The song Bruce Springsteen wrote about “being an outcast”
It is difficult to imagine a period in which Bruce Springsteen was not a beloved, globally successful, and hugely influential cornerstone of rock and roll music. The New Jersey-born songwriter has enjoyed a truly iconic career spanning over six decades and taking on a plethora of different styles and genres within that time. Throughout it all, however, Springsteen never forgot his early beginnings as a rock and roll outcast growing up in New Jersey.
During these early years, like many people of his generation, Springsteen found an escape from the monotony of suburban life in the revolutionary sounds of rock and roll. In fact, it was seeing the King himself, Elvis Presley, on The Ed Sullivan Show at the age of only seven that first set Springsteen on his path to musical greatness. However, this penchant for rock rebellion also made the future songwriter seem like an outcast and a loner during his high school years.
As Springsteen’s 20s loomed, the budding young musician felt largely lost. Alienated by education, he briefly enrolled in a local college before dropping out; he could not seem to find anywhere to ‘fit in’. As always, though, the answer came in the form of rock and roll. After seeing The Beatles perform on American television in 1964, Springsteen devoted himself entirely to the cause, forming various groups and playing at any local bar, venue or restaurant that would allow him.
After spending much of the 1960s attempting to make a name for himself in the music world of the American East Coast, Springsteen finally set about recording an album – Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J – alongside the group that would later morph into the E Street Band. Effectively, it was this album that gave Springsteen his first major step into the music industry, a step from which he would never look back.
It’s safe to assume that, if you are reading this, you already know the rest of the Springsteen story about his rise to rock stardom and his unique ability to remain at the top of his game for multiple decades. Seemingly, though, Springsteen never fully turned his back on his New Jersey roots, regularly paying homage to his hometown and the early life experiences that impacted him. Inevitably, the songwriter always maintained the ‘outcast’ mindset, even as a rock and roll superstar.
These feelings of adolescent alienation have been explored by Springsteen multiple times over the years but are perhaps most notable on the 1975 track ‘Backstreets’, taken from his defining record Born to Run. Speaking about the construction of the song to Rolling Stone in 2016, Springsteen shared that he was inspired by “Just youth, the beach, the night, friendships, the feeling of being an outcast and kind of living far away from things in this little outpost in New Jersey. It’s also about a place of personal refuge”.
Given that he had previously taken refuge from teenage alienation and suburban monotony in the vibrant world of rock and roll, the full-circle moment of writing an incredibly successful song about that exact topic must have been very satisfying for Springsteen.
