Classic Albums. PT1, Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. The past six months slowly chipped away at my soul as I trod the monotonous path of promotion, aimlessly assisting in the false-expectation of dullard no-hopers and post-oasis thugs with guitars. It got extremely tiresome to be honest, and music became just another blunt clog in my depressing existance and i knew that when i started to not worry about music then it was time to get the fuck out, but I’ve always been a cynic and I’ve always been naïve - so why change now?

But I’m back behind the keyboard and back listening to music I love, for me, and not for the profit of others. (by the way if anyone i know actually reads this, its not directed at anyone - but the music industry, with big booking agents anyway, is fucked)

So in the spirit of my newly established optimism I’ve decided to review my favourite albums, and although my words will never do them justice and my literary cock-ups will never portray the real beauty of such enigmatic works of art, I thought I’d give it a whirl…

Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run

To review an album of such unfathomable fantasy is a hazardous undertaking which I certainly do not have the talent nor knowledge to complete lucratively, but then again, I believe that very few can put down in words the enormity installed in the lyrical dexterity of this 70’s marker of utter genius.

It’s hard to believe that Columbia were debating the dropping of The Boss and the E Street Band during the year long construction of this, Bruce’s third full length studio output: regret would not have come close to the summing up of that situation had it ensued. Luckily for Bruce and the rest of humanity though, their record label held out for the completion of an album that would define the lustful romanticism of the working class beauty and hope that Springsteen held so dearly to his heart.



Perhaps the most accomplished thing about this album is that over time the myth has not preceded the legend. In the three and a half decades since this defining piece of work was released, the teenage generation has undergone numerous changes be it social, technological and economical, yet the theme of endless summer nights held together by the backdrop of young-gun love and stunning tales of girls, love, lust and escapism still remain so relevant and hopeful.

The thing that captured me about this album is the way that Bruce creates this urban wasteland that through the eyes of a romantic construes into an Arcadian paradise where the summer never ends and our hearts never falter. ‘Screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves, like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays’ he tinkles in the opening spark of subtlety that launches ‘Thunder Road’ into the mini epic that it soon becomes, blossoming with the helping hand of a piano, that as Bruce describes in the ‘Wings For Wheels’ documentary, signifies the beginning of something: in this case, youthful vehemence and unbreakable passion



For someone who rather loathes America, I do love the sheer American-ness of this album. The way the movies portrayed it, they way they said it would be, except slightly more imperfect which undoubtedly adds to its flair. The pretty girls cascading the boulevards, the classic American cars, the shore-side scraps and seaside fires that burn as brightly as the love that inhabits it. Lyrical perfection layered by multi-instrumental howls, building a canvas of saxophones, guitars, pianos and the New Jersey growl of a young man who dreamed of changing the lives of thousands through his melodically uplifting narration.

The concept of escapism runs through the veins of ‘Born To Run’ via tenderly penned lyricism as Bruce displays a sense of captivity within his curb side utopia, ‘Tear drops of the city bed, Scooter’s searching for his groove, the whole world’s walking pretty and I can’t find the room to move’ and he continues, ‘I’m going to sit back real easy and laugh, while Scooter and the big man bust the city in half’.

There’s something mystical about the way Clarence Clemmons saxophone invokes a sense of buoyancy into this album, making it all the more energetic and, as becomes clear throughout the rest of the record, it becomes a necessity in Bruce’s blue collar anthems, accurately construing images of mid-seventies Asbury Park.



As heard in Bruce’s first two releases, ‘Greetings From Asbury Park’ and ‘The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle’, these illicit characters he continually turns to, semi-autobiographical in parts, attach themselves to the records and the emotions of the listener. There’s that movie-like sense of epic endings in his proletariat settings of run down arcades and decrepit piers. ‘Jungleland’ clearly portrays this in all its gallant and majestic glory - waves of grandiose pianos and splendorous picture-painting words glamorously ache with the distinguished marksmanship of a man who has finally grasped the unobtainable cusp of perfection, crooning towards the end of the eight minute tale, ‘the poets down here don’t write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be’, and that is Bruce in all his unblemished splendour.