The Shotgun Blast That Led to the Story Behind “My Hometown” by Bruce Springsteen

Two teens were shot in Freehold, New Jersey, in 1969.

Bruce Springsteen’s seventh single from the album Born in the U.S.A. Image courtesy of Columbia Records.

The May 21, 1969, edition of The Asbury Park Press reported the events of the previous evening as they occurred in Freehold, New Jersey. The police logbook showed a group of black teenagers gathered near the bus terminal and were dispersed without incident. Two hours later, another group was broken up, leading to multiple smashed windows. Multiple calls came in to report groups of blacks with sticks and clubs at various locations around town.

At 10:00 pm, a caller reported a crowd “pelting passing cars with rocks and bottles.” At 10:27, a “large group” of cars filled with white teens drove through the bus terminal area “shouting catcalls to nearby black youths.” Several minutes later, police said, “A carload of white youths pulled alongside a car of black youths, and a shotgun was fired into the backseat of black teenagers.”

Let’s take a look at the story behind “My Hometown” by Bruce Springsteen.

Freehold’s most famous citizen was still unknown at the time. Bruce Springsteen was playing with a band called Child. In 2021, he told Barack Obama, “I grew up in a bit of an integrated neighborhood. I had Black friends when I was really young, but there were a lot of rules about whose house you shouldn’t be in. You’re a child on your bicycle, and you’re aware of all these unspoken rules. Freehold was your typical small provincial redneck racist little American 1950s town, you know? It was a town that suffered a lot of racial strife… A friend of mine lost his eye… They brought in the state troopers, and there was a state of emergency.”

The victims of the 1969 shotgun blast were Dean Lewis, 16, who suffered wounds to his face, and Leroy Kinsey, Jr, 19, who was hit in the neck. They both survived and were taken to Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune. Mayor John Dawes declared a state of emergency and ordered a curfew until 6 am. Quiet was restored shortly after midnight.

Springsteen began writing the song in 1982 as an upbeat rockabilly number called “Your Hometown.” After recording a few demos of the song, he reworked it into a ballad called “My Hometown.”

In 2024, drummer Max Weinberg told Rolling Stone magazine, “One of the times I was staying at his house, there were two bedrooms, and mine was next to his. Late at night, I remember him writing, and I could hear literally through the door, him writing ‘My Hometown’ on his acoustic guitar. And that I remember distinctly. When he came to record it, he had done it with a Linn drum, just with the beat that ended up on the record. But he wanted me to replace the drum machine. And I overdubbed to what he had pretty much laid down in his house.”

Springsteen sings of the closing of a textile mill. A year after the song’s release, the Freehold 3M factory closed. On January 19, 1986, Springsteen played a benefit show for the affected workers at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park.

Before he played “My Hometown,” he said, “The marriage between a community and a company is a special thing that involves a special trust. What do you do after 10 years or 20 years, you wake up in the morning and see your livelihood sailing away from you, leaving you standing on the dock? What happens when the jobs go away, and the people remain? What goes unmeasured is the price that unemployment inflicts on people’s families, on their marriages, on the single mothers out there trying to raise their kids on their own. The 3M company: it’s their money, it’s their plant. But it’s the 3M workers’ jobs. I’m here to say that I think that after 25 years of service from a community, there is a debt owed to the 3M workers and to my hometown.”

The song closes the album Born in the U.S.A., which is one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. It has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. “My Hometown” was the seventh single off the album. When it hit the top ten, it became the seventh song to achieve that milestone, tying a record for most top-tens from an album. The music video for the song was directed by Arthur Rosato and was filmed live at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum toward the end of the Born in the U.S.A. tour.

When Springsteen introduced the song on Broadway in 2018, he said, *“Everybody has a love/hate relationship with their hometown. It’s just built into the equation of growing up. If you take me, I’m Mr. ‘Born to Run.’ I’m Mr. ‘Thunder Fing Road.’ I was born to run, not to stay. My home, New Jersey, it’s a death trap. It’s a suicide rap. Listen to the lyrics, alright? I gotta get out. I gotta hit the highway. I’m a road-running man. I got the white line fever in my veins. I am gonna bring my girl, and I have had enough of the s that this place dishes out. I am gonna run, run, run, and I’m never coming back. I currently live 10 minutes from my hometown. But, ‘Born to Come Back?’ Who would have bought that?”*

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By day, I work at the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum. Buy me a coffee.