WATCH: Obama on Springsteen: It all started on Highway 9

It all started on “Highway 9.”

President Barack Obama cited Bruce Springsteen’s “anthems of America” in bestowing the Freehold native with the Presidential Medal of Freedom Tuesday, Nov. 22 at the White House.

The anthems rose out of Springsteen’s upbringing in Freehold, Obama said.

“He was sprung from a cage out on Highway 9,” Obama said. “A quiet kid from Jersey just trying to make sense of the temple of dreams and the mysteries down in his hometown: pool halls, bars, girls and cars, alters and assembly lines and for decades, Bruce Springsteen has brought us all along on a journey consumed with the bargains between ambition and injustice, pleasure and pain, the simple glories and the scattered heartbreak of everyday life in American.”

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“To create one of his biggest hits, he once said, ‘I wanted to craft a record that sounded like the last record on Earth -- the last one you’d ever need to hear. One glorious noise -- then the apocalypse.” Every restless kid in America was given a story: ‘Born to Run,’" Obama continued.

“He didn’t stop there. Once he told us about himself, he told us about everybody else: The steel worker in ‘Youngstown,’ the Vietnam vet in ‘Born in the U.S.A.,’ the sick and the marginalized on the “Streets of Philadelphia,’ the firefighter carrying the weight of a reeling but resilient nation on ‘The Rising,’ the young solider reckoning with ‘Devils & Dust’ in Iraq, the communities knocked down by recklessness and greed in ‘Wrecking Ball.’ All of us, with our faults and our failings, every color and class and creed, bound together by one defiant, restless train rolling toward ‘The Land of Hope and Dreams.’ These are all anthems of our America, the reality of who we are and the reverie of who we want to be.

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“The hallmark of a rock ‘n’ roll band, Bruce Springsteen once said, is that the narrative you tell together is bigger than anyone could have told on your own. For decades, alongside the Big Man, Little Steven, a Jersey Girl named Patti, and all the men and women of the E Street Band, Bruce Springsteen has been carrying the rest of us on his journey, and asking us all, ‘What is the work for us to do in our short time here?’

“I am the President, he is the Boss. And pushing 70, he is still laying down four-hour live sets. If you have not been at them, he is working! Fire-breathing rock ‘n’ roll. So I thought twice about giving him a medal named for freedom, because we hope he remains, in his words, a ‘prisoner of rock ‘n’ roll’ for years to come.”

The audience broke out into a cheer of “Broooce” when Obama pinned the medal around Springsteen’s neck.

Springsteen, who now lives in Colts Neck,  started out in small bands, including Castiles, in the Freehold area and eventually started playing the Asbury Park music scene in the late 1960s. He released his first album, “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.”, in 1973, and his fame with the E Street Band grew from there. He’s now one of the most recognized Americans in the world.

“He’s really an incredible person and the work he does for the world is deep and incredible,” said Everett Bradley, who played  percussion and sang on the E Street Band Wrecking Ball Tour, on Tuesday, “He’s a champion for the working class man and you feel the support for him all over the world.”
Springsteen previously received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009.

The other recipients on Tuesday were  basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Native American advocate Elouise Cobell (posthumous), comedian Ellen DeGeneres, actor Robert De Niro, physicist Richard Garwin, Microsoft founder and philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates, architect Frank Gehry, software entrepreneur Margaret H. Hamilton, actor Tom Hanks, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (posthumous), basketball legend Michael Jordan, artist and sculptor Maya Lin, producer Lorne Michaels, attorney Newt Minow, university president Eduardo Padrón, actor Robert Redford, singer Diana Ross, broadcaster Vin Scully and actress Cicely Tyson.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Chris Jordan: cjordan@app.com