“I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” — Jon Landau

Bruuuuuuce. The Boss. New Jersey’s most famous export since boardwalks and bubble wrap.

Springsteen grew up absorbing early 60’s Top 40 radio like a sponge with ears, then became obsessed with the music of The Beatles and The Stones, and as he got older, with the lyrics of Bob Dylan. He synthesized all this musical knowledge and formed a series of bands who played everything from rock and roll to R&B to doo wop to psychedelic blues rock, and at one point consistently played to thousands in Jersey (and Virginia for some reason) in a band called Steel Mill, but couldn’t get arrested anywhere else — except, of course, for the times when he actually was arrested for things like hitchhiking or having long hair.

Bruce broke up the band in the early 70’s to play under his own name and managed to score a record deal with Columbia, but his wordy and lengthy songs made little impression on DJs, record buyers, or his own label. Over in the UK, on the other hand, David Bowie covered two songs from Springsteen’s debut and Manfred Mann covered a third, turning “Blinded By The Light” into a classic rock staple.

In 1974, Jon Landau — best known at the time as a writer for Rolling Stone — published his oft-quoted review of a Springsteen concert with the E Street Band. The review gained legendary status immediately, mostly because it seemed so hyperbolic and audiences at the time disdained anything that smacked of hype, but also because it proved prescient — Springsteen and his band lived up to the legend.

At the time of the review, Bruce was scraping to make ends meet, sometimes sleeping on the beach because he had nowhere else to go, or scouring his car seats for pennies. Within a year, both Time and Newsweek placed him on their covers. Within a decade, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were the biggest rock and roll band in America, if not the world.

You can’t start a fire without a spark. Sit tight. Take hold. Here’s the least you need to know:

Born To Run (1975) You gotta get out of this dead end town and you can. Just hop on a motorcycle, get in a car, you and your baby and the open road, riding into the future, leaving it all behind. An album about youth, romance, and hope.

Darkness On The Edge Of Town (1978) You gotta get out of this town but you can’t. There’s no riding off into the sunset because the horizon holds nothing but darkness. An album about getting older, getting real, and looking for hope.

Nebraska (1982) Springsteen’s acoustic demos were so powerful he decided to strip away the band, turning in a bleak, black and white, modern folk album loosely based around his own childhood and the Charlie Starkweather murders of the 1950’s.

Born In The USA (1984) Some albums perfectly capture the essence of a nation at a certain point in time. A celebration and an indictment of the American dream. Rarely do indictments go platinum and have 7 (out of 12) tracks reach the US Top 10.

Live (1975-1985) The foundation upon which the reputation of The Boss stands. His albums are classic, but his live performances were major events, rock and roll spectacles that built, and then burnished, the legend.