📍Freehold, New Jersey, USA
1949 – 1969“Bruce Springsteen spent his first years at 87 Randolph Street in Freehold, New Jersey, an old and decrepit house he shared with his parents, Doug and Adele, his sister Virginia and his paternal grandparents. In his memoir Born to Run, he remembered a single kerosene stove heating the whole house, waking to see his breath on winter mornings, and his grandfather filling the stove. In the front yard stood a huge copper beech, which he called the grandest tree in town, and which became his fort and second home. The church and school of St. Rose of Lima were a few steps away, and Catholic life shaped his days, often uncomfortably. His family moved around Freehold, to Institute Street and later South Street, and he grew up between his father's silences and his mother's steady work as a legal secretary. Freehold was a working-class town of factories, bars and racetracks, and he saw his father struggle to hold on to jobs. When he was seven he watched Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show; later, after the Beatles, his mother bought him a guitar, and music became his way out and his way of understanding where he came from. After school he played in local bands, then moved toward the Jersey Shore and Asbury Park, where he built his reputation. His songs returned again and again to towns like Freehold, to fathers and sons, factories and the longing to escape. He has spoken of the town with complicated love, and in his memoir he returns to the copper beech as a symbol of the family roots that shaped him.”
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