FEATURE:
The Boss Becomes a King
Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run at Fifty
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I do love…
IN THIS PHOTO: Bruce Springsteen in L.A. in 1975/PHOTO CREDIT: Terry O’Neill
a fiftieth anniversary album celebration! It is a nice round number and is a huge anniversary. This year we have celebrated/will celebrate fifty years of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti, Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Queen’s A Night at the Opera and Patti Smith’s Horses. One of the biggest from 1975 was Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run. Released on 25th August, 1975, it followed 1973’s The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Even though Born to Run was a big chart success in the U.S., it only just made the top forty in the U.K. (it reached thirty-six). Alongside the title track are classics such as Thunder Road and Jungleand. I am going to get to some features that discuss Born to Run. One of Bruce Springsteen’s most popular albums – maybe Born in the U.S.A. or The River can compete -, I know there will be celebrations around its fiftieth anniversary. I am starting out with a Rolling Stone feature. When deciding their 500 best albums ever, they placed Born to Run in twenty-first:
“Springsteen’s first two releases were commercial failures. Around this time, Rolling Stone journalist, Jon Landau saw Springsteen perform at Harvard Square Theatre, noting in the The Real Paper, “I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.” As a last-ditch effort to make Springsteen a commercially successful artist, Columbia gave him a massive budget to record the third album. These sessions would almost break Springsteen mentally, who struggled to convey the sounds he had in his head to the musicians in the studio. Springsteen, having seen his review, brought in Landau to help him, feeling he understood what he was trying to achieve. This was the start of a 47-year-and-counting relationship between the pair and Landau is Springsteen’s manager to this day. ‘Born To Run,’ would take more than 14 months to record with 6 months alone being dedicated to the title track. That song was released months ahead of the album’s completion creating massive anticipation. The opening drum fill was played by Ernest “Boom” Carter, a temporary drummer within the E Street Band. His successor and drummer on the rest of the album, Max Weinberg has said that Carter’s Jazz fusion playing on the song is one that Weinberg could never replicate live and eventually stopped trying.
The record opens with the poignant ‘Thunder Road,’ a song about a character named Mary and her boyfriend and their "one last chance to make it real," similar to Springsteen and this album. It opens with Roy Bittan’s delicate piano playing and namechecks Roy Orbison, a huge influence on Springsteen. Majority of the record was composed on piano, in fact. ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,’ is about Bad Scooter, aka Bruce Springsteen himself and the formation of the E Street Band. In the third verse, Springsteen sings about when “the Big Man joined the band.” The Big Man was his nickname for his now-deceased saxophonist, Clarence Clemons and this part of the song is now used to pay tribute to him in concert, with Springsteen pausing to look at his image on screen before continuing. The LP takes a “four corners” approach with each side starting with upbeat songs to escape and adventure and ending with songs about loss and betrayal (‘Backstreets’ and ‘Jungleland’). The promotion of the record, buoyed by Landau’s now famous quote, created hype and intrigue and saw ‘Born To Run’ peak at #3 on the charts. It went on to sell in excess of 6 million copies and after two false starts, Springsteen had arrived with one of the greatest collection of works ever recorded. I once saw Springsteen perform this cover to cover live and it remains one of the best concert experiences of my life. I’ve listened to this one countless times in my life and no matter how many times I hear it, it makes me emotional and excited everytime. It’s a rollercoaster of stories by one of the best singer-songwriters of our time. I could stop this countdown right now and be satisfied. But I won’t. Onward to the Top 20!”.
I would suggest people check out features like this fortieth anniversary track by track feature from Billboard. This American Songwriter piece is also well worth reading. I want to move to a terrific feature from GRAMMY. They marked forty-five years of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run in 2020. An album that still sounds so extraordinary and potent to this day. It ranks alongside the very best albums ever released. If you have never heard it then make sure that you do as soon as possible:
“With their first two LPs—Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, both from 1973—Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band cemented themselves as masters of both contemplative singer/songwriter elegance and triumphant orchestral rowdiness. Despite the mostly positive critical praise they garnered, however, neither record reaped the financial success and mainstream devotion the group deserved. Understandably, this led to a lot of internal and external frustrations and doubts, so all parties involved knew that—as the saying goes—the third time had to be the charm.
Luckily, 1975's Born to Run proved to be precisely that, launching Springsteen and company into the hearts and minds of virtually the entire world. All of its songs became beloved radio/concert/pop culture staples—thanks in part to a $250,000 marketing campaign by Columbia Records—and it ended up not only reaching the #3 spot on the Billboard 200, but earning praise from Rolling Stone, the New York Times and The Village Voice. Since then, its ability to bring new levels of poetic phrasing, symphonic instrumentation and heartfelt slice-of-life narratives (regarding blue-collar struggles, youthful romantic idealism and urban rebellion) to heartland rock has led many to deem it one of the greatest albums of all time.
Given the immense pressure everyone felt for Born to Run to be a hit, it's no surprise that it took the band 14 months to complete (with almost half of that time spent just on its iconic title track). It would be the last album co-produced by Mike Appel, as well as the first co-produced by music critic turned manager Jon Landau (who, in 1974, famously stated that Springsteen was the future of rock and roll in the midst of others aptly, if reductively, calling him the "new" or "next" Bob Dylan). Many of the same musicians stayed on, with the most significant additions being drummer Max Weinberg, pianist Roy Bittan, and guitarist/arranger Steven Van Zandt (who'd played with Springsteen in prior bands and got the gig after doing the horn arrangements for "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out").
Together, they created a succinct yet exploratory sequence whose Phil Spector-esque "wall of sound" approach built upon everything its two predecessors did so exceptionally (humble yet piercing odes like "Lost in the Flood" and full-bodied celebrations like "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)"). That achievement, coupled with a more established conceptual throughline involving separate but similar characters existing around the same places and striving similar types of freedom, makes it clear why Born to Run is still so revered and idiosyncratic.
Each of its eight songs feels like a cinematic musical adaption of a resonant short story, and Springsteen designed each side to begin hopefully and end sorrowfully. Case in point: "Thunder Road," an exhilarating opener in which the unnamed speaker makes a final plea to his girlfriend, Mary, to run away with him. The instantly comforting blend of Springsteen's harmonica and Bittan's piano makes it seem like the story is set in a Steinbeck novel, and Springsteen’s backhanded compliment—"You ain’t a beauty / But hey, you're alright"—actually conjures Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" in its blunt but realistic testament to authentic attraction. Obviously, its robust and catchy evolution is mesmerizing, foreshadowing the motif of invigorating better life daydreaming that spans the whole album (especially the title track).
Afterward, the origin of the E Street Band is explored in the sleekly nuanced, intricate, and fun—though also subtly mournful—"Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," which evokes the rock 'n’'roll vibe of Springsteen's sophomore effort. In contrast, "Night" recalls the poignant urgency of his debut collection, with its tale of a disheartened blue-collar worker seeking the nighttime joys of drag racing and female companionship resulting in one of Springsteen's most infectiously encouraging choruses. Then, "Backstreets" concludes Side One as a downer, with Bittan's pianowork hinting at the measured misfortune he'd bring to "Jungleland." Springsteen's reflection on the downfall of a plutonic friendship with a woman named Terry is full of coarse, almost inebriated wildness; meanwhile, the band punctuates each emotion with luscious accompaniment (including an imperfect yet earnest guitar solo).
Of course, Side Two explodes with “Born to Run,” which connects to “Thunder Road” not only in its exuberance, but even in its melodies and sentiments. Interestingly, it’s the only track that Weinberg and Bittan didn’t play on since it was recorded before drummer Earnest Carter and pianist David Sancious left the band. Every element is hypnotic, blissful, and legendary; from its sparkly timbres and wholly impassioned serenading, to saxophonist Clarence Clemons' solo and the subsequent deceptively complex breakdown, "Born to Run" is pretty much perfect.
Luckily, the LP maintains that magic, with the dynamic yet relatively straightforward "She's the One" exposing an irresistible femme fatal before the penultimate "Meeting Across the River" acts as a decorative and lowkey tale of a low-level criminal unsuccessfully going for one last score. Cleverly, it also moves us from New Jersey to New York, where the record's closing masterpiece, "Jungleland," takes place. Combining Dylan-esque ponderings with early Chicago-esque arrangements, its like Springsteen's three-act take on West Side Story. It moves from a gorgeously intense chronicle of gang violence to a devastatingly serene aftermath, wherein bittersweet tapestries and appropriately timed escalations guide Springsteen’s wise but disenfranchised commentary. It’s incredibly tasteful and believable, with the line “And the poets down here / Don't write nothing at all / They just stand back and let it all be” standing out as particularly profound and hard-hitting.
From the huge concerts that surrounded it, to the multitude of album cover parodies/homages and industry honors that followed, Born to Run is rightly considered a benchmark for its creator, decade and genre overall. Expectedly, its winning formula inspired an even more mature and downtrodden follow-up, 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, as well as the aesthetics of countless proteges. It set new standards for how lyrical, multifaceted, and thematic rock music could be, and although it's nearly half a century old, it truly hasn't aged a day”.
Before ending with a review, I want to introduce a Ticketmaster feature. They argued that Born to Run is the best Bruce Springsteen album. Though that is a big claim, you would be hard pressed to argue disprove that! It has inspired so many people and has an enormous legacy. It was Springsteen’s breakthrough and it completely transformed Seventies Rock music. As it turns fifty on 25th August, I wonder whether Bruce Springsteen will perform the album in its entirety. He and the E Street Band have done on several occasions:
“If side A ends in despair, side B comes blasting out of the traps like it’s on fire. Every inch of ‘Born To Run’ sounds like it’s revving its engines to infinity. It’s classic rock n’ roll on nitro fumes, fuel-injected youthful confidence, burning everything down on its way to somewhere better. It’s unlikely anyone ever feels as optimistic or alive as they do when ‘Born To Run’ is playing. If you could bottle any moment and relive it on demand, it’s that moment during a Springsteen show when he counts back in from the breakdown. Elation doesn’t even come close. ‘Born To Run’ is a song that defies the idea that it was created. It feels like it’s always just been.
The beautiful, brooding love song ‘She’s The One’ is a pause for breath, but by ‘Meeting Across The River’ things have turned desperate, and there’s only one last chance to try and make something out of nothing. But instead of youthful confidence, this feels laced with danger and a sense that the talk is just talk as the narrator tries to steel himself for the score that’s gonna turn everything around.
We’ve all seen enough films to know how that pans out. But it’s not hard to see Bruce’s tales of desperate lovers and naïve souls out to defy the world as a proxy for his own do-or-die situation. The gangs are his band, the girl is his music: it’s just them against “the record machine”. The colossal ‘Jungleland’ doesn’t offer any happy endings, but probably because Bruce himself didn’t know if there would be one. There’s a pause as the lights go out and the street poet makes his stand, ending up wounded, but crucially “not even dead”. The story is to be continued.
Born To Run was a huge success. At the time of writing, it’s sold over 8 million copies worldwide. The coming years would be anything but plain sailing, especially with a painful and protracted legal wrangle with his ex-manager Mike Appel, but Bruce had already shown he could face down remarkable odds and win, even wounded and up against the wall. With these eight songs, he proved to himself and the world that he was the superstar he’d always threatened to become.
You might wake up tomorrow and put on The Rising, remembering that this is your favourite Bruce record. Or you might sit up late listening to the Steinbeck inflections of The Ghost Of Tom Joad and wonder how any album could be better. Or you might drive down a motorway, high street or suburban road, blasting out Born In The USA and think that this is surely as good as it gets. None of those would be incorrect. But there’s no album that so singularly defines Bruce Springsteen, no album that matters more to his career, than Born To Run. For that, it can only be the greatest”.
I am going to finish with a review from the BBC. I don’t think you will find a review anything other than overwhelmed or hugely positive. It is among those classic albums that has won universal approval. As there will be new inspection of Born to Run close to 25th August, it will reach a new generation. Its title track is one of my favourite tracks. It is a glorious thing! Go and seek out this album now:
“Born To Run’s eight songs run to less than 40 minutes in length, but comprise a whole as satisfying as a portion of exquisitely rich chocolate cake. It seems Springsteen truly went for broke in 1975 after his first two albums had been critically well-received but less so commercially. Music critic Jon Landau became his producer and joined Bruce with his E-Street band in the studio to make what remains a classic, honest musical expression of hope, dreams and survival.
The colossal wall of sound production would make Phil Spector proud. Clarence Clemons’ triumphant yet bittersweet saxophone wailing and Roy Bittan’s nagging piano riffs augment the tough Telecaster guitar sound, while chiming glockenspiel and Max Weinberg’s drumming cement the heady mix.
Lyrically, it’s a dramatic collection of blue-collar tales of love and making ends meet that could only come from New Jersey’s favourite son. He clearly took a few ideas from storytellers like Van Morrison and Bob Dylan but also forged his own uplifting style. In ''Meeting Across The River'', a street tale Lou Reed would be proud of, listeners can ponder on a great deluded hustler’s line: 'That two grand’s practically sitting here in my pocket.' ''Thunder Road'' meanwhile, is almost effortlessly cinematic. In two lines there’s imagery more striking than most songwriters can manage on a whole album: 'In the skeleton frames of burned-out Chevrolets… Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet.' On the excellent title track familiar BS motifs are returned to, particularly running away and the allure of fast cars, 'Chrome-wheeled, fuel-injected and stepping out over the line…We gotta get out while we’re young.' Few tunesmiths can make a bad situation sound so good.
Like Ry Cooder, over a lengthy career the working-class NJ hero has proved himself to be a remarkably versatile operator. He’s taken on rootsy American folk material, written about 9/11 and, of course, had gargantuan commercial success with Born In The USA. Contemporary bands are never slow in praising him and his influence is still keenly felt. In songwriting terms alone Arcade Fire, REM and Mercury Rev have all clearly borrowed his ideas down the years and it’s unlikely they’ll be the last”.
Turning fifty very soon, I will definitely not be the only one marking Born to Run at fifty. There are so many interesting features about the album. This is another that I would recommend people read. Whether you are a Bruce Springsteen or not, Born to Run is impeccable. A work of sheer brilliance from The Boss, we will be talking Born to Run…
FIFTY years from now.