A look back to when Bruce made the cover of ‘Time’ & ‘Newsweek’ at the same time

One of the things that helped launch Bruce Springsteen to stratospheric stardom was in the last week of October in 1975 when the two largest news weeklies, Time and Newsweek both featured New Jersey’s native son on their covers. Springsteen had released his third album Born to Run in August of that year and it had ascended to #3 on the Billboard Album Chart (it eventually sold 6 million copies).

The Newsweek cover story said that because of the album, Bruce had “exploded into a genuine pop-music phenomenon.” In the article, though, the magazine comments on the music industry’s hype machine and wonders if the all the attention will hurt him in the long run (spoiler alert: it didn’t). The Time piece referred to him as “rock’s new sensation” and, as quoted on Ultimate Classic Rock, said that “everybody is going to know where he's coming from and just where he's heading.” The magazine also said he was “a glorified gutter rat from a dying New Jersey resort town who walks with an easy swagger that is part residual stage presence, part boardwalk braggadocio.”

Ultimate Classic Rock also points out that Bruce being on the cover of both magazines wasn’t just happenstance. When Time found out that Newsweek was preparing a story on Bruce, they rushed to get theirs done so as not to get scooped by their main rival. Anyway, as we all know, after being the first rock star to pull off being on the cover of the two mass market weeklies at the same time, Bruce carved out a pretty good career for a gutter rat.

More from New Jersey 101.5