Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen may be the Boss of rock ’n’ roll, but he’s also the common man’s poet, champion, and hard-working hero. On classic-rock anthems like “Born to Run” and “Badlands,” he stares down the hazards of working-class life with a pride and passion bolstered by epic, Phil Spector-meets-Duane Eddy production truly worthy of the term rock opera. But the deceptively complex heartland rocker who declared “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive” on “The Promised Land” brought the same conviction to his tragic portrait of a Vietnam vet on “Born In the U.S.A.,” a song often misunderstood as a fist-pumping patriotic statement. Still, for all his intensity, Freehold, NJ’s favorite son knows how to rev up a rockin’ party and how to laugh at himself, accomplishing both in grand style on “Glory Days.”

Springsteen strips down and gets fired up for a folk fest, in Next Steps.

Even though Springsteen is best known for kicking up a larger-than-life rock ’n’ roll ruckus with his E Street Band, he’s got deep roots as a folkie troubadour. Bruce bore a debt to Dylan from the very beginning, with the freewheeling feel and wild-eyed imagery of “Blinded By the Light,” the first track on the Boss’ 1973 debut album. After years of storming stages with a stadium-size sound, Bruce traced the Dylan influence back a step to Woody Guthrie for the solo-acoustic Nebraska, full of stark-but-stirring Dust-Bowl-of-the-soul ballads like “Reason to Believe.” Springsteen worked that folkie feel to a fever pitch in 2006 with his Pete Seeger tribute album We Shall Overcome; he makes the title track’s promise so believable, you instantly understand why there was once a campaign to get Bruce to run for his home state’s Senate seat.

In Deep Cuts, the Boss goes from street-savvy strut to sanctified stomp.

Being a cultural force of Springsteen’s magnitude almost demands being many things at once. On an atomic live version of Edwin Starr’s 1970 soul smash “War,” Bruce is a sweat-drenched preacher pushing his congregation to the brink and beyond at a rock ’n’ roll revival meeting. On “Spirit In the Night,” he’s a hip, leather-jacketed street poet celebrating the sheer thrill of being a young man set loose to live and love in a late-night urban playground. And on “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” he’s a hopeless romantic with a lovably leaky heart, who lives to paint passionate portraits from the Garden State with lush, local color.

You know you’ve scaled the rock mountaintop when your name becomes an adjective, and down through the decades, the term Springsteenesque has been applied to everyone from John Mellencamp to Meat Loaf, but there’s only one Bruce. Springsteen’s three-hour-plus marathon shows with the E Street Band have become the stuff of legend and made true believers of countless concertgoers, and his platinum-laden discography has made the Boss the biggest thing in American rock since the King left the building. The eternal Jersey boy’s compassion for the working class from whence he came can be felt in everything from the rebellious rocker “Out In the Street” to the hard-bitten ballad “Atlantic City.” But with so much rich rock history to his name, Springsteen can be a tough one to truly experience in full. That’s why we’ve roamed the boardwalks and backstreets of his world to create the ultimate Springsteen experience, from the anthems to the unknown gems, all at your eager fingertips.