Sept 5 AOTD: Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run

Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run

1975



Link To Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcNtV41jwj4

Just a piano and harmonica intro ... and then that iconic line: "the screen door slams."  You could be anywhere in America listening to the Born to Run opener "Thunder Road." But when you listened back in the 70s and 80s, that porch, stoop, or front door was yours!  And you could clearly see Mary dancing to the radio.  Springsteen had reached a new peak as a story teller, using just the right detail and imagery to make a populist scene come to life.  The E-street band provided the rest of the ingredients, supplying keys, saxophone and drums that laid down grooves that were apropos soundscapes to stories of the city, leaving the city, the road, young romance, and friendships leaning loyal and sometimes friendships looming dark.

In a 2015 interview for Rolling Stone, Springsteen claimed that the album held "quite a sense of dread and uncertainty about the future and who you were, where you were going, where the whole country was going. That found its way into the record."  But every song also dishes up characters looking forward, looking out - across a street or across a river.  They all seem to think they can get across. For the 70s this was an album about class, and Springsteen recognized the truth and dread of the blue collars working themselves toward their graves, but he also offered hope, dreams, and a musical escape. In Cleveland, when Disc Jockey Kid Leo played "Born to Run" every Friday on his radio station, this was a chance for those who did not have fun on their jobs all week to see a glimmer of hope on the weekend.

Springsteen has also spoken in numerous interviews to a feeling of  "this was it: do-or-die," as Columbia Records had no belief in the commercial appeal of him or his band. In fact they wanted to redo his second album with session musicians.  So the sound of flying down a road at a hundred miles an hour on wheels that are blasting through Spector's wall of sound in the single "Born To Run," the single released about 6 months before the album came out - well, that's the sound of a man determined to put it ALL out there. And that's the feeling I get when I sing along - desperation, last chance, and giving it all I've got ... to get across.

But the rest of the album is just as colossal, each song looming like pillars of the night, streets, drug deals, and love  - all supporting that hot rod beacon perfectly located in the middle of the album.