The New Issue: Bruce Springsteen Brings It All Back Home

With Working on a Dream — his third great album this decade — a Golden Globe and the Super Bowl halftime show, Bruce Springsteen is hitting another career peak. He invited David Fricke into his New Jersey studio to talk about his new music, the first song he ever recorded and life with the E Street Band. Get the full story in the new issue of Rolling Stone, which hits newsstands today, and get even more Bruce right here:

• Inside Bruce Springsteen's Rolling Stone Shoot — photographer Albert Watson takes you inside the session for this issue's cover in Springsteen's "writing room" and reveals what it was like to put the legend on film.

And don't miss these killer Springsteen galleries:

• Bruce Springsteen: The Vintage Photographs — His early days with the Castiles and hanging backstage with the Who.

• Bruce Springsteen: The RS Covers — Track Springsteen's evolution from 1978 to 2008 in all of our Bruce cover stories.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

More Song Stories entries »

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