A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen From A Jersey Girl

Born in the USA

Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
Till you spend half your life just covering up
Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
To go and kill the yellow man
Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says "Son if it was up to me"
I had a brother at Khe Sahn fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone
He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now
Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go
Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I'm a long gone Daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I'm a cool rocking Daddy in the U.S.A.

2/28 - Hartford, CT HCC Arena
3/2 - Montreal, QC Bell Centre
3/3 - Hamilton, ONT Copps Coliseum
3/6 - Rochester, NY Blue Cross Arena
3/7 - Buffalo, NY HSBC Arena
3/10 - Hempstead, NY Nassau Coliseum
3/14 - Omaha, NE Quest Center
3/16 - St. Paul, MN Xcel Center
3/17 - Milwaukee, WI Bradley Center
3/20 - Indianapolis, IN
3/2 - Cincinnati, OH U.S. Bank Arena
3/24 - Columbus, OH Schottenstein Center
3/28 - Portland, OR The Rose Garden
3/29 - Seattle, WA Key Arena
3/31 - Vancouver, BC GM Place
4/4 - Sacramento, CA Arco Arena
4/5 - San Jose, CA HPPavillion at San Jose
4/7 - Anaheim, CA Honda Center
4/8 - Anaheim, CA Honda Center
4/13 - Dallas, TX American Airlines Center
4/14- Houston, TX Toyota Center
4/18 - Ft Lauderdale, FL Bank Atlantic Center
4/19 - Orlando, FL Amway Arena
4/21 - Tampa, FL St. Pete Times Forum
4/25 - Atlanta, GA Philips Arena
4/27 - Charlotte, NC Charlotte Bobcat Arena
4/28 - Greensboro, NC Greensboro Coliseum
4/30 - Charlottesville, VA John Paul Jones Arena
5/22 - Dublin, ÉIRE RDS Arena
5/23 - Dublin, ÉIRE RDS Arena
5/25 - Dublin, ÉIRE RDS Arena
5/28 - Manchester, GB Old Trafford
5/30 - London, GB Emirates Stadium
5/31 - London, GB Emirates Stadium
6/14 - Cardiff, GB Cardiff Millennium Stadium
6/18 - Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS Amsterdam Arena
6/21 - Hamburg, GERMANY HSH Nordbank Arena
6/23 - Brussels, BELGIUM Koning Boudewijnstadion
6/25 - Milan, ITALY Stadio San Siro
6/27 - Paris, FRANCE Parc des Princes
6/29 - Copenhagen, DENMARK Parken
7/4 - Göteborg, SWEDEN Ullevi
7/5 - Göteborg, SWEDEN Ullevi
7/7 - Oslo, NORWAY Valle Hoven
7/8 - Oslo, NORWAY Valle Hoven
7/11 - Helsinki, FINLAND Olympia Stadion
7/15 - San Sebastián, SPAIN Estadio Anoeta
7/17 - Madrid, SPAIN Estadio Santiago Bernabeu
7/19 - Barcelona, SPAIN Camp Nou
7/20 - Barcelona, SPAIN Camp Nou
7/27 - E. Rutherford, NJ Giants Stadium
7/28 - E. Rutherford, NJ Giants Stadium
7/31 - E. Rutherford, NJ Giants Stadium

Clarence Clemons - The Big Man
Birth date: January 11, 1942
Birthplace: Norfolk, Va.
Plays: Sax, Tuba, other percussion instruments
ESB since 1974
Clemons was a line backer for the Maryland State College football team. An injury put a halt to his pro football aspirations.
He has recorded with many artists besides Bruce Springsteen. Most notably with Aretha Franklin and with Jackson Browne, and he also records as a solo artist.
official website

Steven Van Zandt - Little Steven or Miami Steve
Birth date: November 22, 1950
Birthplace: Winthrop, Ma.
Plays: guitar, mandolin is also a songwriter
ESB since 1975
Although not born in NJ he grew up in Middletown NJ and was an early friend of Bruce Springsteen and was in a number of Bruce's early bands. Van Zandt was a founding member of South Side Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. He starred on the hit television series " The Sopranos" as Dante Silvio. He has also been a solo artist, producer, radio host, arranger....
official website

Garry Tallent
Birth date: October 27, 1949
Birthplace: Detroit, Michigan
Plays: bass, Tuba
ESB since 1971
Garry Tallent moved to Neptune NJ as a teenager. He has recorded with other artists and produced the song "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" for Marshall Crenshaw on the La Bamba soundtrack. unofficial website

Danny Federici - Phantom
Birth date: January 23, 1950
Birthplace: Flemington , NJ
Plays: Organ, glockenspiel, accordian, keyboards
ESB since 1972
He has two solo albums and has appeared on other artists albums - Joan Armatrading, Graham Parker, Gary "U.S." Bonds. Please send good thoughts and prayers his way as he battles melanoma

Max Weinberg - Mighty Max
Birth date: April 13,1951
Birthplace: Newark, NJ
Plays: Drums
ESB since 1974
Max Weinberg joined the E Street Band after answering a newspaper ad for a drummer " no junior Ginger Bakers". He is the leader of The Max Weinberg 7, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Max is the author of The Big Beat: Conversations with Rock's Greatest Drummers and has played drums on Meat Loaf's Album "Bat out of Hell" playing on the tracks Bat out of Hell, You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth and Paradise by the Dashboard Light. He was the live drummer for 10,000 Maniacs in 1992 .

Roy Bittan - The Professor
Birth date: July 2, 1949
Birthplace: Rockaway Beach, NY
Plays: Piano, organ, accordion, synthesizer
ESB since 1974
Roy Bittan has played on dozens of artists albums some of who are: David Bowie, Jackson Browne, Tracy Chapman, Chicago, Catie Curtis, Dire Straits, Peter Gabriel, Meat Loaf, Stevie Nicks, Bob Seger, Patty Smyth, Jim Steinman, and Bonnie Tyler. Bittan also played keyboards on the breakthrough Bon Jovi single, "Runaway."

Patti Scialfa - Red Headed Woman( hmmmm I thought he wrote that for me )
Birth date: July 29, 1953
Birthplace: Deal, NJ
Plays: guitar, percussion; also does vocals
ESB since 1984
Patti has a music degree from NYU, has recorded with Southside Johnny and has recorded solo albums. She and Bruce Springsteen married June 8 1991.
official website

Nils Lofgren
Birth date: June 21, 1951
Birthplace: Chicago, Il
Plays: guitar and does vocals
ESB since 1984
Lofren grew up in the Washington DC area. He joined Neil Young's band at age 17, he had also had his own band " Grin ". He joined the E Street Band as a replacement for Steven Van Zandt. He has recorded solo and with Patti Scialfa, Neil Young and was a two time member of Ringo Starr's All Starr Band.
official website

Soozie Tyrell
Birth date: May 4, 1957
Birthplace: Pisa, Italy
Plays: Violin, vocals
ESB since 1992
Soozie Tyrell born as Soozie Kirschner and has traveled extensively as her father was a military man. Eventually her family settled in Florida, she then relocated to New York City where she became a street musician for many years. Together with Patti Scialfa and Lisa Lowell, she formed a street group known as Trickster. Appeared on albums with Southside Johnny, led her own country band, worked with Busyter Poindexter.
Tyrell first appeared with Springsteen in 1992 on his Lucky Town album, as a backing vocalist.
Official website

Let me start with the stories.

Back in the days of miracles, the frontier days when Mad Dog" Lopez and his temper struck fear into the band, small club owners, innocent civilians and
all women, children and small animals.

Back in the days when you could still sign your life away on the hood of a parked car in New York City.

Back shortly after a young red-headed accordionist struck gold on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour and he and his mama were sent to Switzerland to show them how
it's really done.

Back before beach bums were featured on the cover of Time magazine.

I'm talking about back when the E Street Band was a communist organization! My pal, quiet, shy Dan Federici, was a one-man creator of some of the hairiest circumstances of our 40 year career... And that wasn't easy to do. He had "Mad Dog" Lopez to compete with....Danny just outlasted him.

Maybe it was the "police riot" in Middletown, New Jersey. A show we were doing to raise bail money for "Mad Log" Lopez who was in jail in Richmond,
Virginia, for having an altercation with police officers who we'd aggravated by playing too long. Danny allegedly knocked over our huge Marshall stacks on some of Middletown's finest who had rushed the stage because we broke the law
by...playing too long.

As I stood there watching, several police officers crawled out from underneath the speaker cabinets and rushed away to seek medical attention. Another nice young officer stood in front of me onstage waving his nightstick, poking and calling me nasty names. I looked over to see Danny with a beefy police officer pulling on one arm while Flo Federici, his first wife, pulled on the other, assisting her man in resisting arrest.

A kid leapt from the audience onto the stage, momentarily distracting the beefy officer with the insults of the day. Forever thereafter, "Phantom" Dan Federici slipped into the crowd and disappeared.

A warrant out for his arrest and one month on the lam later, he still hadn't been brought to justice. We hid him in various places but now we had a
problem. We had a show coming at Monmouth College. We needed the money and we had to do the gig. We tried a replacement but it didn't work out. So Danny, to all of our admiration, stepped up and said he'd risk his freedom, take the chance and play.

Show night. 2,000 screaming fans in the Monmouth College gym. We had it worked out so Danny would not appear onstage until the moment we started
playing. We figured the police who were there to arrest him wouldn't do so onstage during the show and risk starting another riot.

Let me set the scene for you. Danny is hiding, hunkered down in the backseat of a car in the parking lot. At five minutes to eight, our scheduled start time, I go out to whisk him in. I tap on the window.

"Danny, come on, it's time."

I hear back, "I'm not going."

Me: "What do you mean you're not going?"

Danny: "The cops are on the roof of the gym. I've seen them and they're going to nail me the minute I step out of this car."

As I open the door, I realize that Danny has been smoking a little something and had grown rather paranoid. I said, "Dan, there are no cops on the roof."

He says, "Yes, I saw them, I tell you. I'm not coming in."

So I used a procedure I'd call on often over the next forty years in dealing with my old pal's concerns. I threatened him...and cajoled. Finally, out he came. Across the parking lot and into the gym we swept for a rapturous concert during which we laughed like thieves at our excellent dodge of the local cops. At the end of the evening, during the last song, I pulled the entire crowd up onto the stage and Danny slipped into the audience and out the front door. Once again, "Phantom" Dan had made his exit. (I still get the occasional card from the old Chief of Police of Middletown wishing us well. Our histories are forever intertwined.) And that, my friends, was only the beginning. There was the time Danny quit the band during a rough period at Max's Kansas City, explaining to me that he was leaving to fix televisions. I asked him to think about that and come back later.

Or Danny, in the band rental car, bouncing off several parked cars after a night of entertainment, smashing out the windshield with his head but saved
from severe injury by the huge hard cowboy hat he bought in Texas on our last Western swing.

Or Danny, leaving a large marijuana plant on the front seat of his car in a tow away zone. The car was promptly towed. He said, "Bruce, I'm going to go
down and report that it was stolen." I said, "I'm not sure that's a good idea." Down he went and straight into the slammer without passing go.

Or Danny, the only member of the E Street Band to be physically thrown out of the Stone Pony. Considering all the money we made them, that wasn't easy to
do.

Or Danny receiving and surviving a "cautionary assault" from an enraged but restrained "Big Man" Clarence Clemons while they were living together and
Danny finally drove the "Big Man" over the big top.

Or Danny assisting me in removing my foot from his stereo speaker after being the only band member ever to drive me into a violent rage.

And through it all, Danny played his beautiful, soulful B3 organ for me and our love grew. And continued to grow. Life is funny like that. He was my homeboy, and great, and for that you make considerations. And he was much more
tolerant of my failures than I was of his.

When Danny wasn't causing chaos, he was a sweet, talented, unassuming, unpretentious good-hearted guy who simply had an unchecked ability to make good fortune and things in general go fabulously wrong. But beyond all of that, he also had a mountain of the right stuff. He had the heart and soul of an engineer. He learned to fly. He was always up on the latest technology and would explain it to you patiently and in enormous detail. He was always "souping" something up, his car, his stereo, his B3. When Patti joined the band, he was the most welcoming, thoughtful, kindest friend to the first woman entering our "boys club."

He loved his kids, always bragging about Jason, Harley, and Madison, and he loved his wife Maya for the new things she brought into his life. And then there was his artistry. He was the most intuitive player I've ever seen. His style was slippery and fluid, drawn to the spaces the other musicians in the E Street Band left. He wasn't an assertive player, he was a complementary player. A true accompanist. He naturally supplied the glue that bound the band's sound together. In doing so, he created for himself a very specific style.
When you hear Dan Federici, you don't hear a blanket of sound, you hear a riff, packed with energy, flying above everything else for a few moments and then gone back in the track. "Phantom" Dan Federici.

Now you hear him, now you don't.

Offstage, Danny couldn't recite a lyric or a chord progression for one of my
songs. Onstage, his ears opened up. He listened, he felt, he played, finding
the perfect hole and placement for a chord or a flurry of notes. This style
created a tremendous feeling of spontaneity in our ensemble playing. In the
studio, if I wanted to loosen up the track we were recording; I'd put Danny on
it and not tell him what to play. I'd just set him loose. He brought with
him the sound of the carnival, the amusements, the boardwalk, the beach, the
geography of our youth and the heart and soul of the birthplace of the E Street
Band.

Then we grew up. Very slowly. We stood together through a lot of trials and
tribulations. Danny's response to a mistake onstage, hard times, catastrophic
events was usually a shrug and a smile. Sort of an "I am but one man in a
raging sea, but I'm still afloat. And we're all still here."

I watched Danny fight and conquer some tough addictions. I watched him struggle to put his life together and in the last decade when the band reunited, thrive on sitting in his seat behind that big B3, filled with life and, yes, a new maturity, passion for his job, his family and his home in the brother and sisterhood of our band.

Finally, I watched him fight his cancer without complaint and with great courage and spirit. When I asked him how things looked, he just said, "What are you going to do? I'm looking forward to tomorrow." Danny, the sunny side up fatalist. He never gave up right to the end. A few weeks back we ended up onstage in Indianapolis for what would be the last time. Before we went on I asked him what he wanted to play and he said, "Sandy." He wanted to strap on the accordion and revisit the boardwalk of our youth during the summer nights when we'd walk along the boards with all the time in the world.

So what if we just smashed into three parked cars, it's a beautiful night!
So what if we're on the lam from the entire Middletown police department,
let's go take a swim! He wanted to play once more the song that is of course
about the end of something wonderful and the beginning of something unknown and
new.

Let's go back to the days of miracles. Pete Townshend said, "A rock and roll band is a crazy thing. You meet some people when you're a kid and unlike any other occupation in the whole world, you're stuck with them your whole life no matter who they are or what crazy things they do."

If we didn't play together, the E Street Band at this point would probably not know one another. We wouldn't be in this room together. But we do... We do play together. And every night at 8 p.m., we walk out on stage together and that, my friends, is a place where miracles occur...old and new miracles. And those you are with, in the presence of miracles, you never forget. Life does not separate you. Death does not separate you. Those you are with who create miracles for you, like Danny did for me every night, you are honored to be amongst.

Of course we all grow up and we know "it's only rock and roll"...but it's not. After a lifetime of watching a man perform his miracle for you, night after night, it feels an awful lot like l

By JOAN LOWY

WASHINGTON (AP) - Rock star Bruce Springsteen endorsed Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president Wednesday, saying "he speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years."

In a letter addressed to friends and fans posted his Web site, Springsteen said he believes Obama is the best candidate to undo "the terrible damage done over the past eight years."

"He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next president," the letter said. "He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where '...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.'"

The bard of New Jersey is known for his lyrics about the struggles of working-class Americans, particularly in the economically ravaged factory towns of the Northeast.

(AP) Bruce Springsteen appears with his band on the NBC "Today" television program in New York's...
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Springsteen and his E Street band were part of the Vote for Change tour, a coalition of musicians opposed to the re-election of President Bush in 2004. He wrote the anti-war ballad "Devils and Dust" about Iraq.

Springsteen did not directly mention Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, in his letter, but appeared to take issue with her recent criticisms of comments made by Obama about working-class voters in small towns in Pennsylvania and controversial statements by his pastor.

"Critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships," Springsteen wrote. "While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man's life and vision ... often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment."