The world liked what it heard.Īs Springsteen skyrocketed to international fame in 1984, he toured the world, filling stadiums and playing concerts of up to five hours. In the tradition of protest singers like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, Springsteen laid bare the dark side of American triumphalism and shared his insight with a growing global audience. This theme was inherent in Springsteen's best-known rock anthem, 1984's "Born In The USA." No statement of patriotic jubilation, this protest song reckoned with the Vietnam War and the fate of the veterans who had not gained a foothold in a prosperous America. Read more: How a 1976 concert shook the Berlin Wall The cover to the album that made Springsteen a global phenomenon But in melancholic songs like "Jungleland," he also invoked the impossibility of breaking free and questioned the myth of the American dream. Springsteen had became a working class hero, a folk-rock poet who gave a voice to the downtrodden. That changed with the 1975 album, Born To Run, which cemented the young singer-songwriter's place in American rock folklore. The title song articulated the desire for breaking free from desolate small town life and hitting the road in search of liberation, which Springsteen did during his first coast-to-coast tour that helped Born To Run hit number 3 on the Billboard charts. Albums like The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle were soon released, with critics hailing Springsteen, still only 25, as the "new Bob Dylan." But sales were slow. with musicians who became the legendary E Street Band. In 1972, he recorded his album Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. Springsteen's 1988 concert in East Berlin rocked the Berlin Wall Image: picture-alliance/dpaīorn in 1949 and raised in a small town in New Jersey in a struggling working class family, Springsteen, inspired by Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, got a guitar and started playing gigs with his first band, the Rogues, at age 16. The song's refrain boomed out of East Berlin during a massive 1988 concert that was a harbinger for the fall of the Wall a year later.Įven Angela Merkel recently revealed that she too was a fan of The Boss. With a guitar slung across his well-toned body, Bruce Springsteen has spent his career singing iconic, gravel-throated songs of hope and despair over the American dream.Īs the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is commemorated, Germans also recall Springsteen's "Born in the USA" as an anthem for democracy in the former East Germany.
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