Never like the guy, and detested him even more after this saga.
Posted on 08/24/2025 7:18:44 PM PDT by DoodleBob
I was 18 when Bruce Springsteen’s third album, “Born to Run,” was released 50 years ago, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
I’d just finished my freshman year in college, and I was lost. My high school girlfriend had broken up with me by letter. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was stuck back in my parents’ apartment in the Bronx.
So when I dropped the record onto my Panasonic turntable and Springsteen sang, “So you’re scared and you’re thinking/That maybe we ain’t that young anymore” on the opening track, “Thunder Road,” I felt as if he were speaking directly to me.
But no song moved me more than the album’s title track, “Born to Run.” How I longed for that sort of love – and how I also felt strangled by the “runaway American dream.” The song was about getting out, but also about searching for a companion. I, too, was a “scared and lonely rider” who craved arriving at a special place. Decades later, I combined the personal and the professional and wrote a book about the making and meaning of the album.
All eyes on the Boss
The album was shaped by the times, particularly the malaise of the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate American landscape. There was an energy crisis, and it wasn’t only oil that was in short supply.
The excitement of the 1960s had passed, and rock ’n’ roll itself was in the doldrums. Elvis had become a Las Vegas lounge act; the Beatles had broken up; Bob Dylan had been a recluse since his motorcycle accident in 1966. The No. 1 hit in 1975 was “Love Will Keep Us Together,” by the Captain and Tennille. Obituaries to rock music appeared regularly.
Springsteen went into the studio feeling the pressure to produce. His first two albums had received good reviews but sold poorly. After seeing a show in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1974, writer Jon Landau proclaimed Springsteen “the future of rock ’n’ roll.” Springsteen wore the label uneasily, though he had more than enough ambition to try and fulfill the prophecy: He later called “Born to Run,” “my shot at the title, a 24-year-old kid aiming at the greatest rock ’n’ roll record ever.”
But in the studio, he struggled. It took him six months to record the title song. He kept rewriting the lyrics and experimenting with different sounds. He was composing epics: “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” “Backstreets,” “Jungleland.” And he was trying to tie it all together thematically as his characters searched for love and connection and endured disappointment and heartbreak.
When Springsteen was finally done with the album, he hated it. He even threw a test pressing into a pool. But Landau, who had come on to co-produce, convinced him to release it.
Poetry for the masses
Despite Springsteen’s apprehension, the response to “Born to Run” was remarkable. Hundreds of thousands of copies flew off the shelves.
Springsteen appeared on the covers of Newsweek and Time, where he was hailed as “Rock’s New Sensation.” Writing in Rolling Stone, critic Greil Marcus called it “a magnificent album that pays off on every bet ever placed on him.”
There was backlash from some corners: critics who resented all the hype Springsteen had received and who thought the music bombastic. But most agreed with John Rockwell of The New York Times, who praised the album’s songs as “poetry that attains universality. … You owe it to yourself to buy this record.”
An operatic drama
The album pulsates between hope and despair. Side 1 carries listeners from the elation of “Thunder Road” to the heartbreak of “Backstreets,” and Side 2 repeats the trajectory, from the exhilaration of “Born to Run” to the anguish of “Jungleland.”
I felt I knew the characters in these songs – Mary and Wendy, Terry and Eddie – and I identified with the narrator’s struggles and dreams. They all wrestled with feeling stuck. They longed for something bigger and more exciting. But what was the price to pay for taking the leap – whether for love or the open road?
These lyrical, operatic songs about freedom and fate, triumph and tragedy, still resonate, even though today’s music is more likely to emphasize beats, samples and software than extended guitar and saxophone solos. Springsteen continues to tour, and fans young and old fill arenas and stadiums to hear him because rock ’n’ roll still has something to say, still makes you shout, still makes you feel alive.
“It’s embarrassing to want so much, and to expect so much from music,” Springsteen said in 2005, “except sometimes it happens – the Sun Sessions, Highway 61, Sgt. Peppers, the Band, Robert Johnson, Exile on Main Street, Born to Run – whoops, I meant to leave that one out.”
In fall 1975, I played “Born to Run” over and over in my dorm room. I’d stare at Eric Meola’s cover photograph of a smiling Springsteen in leather jacket and torn T-shirt, his guitar pointing out and upward as he gazes toward his companion.
Who wouldn’t want to join Springsteen and his legendary saxophonist, Clarence Clemons, on their journey?
That October, I went on a first date with a girl. We’ve been married 44 years, and the stirring declaration from “Born to Run” has proven true time and again: “love is wild, love is real.”
Never like the guy, and detested him even more after this saga.
It’s a great song. The music plays one thing, he sings something else.
No. Silly song for a clown who cannot sing.
This faker sells out stadiums in Europe. They love him in Scandinavia. How crazy is this?
He always sounds constipated when he sings.
Darkness on the Edge of Town is a far superior album and everything he did after those two albums is just trash.
Years ago I heard he donated money anonymously in Asbury Park. Good on him. And he delivers a lot of live music for the price. Kudos.
That said…
Maybe it’s because I grew up outside of Philadelphia and his music was omnipresent, but I find zero redeeming value in his music, his lyrics, and the man as an American.
Now, Max Weinberg is an outstanding drummer. The late Clarence Clemons could play saxophone. They’re top notch.
But Springsteen is the pits.
Can't stand this song. I make it a point to avoid hearing it all Christmas season. Not too crazy about Springsteen in general. His voice always sounds like he's trying to pass a deuce. Never understood anyone liking "Born to Run," either, except people from New Jersey.
The music that spoke to a nation without saying anything of importance.
Exactly. And looks it.
Louis P. Masur sounds like a woman with all the references to himself. Pathetic.
Including the former fat governor whose goal in life is another donut . His Obozo hug may have cost the election
Yeah, well, Keith Moon drove an entire car into a pool. So there!
DESPAIR? WHERE? WHOM?!
I listened to his history courses from the teaching company.
Jeez Louise, nobody can even say anything online today without somebody sticking a shiv in his back.
The first time I ever heard of Springstine was when I saw him on the cover of Time magazine.
Harrrr, we be bloodthirsty buccaneers here.
The article itself doesn’t seem to have much to do with hope or despair. From what I can see there isn’t much political in it at all.
Seen him 3 times. Enjoyed it immensely.
To refresh my memory I just looked at the lyrics. As banal and adolescent as they struck me when it was first released.
So overrated. Mediocre voice. Can’t stand him.
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