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Flint’s Classic Rock – 103.9 The Fox

  • 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.
  • MiamiSteve 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.