Born in the U.S.A.

Bruce Springsteen is best known for his most public acts. It’s in the concert hall—more than on the stereo or the screen—that he engages his audience as few other performers ever have. It’s on the stage that he makes his deepest impression, not only singing his hits, but also telling stories, digging out forgotten songs, shouting like a preacher, clowning like a vaudevillian, whispering like a confessor and leaping about in flagrant disregard for his own safety. From the seats, his fans respond with almost equal fervor until each show, larger than life and longer than a baseball game, reaches its climax of happy, communal exhaustion.

And yet, the most important moments of his career have taken place in utter solitude. His most crucial decisions, the ones that have most shaped his art and career, have taken place not on stage but at home. They’ve taken place in the privacy of those rooms where he has sat with an acoustic guitar and a notebook and tried to write the next line of words and the next measure of music for the next song.