The Boss is back on Tour!
He formed his first band while in college. The members were all local musicians and knew of one another. Originally called "Child", they changed the name to "Steel Mill" working gigs up and down the Atlantic coast. Springsteen's parents had moved to California and in the summer of 1969, Bruce came out to visit them - taking the band along with him. Steel Mill started playing club dates in San Francisco. This led to a show at Bill Graham's Fillmore and a contract offer with Fillmore Records. Believing the advance Graham offered was too small. Steel Mill turned him down and returned to the east coast. In 1971 Steel Mill called it quits
during the following year, Springsteen joined and quit several different local bands. The Bruce Springsteen Band was formed in 1972, the core of what later became the E Street Band. Springsteen's songwriting ability, brought him attention from several people who were about to change his life: new managers Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, and John Hammond, a Columbia Records talent scout. John auditioned then signed Springsteen with Columbia in 1972.
"Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J." was Springsteen's debut album and was released in January 1973. Although sales were slow the album established him as a critical favorite. Later that year, his second album, "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle" was released. It too garnered critical acclaim but no commercial success.
Between 1975 and 2007, Bruce Springsteen released 23 albums and 56 singles. All of the albums made the charts in both the US and the UK, however, while over half were in the top 5, several did not fair as well. The 1984 release, "Born to Run" was by far the most successful of Springsteen's works. The album enjoyed the number one position for several weeks on all charts and grossed 15 million dollars, far outselling any of his other albums.
In 1984, Springsteen won his first Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. By 2006, he added another 14 Grammies in assorted categories to his collection. In 1999, Bruce was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Born in the U.S.A. became the first compact disc manufactured in the United States for commercial release, when CBS Records opened its CD manufacturing plant in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1984. Discs previously had been imported from Japan.