''Backstreets Magazine'' is a published quarterly

Bruce Springsteen Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer and songwriter. He has released 21 studio albums, most of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. Originally from the Jersey Shore, he is an originato ...

fanzine A fanzine (blend of '' fan'' and ''magazine'' or ''-zine'') is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) for the pleasure of others who share ...

that has been covering the music of Springsteen and other

Jersey Shore sound The Jersey Shore sound is a genre of rock and roll popularized at the Jersey Shore on the Atlantic Ocean coast of New Jersey, United States. The Jersey Shore sound evolved from the mixing of pre-Beatles rock and roll, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, ...

artists since 1980. On February 3, 2023, the magazine's publisher and editor-in-chief announced that the magazine will cease publication after one final upcoming issue and will stop updating its website.

History

On October 24, 1980, Bruce Springsteen performed at the Seattle Coliseum in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...

, during The River Tour. That night

Charles R. Cross Charles R. Cross is a Seattle-based music journalist, author and editor. He is primarily known for his coverage of Bruce Springsteen, Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix. Career He was the Editor of '' The Rocket'' in Seattle for fifteen years ( ...

passed out 10,000 copies of a free four-page

tabloid Tabloid may refer to: * Tabloid journalism, a type of journalism * Tabloid (newspaper format), a newspaper with compact page size ** Chinese tabloid * Tabloid (paper size), a North American paper size * Sopwith Tabloid The Sopwith Tabloid an ...

about Springsteen that he had created. That first issue mostly ended up discarded, with many copies floating in puddles by night's end. Those did survive have become valuable collector's items, sometimes fetching hundreds of dollars for a copy.Graff, Gary (2005). ''The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z'', Visible Ink Press, USA. . After that modest beginning, ''Backstreets Magazine'' began an uninterrupted run of publishing. Along the way the magazine won a Music Journalism Award winner for Best Fanzine, and grew from its newsprint roots to a slick magazine format with issue number 10. Full color covers followed soon thereafter, and eventually ''Backstreets'' became a typical full-color published magazine. Christopher Phillips is the publisher and editor of ''Backstreets''. He moved to Seattle in 1993, and began working with Cross starting with issue number 44. By 1994 Phillips was

managing editor A managing editor (ME) is a senior member of a publication's management team. Typically, the managing editor reports directly to the editor-in-chief and oversees all aspects of the publication. United States In the United States, a managing edit ...

, and he launched the companion website in 1995. In 1998 Phillips took over the magazine completely. He stayed in Seattle until 2000, and then moved operations to the East Coast. Phillips and ''Backstreets'' both reside in

Chapel Hill, North Carolina Chapel Hill is a town in Orange, Durham and Chatham counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Its population was 61,960 in the 2020 census, making Chapel Hill the 17th-largest municipality in the state. Chapel Hill, Durham, and the state ...

Website

Backstreets.com grew into a major source of information for the Springsteen fan community. The website provided news, show schedules and reviews, ticket sales information, online store, and news about E Street Band members and Jersey Shore artists. The site also includes BTX, an

Internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least tempora ...

which presents a number of message boards for discussion of everything about Springsteen, as well as to buy, resell, and trade tickets to Springsteen's shows. BTX became the dominant Springsteen fan discussion forum in the U.S., supplanting prior vehicles such as the

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

group rec.music.artists.springsteen, the "Luckytown"

electronic mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...

, and the pre-Internet, telephone-based "Bruce party line". The website was successful enough that, as the decade of the 2000s progressed, the "quarterly" issues of the printed magazine came out far less frequently, causing some sporadic dissatisfaction among subscribers.

References

External links

Official website
{{italic title 1980 establishments in Washington (state) Bruce Springsteen Fanzines Magazines established in 1980 Magazines published in Seattle Music magazines published in the United States Quarterly magazines published in the United States