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Bruce Springsteen Center ribbon-cutting ceremony on June 6, 2026
Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music ribbon-cutting ceremony on June 6, 2026 at Monmouth University in Long Branch
- The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music has opened on the campus of Monmouth University in Long Branch.
- Springsteen stated that music builds community and tells people they are not alone.
- The facility was celebrated with two nights of concerts featuring artists like Jon Bon Jovi, Public Enemy and Sheryl Crow.
They’re building a community.
The new Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music on the campus of Monmouth University in Long Branch is a place to make connections, Springsteen said in an exclusive phone interview Tuesday, June 9, with the Asbury Park Press.
Music has that power.
“Music always has a message. It tells you you are not alone,” Springsteen, 76, said. “Whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re thinking about, you are not alone.”
The center, which opens to the public on June 13, has exhibition galleries, research archives, immersive interactive experiences, a performance theater and a gift shop with Springsteen merch from all phases of the Boss’ career.
Downstairs tells the story of American music and upstairs it’s Springsteen and the E Street Band.
The center’s leadership includes Robert Santelli, executive director; Eileen Chapman, director; and Melissa Kozlowski, director of curatorial affairs. The $50 million wood-accented building was designed by Rick Cook of CookFox Architects, based in New York.
Springsteen also spoke about how music saved him from isolation; the recent biopic, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere;” how Monmouth University has become a creative hub for him, and the recent Springsteen Center’s Music America: The Songs That Shaped Us concerts at Monmouth University on June 4 and 5.
Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Public Enemy, Little Steven Van Zandt, Sheryl Crow, Jackson Browne, Kenny Chesney, Rosanne Cash, Dropkick Murphys and more played, and Santelli emceed the concerts over two nights at the OceanFirst Bank Center on the university’s campus.
Shows produced by the Springsteen Center, like the America Music concerts, can be viewed at the center’s archives.
Now, here’s the interview:
Q: What do you feel is the most important thing for visitors at the new center?
Springsteen: I feel the most important thing is the historical context of the impact of all these musicians have had on American culture. I think you come in and you’re on that bottom floor and you get to see all those wonderful exhibits, Louie Armstrong’s trumpet, Frank Sinatra’s tuxedo, you get a sense of pre-rock era American music, and to me that’s the idea of it, being a long chain of people who dedicated their hearts and souls and spirits to shaping American culture. I think I’d like kids to come out with this historical perspective on the importance of music in the American life.
Q: I got a sense of another important thing is the sense of music as a community builder. We live in an era, like you said on (the Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour), where we’re kind of becoming distant from each other … Music, as you view it and maybe a lot of other people view it, it builds a sense of community. It builds a connection that we’re losing. We’re becoming untethered to our communities.
Springsteen: Live music is one of the few things (that), one, it demands that you come out of your house. It demands you pretty much shut off your screens for a while. It demands that you gather together with your neighbors. Then the shows itself are sort of a true melting pot of American culture.
If you were at the university over the weekend (at the Springsteen Center’s Music America concerts) you saw all kinds of music made by all kinds of people. Then you saw those people playing and singing together. There is something egalitarian, democratic and incredibly positive in that experience.
To me, the weekend was wonderful because, gee, you got Jonny Bon Jovi, you got Public Enemy, you got Mavis Staples, Kenny Chesney, I mean the net was cast over such a wide group of American musicians that it was a wonderful time. So yeah, I think music fights against isolation. This loneliness, it is something that when you arrive at a concert or even when you put something on in your own home, music always has a message — it tells you you are not alone. Whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re thinking about, you are not alone. You are not alone.
Q: I got from the movie “Deliver Me from Nowhere” a message of stay away from extreme isolation. Even back then (in the early ’80s) you were kind of ringing the bell about that. It’s not healthy to get too withdrawn into yourself. We’re all connected here.
Springsteen: I was brought up to be, for better or worse, I was a loner throughout a lot of my young life. Psychologically that was where I was set. So music was the one thing that drew me out of that. I put together a band. If you go out to a concert, you are in concert with your audience. You are engaging in conversation with thousands of people on a nightly basis and I found that gave me a psychological balance that I did not have previously in my character and in my personality.
I think the film was watching somebody come back from those tendencies and that experience, so I’ve been lucky that I had music throughout my life. When I started to play music, it was the first time I began to feel a part of something. My first community was I went over Tex Vinyard’s house in Freehold, New Jersey, in a dining room with six other guys and we started to play together. That was the first community I ever truly felt a part of and that’s led me to feeling that community with the entire nation and the entire world. It’s always been a balm for my natural tendencies toward isolation.
Q: Physically in (the Springsteen Center), there’s so many wonderful things you see and the way it’s set up you’ll see something that will trigger you in a good way and you’re right next to somebody. There’s no long hallways to see an exhibit at the center and you’re cordoned off from everybody. It’s a community experience there.
Springsteen: The center was designed to be a place that brings people together. Once we get rolling, the educational projects that they’re going to have there, it’s a place that’s going to bring a community together. It was designed for that and that’s one of the things I cherished the most about it.
Q: Monmouth University has been a real creative hub for you, I’d say in the last 10 years? You did a few rehearsal shows for “Springsteen on Broadway” there. The American Music Honors (concert at the university’s Pollak Theatre), correct me if I’m wrong on this, when two years ago Tom Morello sang the great Woody Guthrie song ( “This Land Is Your Land”), that seemed to chart your course for the next two tours to include an activist message with the show?
Springsteen: I have to salute Pat Leahy (Monmouth University president), who simply came in and was an incredibly powerful force in engaging us with the university. He was just all in on what we wanted us to do and he wanted us to be a part of the university and of the campus. He’s been an incredible partner, of course with Eileen Chapman and Bob Santelli, they’ve been incredible partners in engaging us with the university to put on these incredible events.
Q: It’s a moment of trust for you, giving Bob, Eileen and Melissa the reins. This is the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music and your name’s on there and that seems like quite a moment for you.
Springsteen: It was something I initially had a bit of ambivalence about — gee, you’re building a building with my name on it, all of that stuff. I knew I don’t know how to put together a center. I have no particular skills in that area. So I was going to have to trust somebody completely and Bob and Eileen and everybody over there really ran with the ball and they built the center.
The sensitivities, they were really aware of my own sensibility in how the center should feel, what it should deliver. I have salute to them completely because I’m on the road, I’m making records, they really put it together with such sensitivity and intelligence that it really reflects who I am and my philosophy.
Q: I always enjoy talking to the (students) there. They’re smart, they’re engaged, they’re no dummies and they really seem to get it.
Springsteen: It’s great to have the students involved. It’s another plus.
Q: Those (Music America) shows were so good, man, I don’t know where to start. Let me ask you this, any thoughts on taking the Bruce Springsteen Center American Music roadshow on the road?
Springsteen: (Laughs) The fun thing about the shows was it was like the old Alan Freed shows. People come up, they do a song or two, then they leave and that’s how the old rock ’n’ roll shows were. But I don’t think we have any plans to take it on the road at the moment. It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
Q: It was great and Marc (Ribler, music director) and the augmented Disciples of Soul …
Springsteen: I can’t tell you how difficult and how impressed I was by Marc Ribler and the Disciples of Soul. They had to learn all kinds of music, get deep into it, to survive over those two days and they were exemplary. I have to give them a shout-out because they did an incredible job.
Q: It was amazing. The only thing Marc Ribler didn’t know was the name of the Elvis intro song that you came out to (at the June 5 show).
Springsteen: (Laughs) I don’t know the name of it. All I know is I said, Marc, when I come on (you play) dah-dah dahhh — the Elvis Las Vegas intro. Really fast, as fast as you can play it. We were having some fun with it.
Q: Everybody knocked it out of the park and you were great. The second line (at the June 4 show) with Trombone Shorty …
Springsteen: I didn’t know that was going to happen but Trombone Shorty was fantastic.
Q: You always deliver, you always surprise in a good way.
Springsteen: That’s good, that’s my job. (Laughs)
Go: Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, 382 Cedar Ave., Long Branch. $22 (adults); $20 (seniors); $16 (youth 7-17 and veterans); free for kids 6 and under, active military, Monmouth University students. Entry slots must be selected via springsteencenter.org. Saturday is sold out.
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Chris Jordan, a Jersey Shore native, covers entertainment and features for the USA Today Network New Jersey. Contact him at [email protected]
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