporters of the band. Things broke wide open for The Boss and his Band right after that.
Other Noteworthy classic rock events on September 23 include...
1930 Ray Charles born.
1939 Roy Buchanan born.
1963 Rolling Stones do opening night of tour with Bo Diddley.
1966 The Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and Ike & Tina Turner play Royal Albert Hall.
1970 Allman Brothers Band releases Idlewild South.
1970 Mick Jagger meets Bianca Macias when the Stones play the Olympia in Paris.
1974 Average White Band's Robbie McIntosh dies at LA party Gregg Allman also attended.
1980 Bob Marley collapses on stage in Pittsburgh in what would prove to be his last concert appearance.
1982 Billy Joel releases Nylon Curtain.
1986 Boston releases Third Stage.
1991 Izzy Stradlin leaves Guns N' Roses and is replaced by Gilby Clarke.
1997 Rolling Stones open Bridges To Babylon tour in Chicago.
2008 John Mellencamp does flood relief benefit show in a small theater in Ohio.
2013 Paul McCartney plays on the roof of the El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
2022 Elton John does a live set on the south lawn of the White House and is awarded a National Humanities Award by President Biden.
2022 Billy Idol releases The Cage EP.
