Why is he called the boss?

Springsteen acquired the nickname Boss during this period, as he took on the task of collecting his band's nightly pay and distributing it to his bandmates. The nickname also reportedly grew out of Monopoly games Springsteen would play with other Jersey Shore musicians. According to Biography, Bruce Springsteen earned his iconic nickname during the 1960s while performing with several bands on the Jersey Shore, where he also met the members of what would become the E Street Band. He regularly collected concert profits and divided them evenly among his bandmates, earning him the nickname The Boss.

Obviously, Springsteen disagreed with that assessment, since he hates bosses. But if you weren't paying your fellow interpreters like an employer, then what were you doing? The albums produced during this period by Human Touch and Lucky Town, released on the same day in 1992, came from a happier place; ironically, as his personal life improved, his songs seemed to lack the emotional intensity that had made him so famous in previous years. As Dave Marsh of Creem magazine prophetically wrote in 1975, Springsteen's music is often strange because it has an almost traditional sense of beauty, a hint of the wonder you can feel when, for example, you fall in love for the first time or finally discover that the magic of music is also in you. Lyrically struggling with the pain, anger and anguish caused by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the album restored Springsteen's status as one of America's most iconic musicians.

This nickname was a way to keep his friends from deciding to call him Gut Bomb King thanks to all the candy he would bring with him to these weekly games and everyone can agree that The Boss is a more satisfying game name than the inflammatory Gut Bomb King.

Dolores Blicker
Dolores Blicker

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