''Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.'' is the debut

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

by the American singer-songwriter

Bruce Springsteen Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American Rock music, rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Nicknamed "the Boss", Springsteen has released 21 studio albums spanning six decades; most of his albums feature th ...

. It was produced from June through October 1972 by Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos at the budget-priced 914 Sound Studios. The album was released January 5, 1973, by

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American reco ...

to average sales but a positive critical reception. ''Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.'' first charted in the United Kingdom on June 15, 1985, in the wake of Springsteen's '' Born in the U.S.A.'' tour arriving in Britain; it remained in the top 100 for ten weeks.'' The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums,'' 1996 In 2003, the album was ranked at No. 379 in ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...

''s "

500 Greatest Albums of All Time 5 (five) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number, and cardinal number, following 4 and preceding 6, and is a prime number. Humans, and many other animals, have 5 digits on their limbs. Mathematics 5 is a Fermat pri ...

" list and in 2013 the same magazine listed ''Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.'' as one of the "100 Greatest Debut Albums of All Time". On November 22, 2009, the album was played in its entirety for the first time by Bruce Springsteen and the

E Street Band The E Street Band is an American rock band that has been the primary backing band for rock musician Bruce Springsteen since 1972. In 2014, the E Street Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For the bulk of Springsteen's recordin ...

, at the

HSBC Arena HSBC Arena may refer to: * Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro, known as HSBC Arena from 2008 to 2017 * KeyBank Center KeyBank Center is a multipurpose indoor arena located in Buffalo, New York, United States. Originally known as Marine Midlan ...

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...

, to celebrate the last show of the ''Working on a Dream'' tour.

Recording

Springsteen and his first manager Mike Appel recorded the album at the low-priced, out-of-the-way 914 Sound Studios to save as much as possible of the

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American reco ...

advance, and cut most of the songs during the last week of June 1972. There was a dispute not long after the record was recorded—Appel and John Hammond preferred the solo tracks, while Springsteen preferred the band songs. As such, a compromise was reached—the album was to feature five songs with the band ("For You", "Growin' Up", "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?", "It's Hard to be a Saint in the City", and "Lost in the Flood") and five solo songs ("Mary Queen of Arkansas", "The Angel", "Jazz Musician", "Arabian Nights" and "Visitation at Fort Horn"). However, when Columbia Records president

Clive Davis Clive Jay Davis (born April 4, 1932) is an American record producer, A&R executive, record executive, and lawyer. He has won five Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a non-performer, in 2000. From 1967 to 1 ...

heard the album submitted on August 10, 1972, he felt that it lacked a potential hit single, and rejected it. Springsteen quickly wrote "

Blinded by the Light "Blinded by the Light" is a song written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen, which first appeared on his 1973 debut album ''Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.'' A cover by British rock band Manfred Mann's Earth Band reached number one on the Billb ...

" and " Spirit in the Night", and recorded both on September 11, 1972. Because pianist

David Sancious David Sancious (born November 30, 1953) is an American musician. He was an early member of Bruce Springsteen's backing group, the E Street Band, and contributed to the first three Springsteen albums, and again on '' Human Touch'' (1992), '' Tr ...

and bassist

Garry Tallent Garry Wayne Tallent (born October 27, 1949), sometimes billed as Garry W. Tallent, is an American musician and record producer, best known for being the bass player and a founding member of the E Street Band, Bruce Springsteen's primary backing ...

were unavailable, a four-man band was used— Vini Lopez on drums, Harold Wheeler on piano, Springsteen on guitar, piano (on Spirit in the Night only), and bass, and the previously missing

Clarence Clemons Clarence Anicholas Clemons Jr. (January 11, 1942 – June 18, 2011), also known as The Big Man, was an American saxophonist. From 1972 until his death in 2011, he was the saxophonist for Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band. Clemons rel ...

on saxophone. Columbia accepted the revised album, and Davis was personally pleased with Springsteen's response.

Critical reception

Reviewing for ''

'' in July 1973,

Lester Bangs Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs (December 14, 1948 – April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist and critic. He wrote for ''Creem'' and ''Rolling Stone'' magazines and was also a performing musician. The music critic Jim DeRogatis called ...

hailed Springsteen as a daring new artist who sets himself apart from his contemporaries with songwriting that either has a serious meaning or showcases his uninhibited gift for verbose, overloaded lyrics and rhyme schemes. "Some of is wordscan mean something socially or otherwise", Bangs said, "but there's plenty of 'em that don't even pretend to, reveling in the joy of utter crass showoff talent run amuck and totally out of control".

Peter Knobler Peter Knobler (born 1946) is an American writer living in New York City. He has collaborated on fifteen books, ten of them best sellers and was the editor-in-chief of '' Crawdaddy'' magazine from 1972 to 1979.Crawdaddy'' that "he sings with a freshness and urgency I haven't heard since I was rocked by '

Like a Rolling Stone "Like a Rolling Stone" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on July 20, 1965, by Columbia Records. Its confrontational lyrics originated in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhauste ...

' ... the album rocks, then glides, then rocks again. There is the combined sensibility of the chaser and the chaste, the street punk and the bookworm." ''

Creem ''Creem'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American rock music magazine and entertainment company, founded in Detroit, whose initial print run lasted from 1969 to 1989. It was first published in March 1969 by Barry Kramer and founding editor ...

'' magazine's

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became a ...

said Springsteen's songs are dominated by the kind of mannered emotional transparency and "absurdist energy" that made

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...

"a genius instead of a talent". In '' Christgau's Record Guide'' (1981), he wrote that despite the grandiloquent, unaccompanied "Mary Queen of Arkansas" and "The Angel", songs such as "Blinded by the Light" and "Growin' Up" foreshadow Springsteen's "unguarded teen-underclass poetry", while even the maundering "Lost in the Flood" is interesting. In '' All Music Guide to Rock'' (2002), William Ruhlmann gave ''Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.'' five stars and said that it combined the mid-1960s

folk rock Folk rock is a fusion genre of rock music with heavy influences from pop, English and American folk music. It arose in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s. In the U.S., folk rock emerged from the folk music re ...

music of Bob Dylan, accessible melodies, and elaborate arrangements and lyrics: "''Asbury Park'' painted a portrait of teenagers cocksure of themselves, yet bowled over by their discovery of the world. It was saved from pretentiousness (if not preciousness) by its sense of humor and by the careful eye for detail ... that kept even the most high-flown language rooted." In 2003, the album was ranked number 379 on ''

'''s list of

the 500 greatest albums of all time "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is a recurring opinion survey and music ranking of the finest albums in history, compiled by the American magazine ''Rolling Stone''. It is based on weighted votes from selected musicians, critics, and indu ...

. They ranked it 37th on their list of greatest debut albums.

Track listing

Personnel

– lead vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar,

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica incl ...

conga The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest ...

s, handclaps, bass guitar on “Blinded by the Light” and “Spirit in the Night”, piano on “Spirit in the Night” The E Street Band *

– saxophone, backing vocals, handclaps * Vini Lopez – drums, backing vocals, handclaps *

– piano,

Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert, first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding #Drawbars, drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, sound was created ...

, keyboards *

– bass guitar Additional musicians * Richard Davis –

double bass The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions ...

on "The Angel" * Harold Wheeler – piano on "Blinded by the Light" and "Spirit in the Night" Technical * Mike Appel – producer * Jim Cretecos – producer *Louis Lahav –

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

*Jack Ashkinazy – remixing * John Berg – cover design *Fred Lombardi – back cover design *

Steven Van Zandt Steven Van Zandt (né Lento; born November 22, 1950), also known as Little Steven or Miami Steve, is an American musician and actor. He is a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, in which he plays guitar and mandolin. He has appeared i ...

reportedly provided sound effects on " Lost in the Flood", although Van Zandt denied having any involvement on his official

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

page.

Charts

Certifications and sales

References

External links

Album lyrics and audio samples
*
''Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.''
at

Myspace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

(streamed copy where licensed)
The Asbury Park Boardwalk, New Jersey – Past and Present
{{DEFAULTSORT:Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. Bruce Springsteen albums 1973 debut albums Albums produced by Mike Appel Columbia Records albums Asbury Park, New Jersey