Bruce Springsteen Won't Touch This American Beer Brand

In 1975, Bruce Springsteen released the song "Jungleland", in which he sang about a "barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge, drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain". Half a century later, we may not know who the girl was or why she was barefoot, but we can make one very educated guess — she wasn't drinking Budweiser, a beer The Boss disliked enough to call it out in his band's rider.

Details from the 37-page rider were published by The News Gazette. And while the headlines focused on Springsteen's request for broth-heavy chicken soup, or the eight love seats in the dressing room, there's one epic, easy-to-miss, two-word takedown. Included in the rider are six bottles of beer, with the caveat: "not Budweiser".

Budweiser is an iconic American brand, and it flaunts the fact: Its recent Superbowl commercial signs off with the slogan, "Budweiser isn't only made in America; it's made of America". Well, it definitely wasn't made for this American icon, whose rider did include bottles of Belvedere Vodka, Santa Monica Pinot Grigio, and three kinds of Bai 5-brand beverages — Congo Pear, Costa Rica Clementine, and Kula Watermelon. Incidentally, Budweiser finds itself on the list of beer brands fans have been side-eyeing over rising prices, not that cost would have been of any concern to Springsteen. He just has a preference for "high quality beers" according to the rider.

Springsteen's "Not Budweiser" rider is from March 2023, when his E Street Band played a two-and-a-half-hour set at North Carolina's Greensboro Coliseum. By the end of that year, the American legend had to cancel a string of concerts due to a peptic ulcer, an illness that scared him enough to give up alcohol altogether. While he was never known to be a heavy drinker (a fact attributed to his father being an alcoholic in his 2016 biography), his drinking has often made the headlines. There are a whole bunch of videos of The Boss chugging beers on stage. In 2000, he was even charged with driving under the influence, although the charge was later dropped since his blood alcohol levels were well within permissible limits.

Also, there are many bars and beers that pay tribute to Springsteen. The Jackalope Brewing Company from Nashville released a black IPA brewed with spruce tips called Spruce Beersteen in 2019. And Texas-based Backstreets Brewery's entire menu is a tribute to the legend, featuring beers such as Bruce's Bock, as well as Sandy's Sour and Kitty's Klosch, named after characters in Springsteen's songs. The brewery probably should brew a beer that is served warm and name it after the girl from "Jungleland".

Incidentally, Budweiser wasn't the only thing banned by Springsteen's E Street Band. Also on the list of things they didn't want to see at the venue were craisins, buffets, instant oatmeal and security guards wearing military-style uniforms. 

Springsteen's rider is fairly straightforward compared to some others. The list of foods Frank Sinatra demanded in his dressing room before concerts was far more specific, for instance. It featured, among many other things, three cans of Campbell's chicken and rice soup (plus a crockpot), chicken salad sandwiches without the mayo, and two dozen cans of soda, including Coke, 75% of which had to be diet. Eddie Van Halen used to famously insert a no-brown-M&Ms clause in his requests, not as a rockstar quirk, but as a safety standard. Basically, it was a test to check how closely the venue was reading the rider.

Fans online agree that Springsteen's rider was fairly standard in comparison. "None of these seem weird. At this point, this band knows what works and what doesn't work to put on a great show," one fan wrote on Reddit. Another fan added that some of the more strange-sounding requests had history behind them. "These guys are professionals who have been doing this for a while. They know what they like and want, and it all seems pretty obtainable ... I guarantee that every detail that's overly specific comes with a story of a venue that tried to cheap out."