Bruce Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa, shielded their three children from his superstardom when they were younger.
In a recent interview with The Times, Springsteen, 75, opened up about why he and Scialfa, 71, “didn’t expose” their kids — Evan, 34, Jessica, 32, and Samuel, 30 — to his fame at first.
“When they were little, if they heard me on the radio they would go, ‘Bruce Springsteen!’” he recalled. “It was their way of separating their dad from this abstract character who also seemed to be a part of their lives. A lot of times, we just didn’t expose them to it.”
Springsteen continued, “They came to concerts a few times before going back to their rooms to play video games, and didn’t know much about it beyond what they may have read.”
As the kids grew older, they started to become more involved and “wanted to bring their friends” to see their dad perform. “But apart from that they chose their own lives, developed their own work, found their own partners and families, all at a nice distance from the strangeness of my job,” he added.
Springsteen’s onstage persona also kept its distance from his marriage. “The minute I step off stage, I’m the chauffeur who gets the kids to school at 6 a.m.,” he teased.
Springsteen and Scialfa tied the knot in 1991, one year after welcoming their first son, Evan. The couple had a long history before their relationship eventually became romantic. (Scialfa has been a member of Springsteen’s E Street Band since 1984.)
“I’ve known Pats, on and off, since she was 17, and we had a steady relationship as friends until we got together as a couple in 1988, when I was 38 and she was 34,” Springsteen told The Times. “It’s worked out pretty well … except for the fact that I tend to take up a lot of space.”
Though he’s one of the most famous names in music — Springsteen has sold more than 140 million records worldwide and won 20 Grammy Awards throughout his decades-long career — The Boss previously admitted that his kids have never been his biggest fans.
“They had their own musical heroes, they had their own music they were interested in,” he told The New York Times in 2023, joking that Evan, Jessica and Samuel tended to “showed a healthy disinterest” in his career. “They’d be pretty blank-faced if someone mentioned a song title of mine.”
To Springsteen, the disinterest was a positive sign. “I always looked upon that as that we did a good job. … I know a lot of kids who wouldn’t mind seeing 50,000 people boo their parents. But I don’t know how many would want to see those people cheer [for] their parents,” he teased. “It’s just not right!”
Springsteen’s family has been in the spotlight for years, and fans recently gained new insight into their lives when Scialfa revealed she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2018. The revelation came in the documentary Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
“They found it early on and she’s got really good doctors, who have helped a lot. But it does fatigue her, very intensely, and that’s a problem,” Springsteen told The Times. “I’m doing a three-hour show, which is fatiguing for me and I’m pretty much at the top of my health. But she’s been great.”
He continued, “We’ve worked out that she can come out and sing a few songs, and it’s important that the fans know what’s going on because they haven’t seen her in five years. Patti decided she owed that to her audience.”
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