As the Springsteen Center's doors begin to open officially, Part 3 of 3: Bruce himself speaks...

photo by Mark Krajnak

June 14, 2026

Below is our transcription of the narration provided by Bruce Springsteen for Thom Zimny's short introductory film The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen’s American Music Journey, now playing exclusively in The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music's Powell Soundstage theater:

Welcome to New Jersey, the place where I was born, raised, loved, loathed, left, and returned to, and where I'll probably spend the rest of my life. Now I've been driving back to my hometown for most of my adult life looking for... I'm not sure what. All I know is I continuously return to the places and moments that shaped me as a person and as a musician. The cultural influences I absorbed became deeply woven into the fabric of my music. Now of course we're all products of where we come from, but the conditions present when I was growing up made this place an unlikely hotbed for American music, its light beaming into our lives from places beyond the Shore... something we could actually be a part of, even in Freehold, NJ.

American music history is marked by significant movements and moments. Rock-and-roll is its biggest inflection point. And I call it rock-and-roll, but it's everything. It's blues, it's gospel, it's country, it's R&B, it's soul. Along with our quintessentially American creations - jazz and hip-hop, too - they're all cars on the same train.

I came along at the same time as rock-and-roll, as it grew from a trend to a global cultural force. American music offers vital keys to understanding our people, our ideals, and our shortcomings. I'm but one of a long line of messengers. So join me as I revisit the musicians and moments that helped shape our culture and had such a profound influence on me and my work. There's no more thrilling history lesson than that of American music.

Jukeboxes... The best; a tremendous loss to the diner industry these days. Take this one... What's on this? "In The Mood." My mother would've loved that one. Glenn Miller. I used to play "In The Mood" in my first band with The Castiles, because we used to play weddings, so we had to appeal not just to the kids, but to the parents. My mother would dance with me 'til the end of her life to "In The Mood."

Now, my mom, Adele, always turned the kitchen radio to one of the Top 40 stations out of New York City. It was the daily soundtrack to my bowl of Sugar Pops. Now, if a song was popular in the 1950s, I absorbed it by osmosis. The imprinting had begun.

As Top 40 radio evolved from Frank Sinatra and doo-wop to early R&B and rock-and-roll, I grew more passionate about the music I was hearing, setting the stage for my own personal Big Bang: September 1956, The Ed Sullivan Show, beamed to seventy million viewers unprepared for what they were about to witness. I'm six years old, and I used to listen to the radio with my grandpop and that nurtured me, but the impact of actually seeing Elvis was staggering. Presley opened a door that felt like freedom. A new era had begun. It was the moment I began to recognize that no matter where you came from or your social status, a true artist or anybody could move beyond their station. I needed my own guitar, and so my loving mother rented me one from Mike Diehl's Music in Freehold.

Fast-forward... It's 1964. Girls screamed for Elvis, but when The Beatles played Ed Sullivan... whoa! Those girls were electrified, as was a fourteen-year-old Bruce Springsteen. I'd never heard screaming like that before, and all I knew is I wanted to hear it again, except at me! Who wouldn't want to be in a rock-and-roll band?

I quickly learned I wasn't alone in this feeling. The arrival of The Beatles marked the start of a youth culture that became a dominant force to this day. Music provided sanctuary from a birthright of limited expectations. We grew our hair long. We bought Beatle boots. We formed our own groups, and I started seriously practicing the guitar. I joined The Castiles, and we tried to be our own version of the great British Invasion acts that followed The Beatles. As we dove deeper, we came to learn that The Beatles' heroes were greats like Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Little Richard.

Overseas, they were listening to us before we were listening to them. That realization proved to be a profound one. It spurred a lifelong desire to look back further and learn about the places, the people, and the musical movements, grounded right here in my own country, that helped birth rock-and-roll.

I still listen to tons of doo-wop to this day... "In The Still Of The Night." Five Satins... Beautiful song of lost love and summer lament. There are no sweeter vocal harmonies than those of doo-wop. Doo-wop groups began in the 1940s, and when rock-and-roll was blossoming in the fifties, doo-wop moved from street corners to Top 40 radio. Decades later, hip-hop would follow the same path. The most authentic sound of the street, incredibly influential... Grandmaster Flash's "The Message," one of the great actual protest songs of all time.

Who else we got here?... Of course! What jukebox would be worthy of its name without "Will You Love Me Tomorrow"... The Shirelles. They formed right here in New Jersey at Passaic High School. Some of our greatest singers were discovered in African-American neighborhoods and paired up by their record labels with songs written by folks like Carole King and Gerry Goffin, who worked at The Brill Building in Manhattan along with a team of other songwriters in what amounted to a hit factory.

Doesn't get any better than that. Hey, there it is: the jukebox. Bring 'em back.

Another underappreciated feature of the jukebox is that it presents songs as songs, regardless of genre. Record stores, radio stations, and now streaming services have been trying to categorize music for decades. That typically meant division along racial lines.

Thankfully, music fans don't care much for labels. Love for both rock-and-roll and R&B artists crossed racial boundaries in the mid-sixties, but that wasn't reflective of our society as a whole. In many places, and particularly in the South, cities were directly or indirectly segregated. The Turf Club, here in West Asbury Park, was once part of a thriving Springwood Avenue scene that played host to legendary musicians, including Count Basie and Billie Holiday. The Big Man, Clarence Clemons, performed there before he joined the E Street Band.

Tragically, the racial unrest that took place in Asbury Park in July 1970 crippled this vibrant Black neighborhood. The local music scene was changed forever, and Asbury Park took and is still taking a long time to heal.

Similar events played out in bigger cities, stemming from the fight for opportunity and equality that drove The Civil Rights Movement, and the loss of leaders who were senselessly taken from us. Given that backdrop, it's all the more extraordinary that soul music thrived in places like Detroit, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

In the case of Motown, founded by Berry Gordy in 1959, a record label became Detroit's music scene, and what a scene it was. Martha and The Vandellas, The Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson Five... writers like Holland-Dozier-Holland, writing hit after life-affirming hit. Motown embodied its slogan; it was "The Sound of Young America." The label would come to dominate the pop charts, and in doing so, turn Black artists into superstars, all from one modest building: Hitsville U.S.A., Detroit.

As much as Elvis, Stax Records put Memphis on the musical map. The house band and songwriters at Stax were a mix of young, immensely talented Black and white players who all loved the same music and established a signature sound. They wrote and recorded with a collection of singers who became soul music legends.

Now, I was fortunate to be part of a diverse regional music scene and to see amazing performances at venues like Convention Hall. It was my portal to the world of music beyond Route 9. On any given week, you could see the biggest names in rock, soul, and pop music right here at the Shore. When these artists gave us the chance to witness their talent, they became larger than life.

On this one poster itself, you got a chance to see The Four Tops, Mitch Ryder, The Who, The Four Seasons, The Doors. Here's some I missed... The Rolling Stones... Shame on me; I didn't have the money.

We borrowed liberally from the showmanship of music's great soul frontmen and their sensational backing bands. One of the life-changing shows I saw was Sam & Dave at The Satellite Lounge in Cookstown, NJ. Nobody led a band like Sam Moore. I aspired to work as hard as they did, and to be that entertaining.

Many of my favorite songs back in those days carried such depth of feeling that it seemed to emanate from a source that was beyond melody or vocals. I was sensing the spirit of the pioneering forefathers and foremothers who stood at the headwaters of gospel and blues.

We can trace most of American popular music - from jazz to punk to hip-hop - back to gospel and the blues. Without gospel, there is no R&B, no soul music, and rock-and-roll has no heart. Without the blues, there's no country music, and rock-and-roll has no rhythm or stories to tell.

The roots of gospel music reach back to the plantations and spiritual hymns sung by enslaved African-Americans to keep faith as they endured cruel and inhumane conditions. Spirituals evolved into gospel in Southern Black churches where great preachers would later serve as prototypes for bandleaders like Jackie Wilson and Otis Redding. They fed off the energy from the congregation just like the crowd at a concert. Now whether you have faith or not, gospel music stirs us through the power of the human voice. Many of our R&B and soul heroes got their start in the church. Great soul singers never lost their gospel power, no matter the song they were singing.

If gospel belongs to Sunday morning, the blues was Saturday night. The blues captures our trouble, our losses, our regrets, our resilience, our love, and our lust, too. Now, gospel came from God's word, but the blues was people's music. Blues musicians were the earliest singer-songwriters: one man, one guitar, speaking his truth. Blues started on acoustic guitar, foot-tapping to keep time. The guitar would turn electric, and the beat moved to the drums, as the blues set the stage for rock-and-roll.

I got into the blues through the British groups. It was a whole new world when I finally got to the real thing, to the great American musicians in my own backyard that I was simply unaware of. That opened my eyes tremendously. The late-sixties arrival of blues-influenced bands like Cream, The Allman Brothers, and Led Zeppelin brought a heavier sound that every guitar-player on the Shore tried to emulate, myself included.

The best players would gather at The Upstage club in Asbury Park, and we'd jam until five in the morning. Those sessions were a melting pot of musical styles, and helped develop a cohort of musicians who were quietly competitive with each other. Black, white, brown... It didn't matter, as long as you had the chops. The guys in the first lineup of the E Street Band... they all passed through The Upstage, including David Sancious, whose jazz background deeply influenced my first two albums.

I've often said the verses in my songs are the blues and the choruses are the gospel. My storytelling is also connected to another great American sound: country music. For me, country music was Hank Williams. I started listening to him around Darkness on the Edge of Town, searching for music that dealt with adult issues, and that was country music. Men and women weaving relatable stories of heartache, loss, and occasional joy... That's what gives country music its humanity.

Country music was the first to harness the power and reach of radio, with the debut of The Grand Ole Opry in 1925, which was broadcast from coast to coast. Like it had for Elvis and The Beatles, television introduced millions of viewers to the stars of country music. And in the late sixties, The Man in Black himself, Johnny Cash, got his own TV show. Cash performed with musical guests from all different backgrounds: folk, blues, soul, country, and rock. He connected the dots between genres right there onscreen, and that reinforced to me that American music defies genre labels and boundaries. Cash's duet with Bob Dylan showed country and rock to be deeply intertwined. A decade later, The Eagles proved the combination could sell millions of records, and country stars continue to sell out arenas and stadiums these days.

Starting in the early eighties, I was looking for a music that would address social-justice issues, class issues... Country music was great, but dealt a lot with fate. Folk music left a window open to hope. Folk songs were handed down from generation to generation, long before recording was possible. These are some of the most enduring melodies in the American canon. Even classical composers like Aaron Copland drew inspiration from the folk tradition. It is music of and for the people, and lyrically, folk songs often doubled as an oral history of significant events.

When I found Woody, he had an attitude about how to take action, how to write songs that had meaning, power, and spoke truth to power. Woody Guthrie had "This machine kills fascists" written on his guitar, and he meant it. He was the original punk rocker. His music was the first to reflect a vision of America that I believe to be true.

The remarkable thing about a great folk song is that their messages are timeless. Protest music may have started in the folk tradition, but it can be felt in every genre. Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind" inspired Sam Cooke to write "A Change Is Gonna Come," and for every "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young or "Give Peace A Chance" by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, there's "Mississippi Goddam" by Nina Simone, "Fight The Power" by Public Enemy, and "Alright" by Kendrick Lamar.

From the start, every genre of American music influenced the others. It's like a guitar; you can't pluck one string without others resonating around it.

No one could have predicted how powerful rock-and-roll and popular music would become. Lyrics became poetry, concerts became tribal gatherings, hit songs transcended cultures across the globe...

Now, I've been a student and a practitioner of American music going all the way back to my childhood in Freehold. It was the first art that moved me, that let me know there was a bigger world waiting for me out there. Your ticket to the Center is an invitation to become a fellow student of American music, and maybe even to join me as another musical messenger... another link in the chain, carrying on its rich traditions.

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Below are excerpted and transcribed remarks from Bruce Springsteen's speech at the official dedication/ribbon-cutting event for The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music on June 6, 2026:

I'm particularly thrilled to be sharing this building with all of this wonderful musical history and with so many of my artist-teachers, mentors, and heroes. I look at my work life as a very small link in a mighty chain, and those who visit here will get a sense of that chain through the lives, work, and vision of all these historic artists...

The building really feels like me. It feels like where I come from. When I look at it, it reminds me of the rug mill where I started my first band a half-block up the street. The looms were clangin' and bangin'. There was no air-conditioning, all the windows were open all through the summer, and it was through the sound of that rug mill that I created my first music...

American culture shapes our future as a nation. It's the wellspring of American identity, and of who we are and who we will be as a country. We need the deep and democratic influence of American music now more than ever...

Well, this is the wonderful beginning of something that I hope will bring life, hope, creativity, education, dreams, inspiration to this campus, our community, and our country. I'm deeply honored to be part of it.

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The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music is now officially OPEN to the public! Click here to plan your visit.