My first real experience with Bruce Springsteen was “Dancing in the dark”, followed by the album, but in truth the first time I heard him --- knowing nothing about him at the time --- was on the way back from a company Christmas party. Getting a lift home from the boss ---- with a lowercase b of course, my own employer --- I half-heard “Born to run” on the radio, but mistook the final line for “Maybe we will fall to earth”, and thought that's one hell of a line. Sadly it was not correct of course, but I did at least get to hear the DJ announce who was singing. I paid it little mind really, my head full of heavy metal and prog rock. And then one morning as I prepared to leave after my show had finished on the local radio station, one of the other guys introduced “the new single from Bruce Springsteen”, and spun “Dancing in the dark”. My interest very much piqued, I believe I caught the bus directly into town and bought the album “Born in the USA”, thus starting me off on a journey through the Boss's catalogue, which naturally included “Born to run”.
Born to run --- Bruce Springsteen --- 1975 (Columbia)
Springsteen's third album, it was his breakthrough, commercially and musically, and indeed his last chance to make it big before he was dropped by his management, who footed the bill for the ambitious project. Bruce's other albums to date had been very decent, but had spawned no hit singles and gained little in the way of sales, though they were critically acclaimed. It's rather interesting to note that, though this album contains many of what would go on to be standards of his, there is in fact only one hit on it --- the title track --- and the album itself only has eight tracks, though that was fairly common in the seventies, unlike now where you can get ten or twenty, or more, per album. The reason for this was mostly mechanical logistics.
For those of you who grew up on CDs or even MP3s, you may not appreciate the nuances of an LP, or Long Player, we had to contend with back then. Each song or piece of music would be cut into a certain groove on the record surface (leading to the term “tracks”, which still survives today, long after its meaning is gone), and you could only fit so much into each groove before the sound would deteriorate, which generally worked out at about four to five songs per side. Records had two sides, but you had to end the first side then flip the record over to hear the second side. So approximately eight to ten tracks was all you could get on one physical disc. If the band or artiste had more than that to put on the album, well that's where double LPs came into being. It seems odd now that a band like ELO could take up four sides of a record with the album “Out of the blue”, and yet the songs only add up to seventeen, that's four per side with side two having five only by virtue of one of the tracks being just over a minute. Nowadays that all fits on one compact disc. How times have changed.
“Born to run” has gone down in musical history as one of the most important rock albums of the century, and with good reason. Drawing on the influences and styles of his heroes, Dylan and Orbison, and presenting a darker, more mature and indeed more realistic face of America to the world, Springsteen, like Waits, peopled his songs with “broken-down heroes” and “strung-out teenagers” who refused to live the American Dream and rebelled because, well, what ya got? They weren't always victorious in their often short-lived rebellions, but they lived as they wanted to live and, in many cases, died as they wanted to die. Springsteen presented the dark underbelly of American society, and challenged the songwriters of the fifties and sixties who loudly proclaimed that all was well in the land of the free. All was not well, this young upstart roared, and I'm here to tell you about the
real America.
With instantly a lonely, desolate, almost hopeless aura, “Thunder Road” opens the album as Roy Bittan's piano backs Bruce on the harmonica before he begins to sing. It's a song of escape, and as the piano takes the tune solo Bruce sings of the night-time tryst between Mary and his protagonist as he tries to convince her to run away with him, away from this one-horse town and off on a life of adventure.
”Show a little faith!” he exhorts her
”There's magic in the night.” Percussion and guitar kick in as he describes the ride down the two-lane blacktop to destiny. You very easily get caught up in the enthusiasm, the youthful exuberance and the promise of a better life lying beyond the eponymous road. Springsteen sings of his plan to make a living ---
”I got this guitar/ And I'm really gonna make it talk”, and as I've described this song pretty extensively in my “Two sides of the same coin” feature recently, I won't go too much into the lyric. However it's a powerful, joyous and hopeful start to an album that ultimately ends in despair as the glamour and glitz falls from the idea of eloping and the singer realises there is after all no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and he is trapped, like so many of his fellows, in a dark and dangerous place. For now though, an exuberant sax from Clarence Clemons joins Bittan as they take the song to its fadeout, and into what is perhaps the only track on the album I don't care for.
I always wondered what a “Tenth Avenue freeze-out” was, and now I know: nobody knows. Not even Springsteen, who wrote the damn song! How disappointing! But I assume he did at one time know, he probably has just forgotten or else is keeping the information to himself. The song itself though I think relies too much on the horn section, and although it has a boppy, fresh, uptempo piano driving it, this track just has never done anything for me. It's apparently about the formation of the E Street Band, and while I don't hate it, it's definitely my least favourite on the album. It's probably the brass: you know I don't particularly care for brass. It could also be that after the bombast of “Thunder Road” it just sounds like a comedown to me. I don't know; I just will never like it as much as the rest of this album.
We're right back to that bombast though with a fusilade of drums and a blasting salvo on the sax from Clemons, the tempo cracking along as “Night” re-establishes order. The power and passion in this song has to be heard to be believed; it runs along at an almost frantic pace, Bittan's piano chattering along as guitars and sax come along for the ride. Bruce sings of the chance to blow off steam, getting through your job waiting to just let it loose on the roads:
”You work nine to five/ And somehow survive until the night.” It's a short song, but crammed with more emotion and passion than some songs twice its length, and ends on a superb sax break from the Big Man. Things take a total left-turn then for the first ballad on the album, the dark, gritty, desolate “Backstreets”, as the first inklings of the real world intruding on the hero's fantasy one show themselves.
Opening on a beautiful bluesy piano, joined by a screaming organ from Danny Federici the song runs for a full minute before Springsteen comes in with the vocal, singing about his attempts to escape with his lover,
”Hiding on the backstreets”, but knowing that you can't run from life forever. A great guitar solo takes the midsection, the first I think on the album, then the song falls into something of a lull as the hero reflects on his situation alone as he asks
"Remember all the movies, Terri/ We'd go to see/ Trying hard to walk like/ The heroes we thought we had to be?” The song then winds up to an incredibly powerful conclusion on Bittan's piano, with Springsteen repeating
”Hiding on the backstreets” about twenty times before the final chorus punches a hole in your heart and the song hammers to a stop. Take a breath, cos you ain't heard nothin' yet!
I would assume everyone has heard the title track, but when I started doing these classic albums I promised I would treat them as if there were people out there who did not, so “Born to run” hits you right smack in the eyes with a cannoning drumroll and guitar riff, thundering along as Springsteen relates the pent-up anger of being trapped in a dead-end job in a small town.
”Baby this town rips/ The bones from your back” he warns his girl,
"It's a death trap, a suicide rap/ We gotta get out while we're young.” How many youths have screamed the same but never had the guts to do anything about it? Clemons again takes the song with a sweet and punchy solo which has become iconic, and the song then slows down to a buildup as Springsteen sings again about cars and races and promises Wendy
”I wanna die with you on the streets tonight in an everlasting kiss.”
A rolling, swirling organ readies us for the last attack as Bruce brings it home with a passionate, sweat-drenched performance that just has you shaking, and I now hear the correct lines I misheard so many years ago:
"Tramps like us/ Baby we were born to run.” In typical style then he slows everything down for the almost muted “She's the one”, with acoustic guitar opening and rippling keyboard accompanying the first verse before the percussion from Max Weinberg powers in and Bruce yells the first of many “HUH!” grunts, and the song takes off. A ballad, you thought? Ah no, not just yet my friend. The drums explode all over the track and Bittan goes wild on the piano while Miami Steve van Zandt racks out the riffs, bandana flying and a grim smile on his thick lips. Of course, the Big Man has to stamp his authority on the song, and so he does, with another pitch-perfect solo on his sax. Great backing vocals take the track into yet another almost pause, Springsteen building up once again to a big finish, this time with a strong presence from Weinberg as Bittan flies along on the keys.
Smoky sax and soft piano then introduce the jazzlike “Meeting across the river”, which is indeed a ballad, though not a song of love, but of a dangerous assignation. Clemons for once stays more in the background, and the piece is carried by Bittan's superb piano planning. It's a short song, and in truth not one of my favourites, but it leads into one of the standouts on the album, not only the closing track but also the longest by far, at over nine and a half minutes long. “Jungleland” would become another Springsteen standard, and gets going with violin from Suki Lahav before Bittan takes over on the piano as Bruce sings of the goings-on in the city, the things that happen under cover of darkness, when “decent folk” are tucked away in their beds. Deep organ makes its presence felt as Federici comes in, then Weinberg hits it and we're off on the second section of the song.
The tempo kicks up, almost “Thunder Road” revisited in ways, as Springsteen likens wannabe musicians to gang members ---
”Kids flash guitar just like switchblades/ Hustling for the record machine/ The hungry and the hunted/ Explode into rock'n'roll bands/ And face off against each other in the street.” A great solo from van Zandt before it all stops to pay homage to Clemons as he leads the song into its third section with a soulful, heart-wrenching solo that carries it from its fourth minute, accompanied by Federici on the organ, well into the sixth before everything descends on the organ and then down to single piano notes as Bruce tells us what happened to the Magic Rat and the Airport Girl, the verse almost spoken, each word stretched out.
”In the tunnels uptown/ The Rat's own dream guns him down .../ Nobody watches as the ambulance pulls away...”
The tragic pathos of the actual realisation of the American Dream has never been so perfectly described as Bruce sighs
”The poets down here/ Don't write nothin' at all/ They just stand back/ And let it all be.” A stupendous piano ending and a wounded vocalise vocal from Springsteen and the album comes to a triumphant close.
TRACKLISTING
1. Thunder Road
2. Tenth Avenue freeze-out
3. Night
4. Backstreets
5. Born to run
6. She's the one
7. Meeting across the river
8. Jungleland
It's kind of really only after the album has finished that you start to realise how well-crafted it is. Starting off with high hopes and visions of a bright future, it traces a path through an existence that becomes barely subsistence, dark deals done on street corners, friends who betray and lovers who leave, and ends in a desperate attempt to gain recognition and acceptance before the realisation sets in that you're stuck in this rathole of a city and there's nothing you can do about it. It's possibly one of the most realistic renditions of youthful hope turning to dour adult pragmatism and realism, almost a defeated acceptance of the life you are forced to lead. The fast cars are gone, the open road is gone and all you're left with are the dark, stinking, crumbling towers of Jungleland frowning down on you like the ghosts of your disapproving parents, but without the added security of being able to turn to them when you're in need. You're stuck here now, no way to get back home to that one-horse town you so reviled when younger, no woman by your side and in all likelihood no car and no job, and as Bruce spits out in the lyric to the closer, you have to make your stand, down in Jungleland.
It's easy to see why this became such a hit and then such a classic. Really, nothing like this had been written before that I know of. Most American singers would have been loath, even fearful of attacking the supposed comforts and security of middle America, and less inclined to dare to suggest that the cities, far from being havens of opportunity where a man might make his fortune, were in reality cesspools of loneliness, decay and despair, where a man could lose his life for simply saying the wrong thing or looking at the wrong person the wrong way. Springsteen dared though; he stood up, guitar in one hand, notebook in the other and snarled “
This is the America
I see!”
And so many other people began to see it too, and to question the
status quo and the values that had been instilled into them. Nobody would try to call Springsteen a revolutionary, but he certainly stood up for the common man, took on the American Way, and tried to show us there was another path we could follow if we believed, as he did, that we were in fact born not to follow, born not to obey or conform, but born to rebel, born to question, born to ask for more than we were told we could have. Born not to accept that this was all there was. Born to strive, to fight, to never give up.
Born, in short, to run.