Roy Bittan - Life and Career

Life and Career

Bittan was born in Belle Harbor, Queens, New York City. He is a long-time member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, and has performed on the majority of Springsteen's albums, beginning with Born to Run in 1975. In Springsteen's band introductions, Bittan's "Professor" moniker was given, (albeit falsely) to his being the only group member with a high school diploma. Bittan provided background vocals for most of the songs on Born to Run, along with Steven Van Zandt. His voice is also featured slightly on the vocal weaving in "Out in the Street". However, from the Born in the U.S.A. Tour on, his voice was no longer used. When Springsteen decided to break his connection with the E Street Band in 1989, Roy Bittan was the one member he retained, both in studio and on the "Other Band" Tour.

With the E Street Band, Bittan uses a Yamaha grand piano, preferring the bright sound to cut through the group's sound compared with other acoustic models. He has also been known to use Yamaha, Korg and Kurzweil keyboards as part of his live rig. His riffs and melody lines have become signatures for the Springsteen sound. Roy is an avid accordion player, which was a skill he seldom used with the E Street Band until playing "American Land" as the closing number on the 2007-2008 Magic Tour and then later taking the instrument's part on "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" after the death of bandmate Danny Federici.