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| Tour by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band | |
 Promotional poster for the show of June 15, 1985 in Frankfurt | |
| Associated album | Born in the U.S.A. |
|---|---|
| Start date | June 29, 1984 |
| End date | October 2, 1985 |
| Legs | 4 |
| No. of shows |
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| Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert chronology | |
The Born in the U.S.A. Tour was the supporting concert tour of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. album. It was his longest and most successful tour to date. It featured a physically transformed Springsteen; after two years of bodybuilding, the singer had bulked up considerably. The tour was the first since the 1974 portions of the Born to Run tours without guitarist Steven Van Zandt, who decided to go solo after recording the album with the group. Van Zandt, who was replaced by Nils Lofgren, would appear a few times throughout the tour and in some of the music videos to promote the album. It was also the first tour to feature Springsteen's future wife, Patti Scialfa.
The tour started in June 1984 and went through the United States and to Canada. In March 1985 the tour went to Australia, Japan and Europe. It then headed back for a second leg of the U.S. tour in which Springsteen and the E Street Band played to sold-out professional football stadiums. The tour finished in October 1985 in Los Angeles.
Springsteen had consistently pushed for improvements to the usual concert sound systems during his tours, wishing to provide the best experience for every audience member, and by the time of the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, the resulting eight rows of delay speakers suggested by Bruce Jackson, his live sound engineer during this period, brought greater audio fidelity to even the furthest "nosebleed" seats. This new development set a higher standard for concert sound, but it was more expensive to implement, and it became a factor in driving up the cost of concert tickets for artists who sought the same sound quality that Springsteen had demonstrated.[1][2][3][4]
The tour grossed $80–90 million overall.[5] Of that, $34 million came from Springsteen's summer 1985 stadium dates in North America.[5] The Born in the U.S.A. album was inside the top 10 of the Billboard 200 during the entire tour. Springsteen also was enjoying a hit single from the album (there were seven in total) during any moment of the tour. The album along with Springsteen's previous album, Nebraska, which he did not tour to promote, were performed in their entirety throughout the tour. Total attendance was 3.9 million.
- ^ Pertout, Andrián (March 1, 2000). "Bruce Jackson: Sonic Guru". Mixdown. Retrieved February 3, 2011.
- ^ Cullen, Jim (2005). Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American tradition. Wesleyan University Press. p. 107. ISBN 0-8195-6761-2.
- ^ Smith, Larry David (2002). Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and American song. Praeger. p. 134. ISBN 0-275-97393-X.
- ^ Marsh, Dave (2006). Bruce Springsteen on tour, 1968–2005. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 110. ISBN 1-59691-282-0.
- ^ a b Fricke, David (February 27, 1986). "The Long and Winding Road". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on April 21, 2009.