1 While it was Asbury Park, New Jersey, that he made famous, he was actually born (on September 23, 1949) in nearby Long Branch and raised in Freehold

2  He got his first guitar after seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show. Learning to play was so frustrating, though, that he put it down for five years.

3  His high school band, the Castiles, had its first performance in 1965 at the Woodhaven Swim Club in Woodhaven, New Jersey. The group closed the show with Springsteen's arrangement of Glenn Miller's "In the Mood." They earned $35.

4  With the cheapest tickets on his reunion tour selling for $37.50 and most costing $67.50, his concerts gross roughly $1 million a night. Bruce's 15 sellouts at New Jersey's legendary Meadowlands make him the biggest-drawing artist in the history of that complex, playing to more than a million fans during multinight stands from 1981 to 1999.

5  Bruce made his first recording with the Castiles when he was 16, cowriting two songs in the back of the car on the way to the shopping-mall studio in Bricktown, New Jersey. The songs--"That's What You Get" and "Baby I"--were never released.

6  Though he has had a dozen songs in the Top 10, Springsteen has never had a number one single. (Neither, for the record, have James Brown or Creedence Clearwater Revival.)

7  Manfred Mann's Earth Band, on the other hand, had a Number One hit with its version of Springsteen's "Blinded by the Light."

8  Bruce's first manager was Mike Appel, who cowrote the Partridge Family's 1971 hit "Doesn't Somebody Want to Be Wanted?"

9  He signed his first management contract on the hood of a car in the unlit parking lot of a New Jersey bar.

10 He later was tied up in court for 11 months fighting to have the contract voided.