Bruce Springsteen Timeline

September 23, 1949: Bruce Springsteen is born in Freehold, New Jersey.

May 3, 1972: Bruce Springsteen auditions for Columbia Records A&R man John Hammond at his office in New York. He signs with the label a month later.

January 1, 1973: ‘Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.’, Bruce Springsteen’s debut album, is released.

January 31, 1973: Bruce Springsteen performs in New York City for the first time.

November 1, 1973: The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle’, Bruce Springsteen’s second album in less than a year, is released. Though neither album charts until 1975, Bruce Springsteen and his newly christened E Street Band steadily win fans on the road with their powerful two-hour sets.

May 22, 1974: A performance in Cambridge, Massachusetts, inspires music journalist Jon Landau to write, “I saw rock and roll’s future—and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

September 6, 1975: ‘Born to Run’ by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band is released. The album garners critical raves, and Springsteen appears on the covers of both ‘Time’ and ‘Newsweek’ at the end of October.

October 27, 1975: Bruce Springsteen appears simultaneously on the covers of ‘Newsweek’ and ‘Time’ after ‘Born to Run’, his much-anticipated third album, quickly vaults to #3 on the album chart.

November 1, 1975: Bruce Springsteen hits #23 with “Born to Run”.

July 1976 - May 1977: Bruce Springsteen is engaged in a legal battle with manager Mike Appel, during which time an injunction prohibits Bruce Springsteen from recording with ‘Born to Run’ coproducer and soon-to-be manager Jon Landau.

June 1, 1977: After a settlement is reached in his lawsuits on May 28, Bruce Springsteen begins work on ‘Darkness On the Edge of Town’, his long-delayed fourth album. It is released on almost exactly a year later.

May 23, 1978: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band kick off their first major arena tour in Buffalo, New York. It ends seven months and 109 cities later in Cleveland on January 1, 1979.

September 23, 1979: On the very day he turns 30, Bruce Springsteen performs a set at New York’s Madison Square Garden as part of the Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) benefit concert. His “Mitch Ryder Medley” is a favorite part of the multi-artist three-album set, No Nukes, culled from the concert.

November 1, 1980: ‘The River’, Bruce Springsteen’s sprawling double-album masterwork, enters the U.S. charts, which it tops for four consecutive weeks. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band kick off another marathon tour on November 3. It ends ten and a half months later in Cincinnati, on September 14, 1981.

1982: Bruce Springsteen releases his mostly acoustic, folk-flavored album ‘Nebraska’.

September 1, 1982: Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, an acoustic solo set of dark-themed material cut at home on a four-track cassette recorder—and originally intended as a demo tape of new material for the E Street Band to learn—is released as is.

June 17, 1984: Culled from roughly 100 songs recorded over the previous year and a half, Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ is released. It becomes one of the biggest albums of the Eighties, remaining at #1 for seven weeks and selling more than 15 million copies. It also launches seven Top Ten singles: “Dancing in the Dark” (#2), “Cover Me” (#7), “Born in the U.S.A.” (#9), “I’m On Fire” (#6), “Glory Days” (#5), “I’m Goin’ Down” (#9) and “My Hometown” (#6).

October 2, 1985: Bruce Springsteen’s globe-trotting Born in the U.S.A. Tour draws to a close at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The 15-month, 150-date outing found him performing at mammoth outdoor stadiums and indoor arenas.

November 29, 1986: Bruce-mania remains in full swing as Bruce Springsteen’s hotly anticipated five-album box set, Live/1975-85, becomes a retail sensation at Christmastime. The decade-spanning collection of concert recordings enters the chart at #1.

November 5, 1987: ‘Tunnel of Love’ becomes Bruce Springsteen’s fourth #1 album, following ‘The River’, ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ and ‘Live 1975-85’. According to ‘Billboard’, he is the only artist to amass four #1 albums in the past ten years.

January 31, 1989: The 18-song Video Anthology/1978-88, which contains every Bruce Springsteen video to date, is released.

June 9, 1991: Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa, a member of his E Street Band since 1984, are married in a ceremony at their home in Beverly Hills, California.

April 18, 1992: ‘Human Touch’ and ‘Lucky Town’, two simultaneously released studio albums by Bruce Springsteen, debut at #2 and #3, respectively.

November 11, 1992: A live-in-the-studio performance by a fully plugged-in Bruce Springsteen and band premieres on MTV’s “Unplugged” series. The show is released on home video a month later as ‘Bruce Springsteen: MTV Plugged’ and appears on CD in 1997.

November 11, 1992: MTV presents Bruce Springsteen in a first-ever televised concert performance “Bruce Springsteen Plugged.”

April 23, 1994: “Streets of Philadelphia,” Bruce Springsteen’s contribution to the film AIDS-themed film ‘Philadelphia’, becomes his first Top Ten hit since “Tunnel of Love” in 1987.

March 18, 1995: ‘Greatest Hits’, an 18-track anthology that includes newly recorded tracks by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, enters the album chart at #1. A video documentary of the studio reunion is released in 1998 as ‘Blood Brothers’.

September 2, 1995: Backed by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Jerry Lee Lewis sings “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire” at the Concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

September 2, 1995: Backed by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Chuck Berry performs “Johnny B. Goode” and “Rock and Roll Music” at the Concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

November 26, 1996: Bruce Springsteen begins his first solo acoustic tour in Los Angeles, coinciding with the release of ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’.

March 15, 1999: Bruce Springsteen is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the fourteenth annual induction dinner. Bono (of U2) is his presenter.

April 9, 1999: Bruce Springsteen’s reunion tour with the E Street Band kicks off in Barcelona, Spain. The band plays for three hours without a break.

July 15, 1999: The U.S. leg of the Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band reunion tour commences with the first of 15 sold-out shows at New Jersey’s Continental Airlines Arena.

April 17, 2008: Danny Federici, keyboardist for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, dies of melanoma in New York City.

Timeline was from: http://www.rockhall.com/inductee/bruce-springsteen