Bruce Springsteen

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2016

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Bruce Springsteen. His career has brought him 20 Grammys, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award and his albums sell in their millions around the world. He grew up in New Jersey where the Catholic church played a central role in his early life. The family teetered on the brink of poverty, and his first guitar was rented, rather than bought. He spent his apprentice years as a musician and singer with local bands before landing a record deal in 1972. When 'Born to Run' was released in 1975 it turned him into a household name. His first Top Ten single was 'Hungry Heart', ahead of his most successful album 'Born in the USA' which was released in 1984. In spite of having long transcended the environment he grew up in, Springsteen has remained a chronicler of blue-collar lives. His records are frequently a political commentary on the struggles of ordinary Americans. In the Nineties he settled into family life with his wife Patti Scialfa who sings with his E Street Band. Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:03.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young.
0:05.0	Thank you for downloading this podcast.
0:07.0	This is an extended edition of the original Radio 4 broadcast.
0:11.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the Radio broadcast.
0:16.0	For more information about the program, please visit bbc.co.uk-radio4.
0:31.0	Music
0:39.0	My custom way this week is Bruce Springsteen.
0:42.0	The barred of blue-colored America for over 40 years he's been capturing in music and words and performance.
0:48.0	The defining truth of lives as they're lived in factories and diners, dive bars and school yards,
0:53.0	chronicling in his own words the distance between the American reality and the American dream.
0:59.0	His 20 grammys, two golden globes and an academy award are pretty much shorthand for not just sales,
1:04.0	but the significant cultural mark his music has made.
1:08.0	And he couldn't surely have done it so well if he hadn't lived the story himself.
1:13.0	Born in New Jersey at the tail end of the forties, he was brought up in a household often beset by poverty and emotional chaos.
1:20.0	He says, I believe every artist had someone who told them they weren't worth dirt
1:26.0	and someone who told them they were the second coming of the baby Jesus and they believed in both.
1:31.0	And that's the fuel that starts the fire.
1:34.0	And so welcome Bruce Springsteen, the fuel that starts the fire.
1:37.0	Who were the two people in your life that were telling you those two things?
1:41.0	It's usually your parents.
1:43.0	And it was for you?
	...

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