Bruce Springsteen – ‘Glory Days’

• Writer: Bruce Springsteen
• Producers: Bruce Springsteen, Jon Landau, Chuck Plotkin, and Steve Van Zandt
• Recorded: Early 1984 at the Power Station, New York City
• Released: May 1984
• Players:
  Bruce Springsteen — vocals, guitar
  Clarence Clemons — saxophone
  Danny Federici — keyboards
  Roy Bittan — keyboards
  Garry Tallent — bass
  “Miami” Steve Van Zandt — guitar, mandolin, vocals
  Max Weinberg — drums
• Album: Born In The U.S.A. (Columbia, 1984)
• Also on:
  Greatest Hits (Columbia, 1995)
  The Essential Bruce Springsteen (Columbia/Legacy, 2003)
• “Glory Days” was the fifth single released from Bruce Springsteen‘s Born In The U.S.A. album.
• In the song, Springsteen poked fun at nostalgia with two vignettes. In the liner notes to his Greatest Hits album, he wrote, “The first verse (about meeting a high school baseball player) actually happened, the second verse (about a high school classmate and single mother) mostly happened, the third verse, of course, is happening now.”
• The video for the song, a performance clip set in a pool hall, was shot in Asbury Park and directed by filmmaker John Sayles.
• “Miami” Steve Van Zandt, who left the E Street Band after the recording of Born In The U.S.A., made a cameo appearance in the video.
• The Born In The U.S.A. album was Springsteen’s commercial breakthrough, topping charts everywhere and selling over an estimated 18 million copies worldwide.
• The album also earned Springsteen his first Grammy Award, for Best Rock Performance, Male.

FAST FORWARD:

• Springsteen dismissed the E Street Band in 1989, though he reunited with them briefly in 1995, and then for a world tour in 1999-2000, which led to the album The Rising and another world tour in 2002-2003.
• Van Zandt, who now goes by Little Steven, left the E Street Band following the Born In The U.S.A. album in 1984 to work on a solo career, although he’s since returned to the group. In addition to the albums he’s released under his own name, he has made a name for himself as an actor on the HBO series The Sopranos, and he also has a syndicated radio show called Little Steven’s Underground Garage.
• Drummer Max Weinberg has a steady job for the downtime between projects with Springsteen — he’s the leader of the Max Weinberg 7, the house band for NBC’s Late Night With Conan O’Brien.
• Springsteen was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1999.
• The 2002 album The Rising was Springsteen’s first with the E Street Band since Born In The U.S.A.
• In 2006, Springsteen released a new, non-E Street Band album called We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, and toured Europe and North America behind it. He recently released a live CD and DVD from the tour.
• Springsteen dismissed the E Street Band in 1989, although he reunited with them, briefly, in 1995, and for world tours in 1999-2000 and 2002-2003. In 2007 they released a new album, Magic, and are now on tour again.

E Street band keyboardist Danny Federici died April 17th, 2008, at age 58, of cancer.