“‘He must be from the Fort,’ he hears the high school girls say.”
– Bruce Springsteen, “Lost in the Flood,” 1973
I recently gave a public talk where it emerged that I started my career as a historian, archivist, and curator for the US Army at a military base located not far from Monmouth University called Fort Monmouth in 2004. As I shared with the audience, Bruce Springsteen has some ties to the base himself. They were intrigued, so now I’m sharing that information with you!
First, though, a bit of background on the Fort. It started as a Signal Corps training camp during World War I. The Signal Corps is the branch of the Army charged with all manner of communication. During the “Great War” era, that meant everything from pigeons to the earliest air to ground radios.
While Camp Alfred Vail, as it was then known, was supposed to be temporary, it wound up outliving the War. The base became known as Fort Monmouth in 1925 in honor of the nearby Revolutionary War Battle of Monmouth. Through its closure in 2011, the base trained thousands upon thousands of soldiers in its schools; while its research and development laboratories innovated technologies that saved lives on the battlefield and, as they made their way into the civilian world, changed the way we all live. See more in my 2024 book, Fort Monmouth: The US Army’s House of Magic.
Today, global streaming giant Netflix is preparing to move into much of what used to be the Fort.
“…the great music of the Castiles kept the evening really bouncing along.”
So how is Bruce connected to Fort Monmouth? Through his music, of course! While there is still research to be done here, it appears that Bruce played at Fort Monmouth several times in the 1960s, and in 1988, 2002, 2012, and 2016.
His earliest performances at the base would have been with the Castiles, often referred to as Bruce’s first “real” band. The Castiles played places like local schools, roller rinks, swim clubs—and Fort Monmouth.
A notebook listing Castiles performances. Photographed by Mark Krajnak for the BSACAM.
As a 1967 Monmouth Message newspaper article noted of the band performing at the opening of the expanded Fort Monmouth Teen Club, “Ribbon cutting, cake cutting and door prizes and also the great music of the Castiles kept the evening really bouncing along.” It seems the band had even the base commander, Major General William B. Latta, and his wife, on their feet and dancing!
The Fort Monmouth newspaper reports on the Teen Club opening, featuring The Castiles, 1967.
The Castiles would break up, as teen bands are wont to do, and Bruce would go on to sign with Columbia Records as a solo artist in 1972. In 1973, he released two albums—Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Columbia had high hopes for both albums, but, while they received largely positive reviews, they struggled commercially. Industry insiders had touted Bruce as a promising new voice, even calling him the next Bob Dylan, but he failed to catch on with a wider audience. Springsteen faced pressure from Columbia to deliver a hit, or risk being dropped.
Luckily for Springsteen, a breakthrough came in August 1975 with Born to Run. The album’s lush, cinematic sound and its themes of youthful desperation and escape resonated with broader audiences than Springsteen’s earlier work had. The single “Born to Run” caught fire on the radio, and Bruce’s concerts—already legendary at the Jersey Shore—gained a national reputation for their intensity. The rest, as they say, is history, and in 2025, Springsteen is just off a tour that saw him playing to sold out venues across the globe.
“…it was a big hush hush thing…”
Such fame means crowds of adoring fans often show up when you need privacy—and that’s what ultimately brought Bruce back to the Fort at the height of his success. The Teen Club was long gone at that point, but Springsteen found he could practice at the secure military base’s Expo Theater without crowds showing up as they would when he practiced in more publicly accessible venues, like Asbury Park’s Convention Hall.
The Fort Monmouth Expo Theater. Courtesy US Army / Melissa Ziobro.
It seems “famous Bruce” (versus teen Bruce) first sought refuge at the base while rehearsing for his Tunnel of Love Express tour. Brucebase shows three rehearsals in January / February 1988, with one of these reportedly seeing “the only known rehearsal or live performance to date of ‘Protection,’ as well as a one-off but incomplete rendition of The Four Tops’s ‘Something About You.’”
The next Fort rehearsals appear to have been in July 2002, in advance of the tour for The Rising. Tom Braumuller, a fire inspector at Fort Monmouth from 1989 to 2004, met Bruce Springsteen during this time. As Tom recalled in an oral history interview for our archive, “…the director of MWR [Morale, Welfare, and Recreation] … brought me into the office and … said, ‘I’m gonna tell you something. And it doesn’t leave your lips … Bruce Springsteen has leased out the base theater to practice for his tour …’ But it was a big hush hush thing, because if people knew he was there, the base would be surrounded by people.”
While he was rehearsing, Bruce wanted to visit the Fort’s firehouse. Tom continued, “I didn’t even tell the firemen he was coming, until the day that man [Bruce] rolled into the parking lot and I called everybody down to the kitchen. I said, ‘Hey, guys, we have a visitor, I need everybody to come downstairs.’ Well, they walked in, their jaws dropped, and [Bruce] hung out, he was down here for a good hour or so, and he just hung out, chatted with us. He signed t-shirts [and] CDs that we had of his songs.”
Some other lucky Fort employees managed to run into the Boss in 2002 as well. One, who was interviewed for our archive but wishes to remain anonymous, remembered, “He pulled in, on this giant Indian motorcycle…He could’ve just completely ignored me. He could have just walked in and been like, ‘oh, this is what I hate about…being famous.’ And he didn’t, he came over, and we had this great conversation.”
After the base closed in 2011, the site remained secure while awaiting redevelopment and therefore still suited to Bruce’s privacy needs. He’d practice there in early 2012 in advance of the Wrecking Ball tour and in 2016 in advance of The River tour. Little is known about these rehearsals, as the base would have been a ghost town during these years.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band rehearsing at the Fort Monmouth Expo Theater, 2016. Courtesy Danny Clinch / @Bruce Springsteen Facebook.
Another Springsteen / Fort Monmouth tie involves the red hat in Bruce’s back pocket on the Born in the USA album cover. I’ll have an article coming out on that in the next issue of NJ Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. We’ll let the suspense build on that one.
Today, Bruce’s career is going strong, but with major construction underway by Netflix, the future of the Expo Theater remains uncertain. If you have memories of Springsteen playing there, we’d love to hear from you! You can reach me at mziobro@monmouth.edu.
Melissa Ziobro
Director of Curatorial Affairs
Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music
Monmouth University
October 27, 2025