Twenty-five years after the release of his first record, "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.," Bruce Springsteen is reborn in the U.S.A. "Tracks," the Boss' 66-song boxed set of mostly unreleased recordings, hits stores today. Meanwhile, the elaborate photo and lyric book "Bruce Springsteen: Songs" (Avon), with text written by the singer, becomes available tomorrow. Here's your chance to test your Springsteen knowledge with the following trivia questions adapted from "Songs" (answers are given below):
1) About which 1974 tune did Springsteen say, "At first I thought it was the name of a movie.... It suggested a cinematic drama I thought would work with the music I was hearing in my head.... It was the first piece of music I wrote and conceived as a studio production."
2) Which album did Springsteen record on a four-track Teac tape machine in the bedroom of his Colts Neck, N.J., home? About this release he said, "The songs connected to my childhood more than any other record I'd made."
3) Which writer-director sent Springsteen a script titled "Born in the U.S.A." with the hope that the singer would pen the film's music? (Hint: The movie was later released as "Light of Day.")
4) The following lyrics are from which song on the album "Born in the U.S.A."?
"I had a job, I had a girl/I had something going, mister, in this world/I got laid off down at the lumberyard/Our love went bad, times got hard/Now I work at the car wash/Where all it ever does is rain"
5) By the mid '80s, Springsteen felt that he'd done as much as he could recording with the E Street Band. Name the album of this period that he made in just three weeks (mostly by himself), saying, "I decided to reintroduce myself to my fans as a songwriter."
Answers: 1) "Born to Run" 2) "Nebraska" 3) Paul Schrader 4) "Downbound Train" 5) "Tunnel of Love"


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