Bruce Springsteen has stated that his Catholic upbringing  had a profound impact on his music.

Springsteen told the Irish Times, “I got completely brainwashed with Catholicism as a child. Once you’re a Catholic, you’re always a Catholic . . . It’s given me a very active sense of spiritual life and made it difficult sexually, but that’s all right,” he jokes.

A new book recently  discovered that Springsteen has Irish roots through his paternal grandmother Martha O'Hagan. She married Springsteen's grandfather, Anthony Springsteen, who was of Dutch ancestry, in 1899.

And it turns out that Martha's grandmother, Ann Garrity, hailed from County Westmeath. Garrity left Ireland in 1852, seven years after the famine devastated much of Ireland.

She settled in the town of Freehold, New Jersey, where Bruce himself was born 62 years ago.

Springsteen went to the Catholic St Rose of Lima School, where he was taught by nun,s many Irish.

Bruce Springsteen's "Sad Eyes":