September 26, 2025 • 28 mins
Dive deep into the legendary album 'Born To Run' as author Sean Egan breaks down each track, celebrating 50 years of Bruce Springsteen's masterpiece!
Purchase a copy of Bruce Springsteen and Born to Run: 50 Years
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The story behind the making of an album released fifty
years ago, arguably considered one of the greatest of all time.
Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen. It's coming up next
and Booked on Rock.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
We're totally bummed rock and Roll. I think I'll leave you.
You're reading Little Hands since it's time to rock.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And roll, roll out, I totally booked. Welcome back to
Booked on Rock, the podcast for those about to read
and rock on Eric Sinitch, we have a returning guest,
Sean Egan. His latest book is titled Bruce Springsteen and
Born to Run fifty years Sean, Welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hi, how are you.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm good. Thanks. So before we get into the album,
when did you first hear Born to Run and what
was your reaction? Well?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I came to Born to Run late, actually, because my
first Springsteen album was The River and absolutely love that
album still do in fact, so obviously once you will,
once you get into somebody, you start checking.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Out their back catalog.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
So I came to that album the wrong way round
because obviously The River was nineteen eighty Born to Run
seventy five, But once you start listening to somebody's back catalog,
you start getting everything in context, and Born to Run
that sort of paid the way for the river. But
(01:24):
the interesting thing is, and I didn't start thinking about
this until I was writing the book, I think Born
to Run created political rock, because if you think about it,
there wasn't really much in the way in rock history
that posited rock and roll as explicitly pronasarian. It was
(01:45):
certainly always anti authoritarian, but there weren't really that many
songs before that album that were a class based rock.
So Bruce really invented the entire genre with that album.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
You're writing the book called. Although the album was a
massive best seller and is by common consensus a cast
iron classic, it easily could have never been made. Talk
about where Bruce was in terms of his standing with
his record label, Columbia and the odds he was facing
at the time he was planning this what would be
his third studio album.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Well, it made two albums in nineteen seventy three, Greetings
from Hasbury Park and The Wild Innocent in the East
Street Shuffle, and they were both promising albums, but they
hadn't really sold many copies, and he was really hamstrung
by the terrible hype that surrounded his first album. He
(02:39):
was being held as the new Dylan, which a lot
of people were in those days, because Dylan was semi
retired and everybody wanted a new poet, laureate of rock
and roll. And he hates hype, always has done, and
of course the public hates it as well to some extent.
So when they checked out his first album and found
(03:01):
that it was merely promising rather than rather than a classic,
as so many Bob Dylan albums already were, then there
was bound to be a little bit of a backlash.
The wild, the Innocent of the East Street Shuffle. It
didn't really advance him much. I mean, you could feel
him experimenting a bit. It was a quite jazzy album,
(03:24):
so it's unique in his cannon in that respect. But
Columbia Records were now beginning to feel, well, maybe we
are wasting our time on this person and we should
just let him go. And they actually said to him,
we need you to record a single, which was a
nonsense idea because he was an album's artist. So it
(03:45):
was like he was being put through this humiliating process
of being forced to audition for his own record company
before they were deign to put out another album by him.
So yeah, that was a terrible position for him to
be at that point in time, and it could so
easily have been the last thing that he ever recorded.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
To understand the songs that make up Born to Run,
it's important to understand Bruce's background, and you do cover
that in the opening chapter, and the chapter is titled
growing Up. The context. While the music is big, Bruce
came from small beginnings. Talk about that and how it
influenced the songs on this album.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Well, one contemporary of his described him as dirt poor,
so he was always he came from a family that
was always scrimping and saving, and he had a loving
relationship with his mother, quite a difficult relationship with his father,
who he only later on in life realized was probably
(04:44):
mentally ill even at that point of his life.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
So he.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Was from the wrong side of the tracks, as it were,
and that kind of stuff informs his songs, and not
merely been the wrong side of the tracks, it's also
being the wrong side of the river because he's from
New Jersey, and like a lot of people in New
Jersey feel or felt then that to him was Nowhereville
(05:17):
and whenever he traveled to New York on the other
side of the river. He just felt this is the
kind of hustle and bustle and glamour that he really
wanted to be part of his life, but it wasn't
when he was stuck in the boondocks of New Jersey.
So yeah, you can. You can hear all of that
(05:39):
in his songs, not so much on his first two albums,
which they do show a lot of street life, but
in a very stylized way. But once he gets into
Born to Run, especially the title track's he's really exploring
the despair of people who feel that because they don't
(05:59):
have of great prospects, that they're may be not valid
as human beings, which is a terrible situation.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
To be in.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Let's get to the tracks now, you right, Quell. Born
to Run starts in a rather peculiar way. Expand on
that in terms of that opening track, thunder Road, and
what Bruce has said about why he chose that particular
song to open the album.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Well, he felt that it just the tone of that
song had the hallmarks of a fresh day and new beginning,
and therefore it was appropriate that it would start the album.
Now that makes its own kind of sense. But sonically
it makes no sense at all because it's a sort
(06:42):
of meandering song. It doesn't really have a proper chorus,
and it's got an instrumental break, but it's in the
oddest place, is right at the end where Clarence plays
his sax soolo to bring things to a close. So
it is a hulia starts at the album. But then
(07:02):
again it works. And part of the reason that it works,
of course, is that having heard the album so many
times over the years, to us it would now sound
odd if it didn't start like that. It just becomes
a natural start to a sort of beloved sequence of songs.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
It's an odd instrumental break as well.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
You point that out, Yeah, I mean, Clarence, it was
a sort of throwback to the fifties. You know, by
the nineteen seventies, the saxophone was not a big part
of rock and roll, but Bruce brought that back. Partly
it was, I think because of his fondness for Clarence,
(07:45):
you know, fine instrumentalist though Clarence was. Bruce and Clarence
Clemons were for a long time close as brothers. The
fact their girlfriends when they first met the two men's
girlfriends used to laugh at them and them are being
gay because they spend so much time together.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Well, thunder Road is a title taken from a nineteen
fifty six Robert Mitcham thriller, which is a non to
Bruce's love of film noir. And that's probably one of
the one of the reasons, among the reasons why I'm
a fan of Bruce, because I am a film noir fan.
The next track, tenth Avenue Freeze Out, you say, in
many ways, it's the most likable cut on the album,
(08:24):
and add that recording artists writing about themselves is often
a dubious proposition at best and unwise at worst. Talk
about why you feel this song manages to sidestep any
of the traps that can often come with this type
of song.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Well, self mythologizing is always a dubious proposition. I mean,
one of my favorite bands of all time is The Clash.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
The Clash.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
We're always writing about themselves, you know, whether it Big
Garage Land or Last Gang in Town or Radio Clash.
And because I love The Clash, you can sort of
forgive them for it. But it's sort of preposterous because
the class were unknown to the vast bulk of the public,
(09:07):
and yet here they were talking about themselves as though
were they were significant cultural forces. And you know, even
the Beatles, who genuinely were a significant cultural force. You've
got a song like The Ballad of John and Yoko,
which is a great song, no denying it, but you're
listening to that sometimes thinking, isn't this a bit a.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Bit self absorbed?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Especially the sort of the quite offensive comparison John Lennon
makes between himself and a man who died in agony
on the Cross. That's a bit too far by anybody's,
by even the most hardcore Beatle fans standards. The thing
about Tenth Avenue Freeze Out is that it doesn't feel
(09:56):
bogged down by that kind of egotism. I mean, Bruce
feels like he's mocking himself at the same time as
he's celebrating himself, bigging up himself as we would say today.
And it's actually quite a joyous track as well. I
mean that lovely brass section. It just rings so clean
(10:17):
and crisp, and you can you can get with the
idea that Bruce and the E Street Band are giants,
that the that the that the song sort of hints
at even though of course at the time they were
pretty much unknown, simply because it is such a likable soundscape.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Rack three Unsided One is Nate and there is a
sadness that lies behind the joy Bruce portrays here in
a song about a man working all day, the boss
man giving him hell. He can't wait to get home
and go for a ride. Springsteen admits to never having
a d job, but he can tap into the everyday
man so brilliantly. Some criticize him, but you say he
(11:01):
can certainly relate as a young musician barely getting by
in those early days, that's something that he certainly he
put a lot of work into, much like a day job.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Well, Bruce had never known anything other than poverty at
that point in his life, whether it be as a
child or as a young man whose job, as it was,
was a very insecure one, being a want to be
a rock star. And of course he'd seen the effects
of having a job that you hate doing every time
(11:34):
he saw his father come home from work. His father
was a very, very unfulfilled man, and that sort of
misery seeped into the Springsteen household and Bruce's own own psyche,
so he was well qualified to write about the effects
of unskilled labor, even if he never knew that experience personally.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And that last track on side one is Backstreets. The
shortest song on the album is Night at three minutes,
and it's followed by the six and a half minute Backstreets.
The narrator's ex girlfriend is named Terry, and Bruce seems
to have a liking for female characters with two syllable
first names ending and why you point this out Bobby, Candy, Cindy, Janey, Kitty, Rosy, Sandy, Sherry, Terry,
(12:22):
Wendy or most commonly Mary. I think I covered them all.
You also point out that the song could have been
shortened up. Is this your least favorite track from the album?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I think it is.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I mean when he goes into the refrain at the end,
hiding on the backstreets, you sort of think to yourself
after a few repeats of that, well, you made your point, Bruce.
You don't need to go on and on about it.
And the girl's name thing. It must sound peculiar to Americans,
but it sounds very peculiar to British people because we
(12:56):
hear these names and they sound so cornerly all American.
They sound like the kind of names that you'd only
hear in a movie rather than in real life. But again,
it's one of those things you come to love because
they're so familiar with Bruce. It's like his trademark, even
if it is a slightly comical one. But there are
(13:19):
good qualities to hiding on the backstreets. It's quite a
vulnerable song. He's talking about that feeling that you have
when you're just left school and you're thinking about your
future and you're not sure you're ever going to amount
to anything. So there's a sort of quivering vulnerability on
the cusp of your adult life.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Bun Rock Podcast will be back after this.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
It's intermission time.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Sean Egan is the author of Bruce Springsteen and Born
to Run. Fifty years we flipped the album over to
side too. It opens with Bruce's breakthrough song on the
title track, Born to Run, and you note that it
was inspired really by the animals cover of House of
the Rising Sun, along with We've got to get out
of this place and it's my life. You're right quote.
We're back in the same psychological territory as night, but
(14:11):
it has greater impact.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah, the Animals were one of the few people who
made proletarian rock before Born to Run, even though they
didn't actually write the songs. But songs like it's my
life and We've got to get out of this place
they do sum up the sort of despair and the
misery and the lack of fulfilm and the yearning ambition
(14:36):
for something more in life of a lot of working
class people, especially younger people, and Bruce taps into that.
I think the most interesting thing about the Born to
Run song is that that was the song which he
wrote for the single that Columbia insisted that he make,
(14:59):
and he absolutely overhauled everything about his style with that
song because he said to his manager, I want to
do a Phil Spector type record, and his manager said
to him, well, Bruce's there's like only twenty words in
a Phil Spector song, whereas there's dozens and hundreds in
(15:22):
your songs. Because if you listen to those first two albums,
his songs are very florrid that you know, the words
are bursting over the margins of the songs almost.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
So he took his manager's.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Advice and he wrote this very stripped down lyric is
a great lyric and it says a lot, but it
was very spare by his standards, you know, because he
was known as a bit of a poet, and that's
where part of the new New Dylan tag came from.
(15:57):
And when you think about it, that is credible achievements
and just change your style overnight like that, and he
never really went back to that florid style that you
hear on those first two albums. That was a new
beginning for him which he stuck to.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
And the next track, She's the One Boy. Didley was
a strong influence on this song. You say Bruce falls
short lyrically on this track, but you praise the musicianship
on this song, with Roy Bitten's piano work being the highlight.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah, I mean Boe Didly of course famous for the
shaven a haircut to bits rhythm sometimes known as hand bone,
which he didn't really invent, but it certainly became his trademark.
And Bruce decides to do his own bo Diddley beat
song with that. The lyric it doesn't fully work. It
(16:47):
is a little bit awkward, you know, that line about
she knows that it kills me kills being the rhyme
with the preceding line, but then he adds this feeble me,
and you know, it's all a bit awkward, and it's
a bit in congress in the context of this album,
which is all about perfectionism and doing things over and
(17:10):
over again. I think he could have put that lyric
through a few more drafts before it before it was
ready to be aired to the world.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
But yeah, it's the E.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Street Band, which which really came together with this album
because he lost two members after the last album and
he needed to to add Roy Batan and.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
And Max Weinberg the drummer.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
So so with a great band like that, even a
mediocre thing like She's the One could be could be
turned into any enjoyable few minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Interesting piece of trivia. Max is not on the title track.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah, that's the only song that Max doesn't drum on
the album, and he never really could replicate the drum
sounds of that title track. But I think history shows
that Max was a very valuable addition to the E
(18:19):
Street Band. We couldn't imagine the E Street Band without
seeing really.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, and I'm drawing a blank on who was the
original drummer. Boom Carter yeah, Ernest Boom.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Carter Boom boom, because the police came round to his
place one day after reports of gunfire and it turned
out that it was just Carter banging on his drums.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
The next track, another film noir title, Meeting Across the River,
talk about how this track is called more static geographically
than the other material on the album, yet it's more
layered in more of a true narrative than any other track.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Well, it's basically a conversation between the narrator and is
his friend and they're talking. The narrator is basically talking
to his friend saying, I hear there's an easy heist
over the river. And it becomes it becomes apparent during
(19:17):
the course of this song that what a nasty piece
of work this narrata is. And this is the This
is the opposite of the narrator in Born to run
the song, who might also be a loser, but he
doesn't really have that nastiness to him. This is a
(19:39):
this is a low life who doesn't care who he hurts,
whether it be his girlfriend whose radio he's just HoTT
or whether it be the people who is going to
planning to terrorize when he when he does this stick
up that he's talking about, and very noir in the
sense that Bruce is only on it in the in
(20:01):
the sense of a vocal. Instead you've got you get
a very spare, jazzy soundscape, which sounds sort of like
the soundtracks wherevery noir movie that you've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
And then you asked the question how to end an
album like Born to Run? We know he chooses the
epitrac jungle Land. So tell me how you feel about
that choice to end the album. I think it.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
I don't think it could have ended any other way, really,
in the sense that you couldn't put that track in
any other place. It's an absolute epic in the same
way that Highway sixty one by Bob Dylan has to
end with Desolation Row, so.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
This one has to end with jungle Land.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
And it's basically it's a street opera. It's a little
bit stylized in the in the way of West Side Story.
You can imagine the protagonists of this of this vista
in pirouettes as they deliver their lines. But at the
same time it has got a certain grittiness to it,
(21:06):
and it's a beautiful piece Musically. It feels like an opera.
It's got several movements, it's got contrasting musical styles, and
it truly sounds epic.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
It has its critics, though you point that out on
the book. What are the criticisms and why do you
say they're missing the point?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Well? They Bob Geldoff famously said about Bob Dylan, he
writes fiction the Magic Rat did not cross over the
New Jersey River in his Sleek Machine. You know, he's
quoting lines from jungle Land in that, and you can
(21:49):
sort of see what he means, because it does feel
very stylized. Some people actually like that about the song.
But the thing is, Bruce was inventing political rock as
he was going along. He had very few antecedents to
(22:10):
provide a template for him. And Bob, of course was
in the New Wave that came right after him, and
punk and new wave did create new rules for political
rock well, one of which, of course, was that everything
should be gritty and naturalistic, and that by definition militated
(22:37):
against the kind of bombasture here in jungle Land. But
you have to say, would punk rock have happened without
Born to Run? Because Born to Run to a very
great extent, made it possible.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
The gate fold sleeve one of the best. You say,
it's emblematic of the album's vivid and widescreen nature. That
great shot of Bruce and saxophone as Clarence Clemmons. This,
you say, appears to have occurred more through serendipity than calculation.
What's the story behind that? Gatefold sleeves usually was done
for double albums, not single albums.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, he had to get special dispensation to make this
one a gatefold sleeve because they were quite expensive to
do and he didn't really have much.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
In mind for the album.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
He went to the photographic studio of Eric Meola, who
was a photographer that he vaguely knew, and he just
turned up in his street clothes. He was wearing a
leather jacket with an Elvis Presley fan club button on it,
and Clarence came with him. The only thing that Bruce
(23:52):
knew that he wanted to do was to have something
a picture with him and Clarence in it, not the
East Eat band and not Bruce on his own. So
he was clearly trying to communicate something with that, and
in fact a lot of people must have been puzzled
when they saw that album. Because he wasn't that well
(24:13):
known a person, A lot of people must have been
wondering which one is Bruce. Unthinkable is that seems today?
But Meola took plenty of pictures. There's some fascinating outtakes
from that session, but the one that we all became
familiar with was Bruce leaning against Clarence. Well, Clarence plays
(24:35):
the sacks, Bruce is actually standing on a box because
he's quite a bit shorter than Clarence was, and so
you only see Bruce on the front. But then you
open the sleeve out and there's saxophone that there's Clarence
with his saxophone on the back cover. It's a very
minimalist design. They're surrounded by white. Just there two figures
(25:00):
and then there's the then there's the track listing on
the back. But it works perfectly because you see that
that sleeve, you're intrigued by it, and of course you
never forget it, and it's past the test of so
many iconic sleeves. It's been much parodied. There's plenty of
(25:21):
people who have imitated that album sleeve, including Sesame Street.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
That's right. One thing I was surprised to read I
always assumed that the critics loved this album right out
of the gate, but that wasn't the case right away.
What was the response by critics.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Well, it got a mixed reception because, first of all,
Born to Run is very much a self conscious epic
and a self conscious classic. In fact, when Bruce was
right recording the single, the title track single, he actually said,
I'm gonna if I'm going to be forced to record
(25:58):
a single, I'm going to make the greatest rock and
roll records you ever heard. So he was he was
aiming high with this album, and you can hear that
on the album that this man is clearly trying to
trying to create a classic.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Very often he succeeds.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
But some people don't like that, of course, They somehow
feel that there's that there's some kind of pure process
involved in making music and it's got nothing to do
with personal ambition or avarice or egotism. Of course, he's
got everything to do with those things as well as
(26:41):
as well as artistic inspiration. Yeah, and it's also absolutely
dripping with rock and roll self referentialism, whether it be
the Specterish production, whether it be the Bow Did track,
whether it be the.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Nods to.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Like in thunder Road where he quotes Roy Orbison. You know,
it's that kind of we would call that meta these days,
but that kind of meta approach or postmodernism, whatever you
want to call it, it wasn't that common in those days,
and to a lot of critics that just came across
(27:27):
as a bit cute.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Much more than a deep dive into the tracks. In
this book, you get into the reception of the album,
the tour, Bruce getting on the cover of Time and Newsweek,
a chapter on Bruce meeting Bob Dylan, Phil Spector, almost Elvis,
how Bruce boosted and altered the development of an entire
genre known as Hartley and rock. Beautiful color photos. So
there's so much more in this book for maybe the
(27:49):
new fan of Bruce, but also the longtime fans. This
is something to really add as part of your collection.
Bruce Brinsteen and Born to Run fifty years out. Now
find out Wheriver books are sold. Look for it nearest bookstore.
You can also find your nearest independent bookstore at bookdown
Rock dot com. Sewan Egan, thank you so much for
doing this. I know we're five hours apart, so you're
doing this interview very late, so I really appreciate you
(28:12):
stepping up and giving another fantastic interview. I had you
on last time for your Bob Dylan book, so thank
you for coming back on.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Good still to you. That's it. It's in the books.
The story behind the making of an album released fifty
years ago, arguably considered one of the greatest of all time.
Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen. It's coming up next
and Booked on Rock.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
We're totally bummed rock and Roll. I think I'll leave you.
You're reading Little Hands since it's time to rock.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And roll, roll out, I totally booked. Welcome back to
Booked on Rock, the podcast for those about to read
and rock on Eric Sinitch, we have a returning guest,
Sean Egan. His latest book is titled Bruce Springsteen and
Born to Run fifty years Sean, Welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hi, how are you.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm good. Thanks. So before we get into the album,
when did you first hear Born to Run and what
was your reaction? Well?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I came to Born to Run late, actually, because my
first Springsteen album was The River and absolutely love that
album still do in fact, so obviously once you will,
once you get into somebody, you start checking.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Out their back catalog.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
So I came to that album the wrong way round
because obviously The River was nineteen eighty Born to Run
seventy five, But once you start listening to somebody's back catalog,
you start getting everything in context, and Born to Run
that sort of paid the way for the river. But
(01:24):
the interesting thing is, and I didn't start thinking about
this until I was writing the book, I think Born
to Run created political rock, because if you think about it,
there wasn't really much in the way in rock history
that posited rock and roll as explicitly pronasarian. It was
(01:45):
certainly always anti authoritarian, but there weren't really that many
songs before that album that were a class based rock.
So Bruce really invented the entire genre with that album.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
You're writing the book called. Although the album was a
massive best seller and is by common consensus a cast
iron classic, it easily could have never been made. Talk
about where Bruce was in terms of his standing with
his record label, Columbia and the odds he was facing
at the time he was planning this what would be
his third studio album.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Well, it made two albums in nineteen seventy three, Greetings
from Hasbury Park and The Wild Innocent in the East
Street Shuffle, and they were both promising albums, but they
hadn't really sold many copies, and he was really hamstrung
by the terrible hype that surrounded his first album. He
(02:39):
was being held as the new Dylan, which a lot
of people were in those days, because Dylan was semi
retired and everybody wanted a new poet, laureate of rock
and roll. And he hates hype, always has done, and
of course the public hates it as well to some extent.
So when they checked out his first album and found
(03:01):
that it was merely promising rather than rather than a classic,
as so many Bob Dylan albums already were, then there
was bound to be a little bit of a backlash.
The wild, the Innocent of the East Street Shuffle. It
didn't really advance him much. I mean, you could feel
him experimenting a bit. It was a quite jazzy album,
(03:24):
so it's unique in his cannon in that respect. But
Columbia Records were now beginning to feel, well, maybe we
are wasting our time on this person and we should
just let him go. And they actually said to him,
we need you to record a single, which was a
nonsense idea because he was an album's artist. So it
(03:45):
was like he was being put through this humiliating process
of being forced to audition for his own record company
before they were deign to put out another album by him.
So yeah, that was a terrible position for him to
be at that point in time, and it could so
easily have been the last thing that he ever recorded.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
To understand the songs that make up Born to Run,
it's important to understand Bruce's background, and you do cover
that in the opening chapter, and the chapter is titled
growing Up. The context. While the music is big, Bruce
came from small beginnings. Talk about that and how it
influenced the songs on this album.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Well, one contemporary of his described him as dirt poor,
so he was always he came from a family that
was always scrimping and saving, and he had a loving
relationship with his mother, quite a difficult relationship with his father,
who he only later on in life realized was probably
(04:44):
mentally ill even at that point of his life.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
So he.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Was from the wrong side of the tracks, as it were,
and that kind of stuff informs his songs, and not
merely been the wrong side of the tracks, it's also
being the wrong side of the river because he's from
New Jersey, and like a lot of people in New
Jersey feel or felt then that to him was Nowhereville
(05:17):
and whenever he traveled to New York on the other
side of the river. He just felt this is the
kind of hustle and bustle and glamour that he really
wanted to be part of his life, but it wasn't
when he was stuck in the boondocks of New Jersey.
So yeah, you can. You can hear all of that
(05:39):
in his songs, not so much on his first two albums,
which they do show a lot of street life, but
in a very stylized way. But once he gets into
Born to Run, especially the title track's he's really exploring
the despair of people who feel that because they don't
(05:59):
have of great prospects, that they're may be not valid
as human beings, which is a terrible situation.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
To be in.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Let's get to the tracks now, you right, Quell. Born
to Run starts in a rather peculiar way. Expand on
that in terms of that opening track, thunder Road, and
what Bruce has said about why he chose that particular
song to open the album.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Well, he felt that it just the tone of that
song had the hallmarks of a fresh day and new beginning,
and therefore it was appropriate that it would start the album.
Now that makes its own kind of sense. But sonically
it makes no sense at all because it's a sort
(06:42):
of meandering song. It doesn't really have a proper chorus,
and it's got an instrumental break, but it's in the
oddest place, is right at the end where Clarence plays
his sax soolo to bring things to a close. So
it is a hulia starts at the album. But then
(07:02):
again it works. And part of the reason that it works,
of course, is that having heard the album so many
times over the years, to us it would now sound
odd if it didn't start like that. It just becomes
a natural start to a sort of beloved sequence of songs.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
It's an odd instrumental break as well.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
You point that out, Yeah, I mean, Clarence, it was
a sort of throwback to the fifties. You know, by
the nineteen seventies, the saxophone was not a big part
of rock and roll, but Bruce brought that back. Partly
it was, I think because of his fondness for Clarence,
(07:45):
you know, fine instrumentalist though Clarence was. Bruce and Clarence
Clemons were for a long time close as brothers. The
fact their girlfriends when they first met the two men's
girlfriends used to laugh at them and them are being
gay because they spend so much time together.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Well, thunder Road is a title taken from a nineteen
fifty six Robert Mitcham thriller, which is a non to
Bruce's love of film noir. And that's probably one of
the one of the reasons, among the reasons why I'm
a fan of Bruce, because I am a film noir fan.
The next track, tenth Avenue Freeze Out, you say, in
many ways, it's the most likable cut on the album,
(08:24):
and add that recording artists writing about themselves is often
a dubious proposition at best and unwise at worst. Talk
about why you feel this song manages to sidestep any
of the traps that can often come with this type
of song.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Well, self mythologizing is always a dubious proposition. I mean,
one of my favorite bands of all time is The Clash.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
The Clash.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
We're always writing about themselves, you know, whether it Big
Garage Land or Last Gang in Town or Radio Clash.
And because I love The Clash, you can sort of
forgive them for it. But it's sort of preposterous because
the class were unknown to the vast bulk of the public,
(09:07):
and yet here they were talking about themselves as though
were they were significant cultural forces. And you know, even
the Beatles, who genuinely were a significant cultural force. You've
got a song like The Ballad of John and Yoko,
which is a great song, no denying it, but you're
listening to that sometimes thinking, isn't this a bit a.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Bit self absorbed?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Especially the sort of the quite offensive comparison John Lennon
makes between himself and a man who died in agony
on the Cross. That's a bit too far by anybody's,
by even the most hardcore Beatle fans standards. The thing
about Tenth Avenue Freeze Out is that it doesn't feel
(09:56):
bogged down by that kind of egotism. I mean, Bruce
feels like he's mocking himself at the same time as
he's celebrating himself, bigging up himself as we would say today.
And it's actually quite a joyous track as well. I
mean that lovely brass section. It just rings so clean
(10:17):
and crisp, and you can you can get with the
idea that Bruce and the E Street Band are giants,
that the that the that the song sort of hints
at even though of course at the time they were
pretty much unknown, simply because it is such a likable soundscape.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Rack three Unsided One is Nate and there is a
sadness that lies behind the joy Bruce portrays here in
a song about a man working all day, the boss
man giving him hell. He can't wait to get home
and go for a ride. Springsteen admits to never having
a d job, but he can tap into the everyday
man so brilliantly. Some criticize him, but you say he
(11:01):
can certainly relate as a young musician barely getting by
in those early days, that's something that he certainly he
put a lot of work into, much like a day job.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Well, Bruce had never known anything other than poverty at
that point in his life, whether it be as a
child or as a young man whose job, as it was,
was a very insecure one, being a want to be
a rock star. And of course he'd seen the effects
of having a job that you hate doing every time
(11:34):
he saw his father come home from work. His father
was a very, very unfulfilled man, and that sort of
misery seeped into the Springsteen household and Bruce's own own psyche,
so he was well qualified to write about the effects
of unskilled labor, even if he never knew that experience personally.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And that last track on side one is Backstreets. The
shortest song on the album is Night at three minutes,
and it's followed by the six and a half minute Backstreets.
The narrator's ex girlfriend is named Terry, and Bruce seems
to have a liking for female characters with two syllable
first names ending and why you point this out Bobby, Candy, Cindy, Janey, Kitty, Rosy, Sandy, Sherry, Terry,
(12:22):
Wendy or most commonly Mary. I think I covered them all.
You also point out that the song could have been
shortened up. Is this your least favorite track from the album?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
I think it is.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I mean when he goes into the refrain at the end,
hiding on the backstreets, you sort of think to yourself
after a few repeats of that, well, you made your point, Bruce.
You don't need to go on and on about it.
And the girl's name thing. It must sound peculiar to Americans,
but it sounds very peculiar to British people because we
(12:56):
hear these names and they sound so cornerly all American.
They sound like the kind of names that you'd only
hear in a movie rather than in real life. But again,
it's one of those things you come to love because
they're so familiar with Bruce. It's like his trademark, even
if it is a slightly comical one. But there are
(13:19):
good qualities to hiding on the backstreets. It's quite a
vulnerable song. He's talking about that feeling that you have
when you're just left school and you're thinking about your
future and you're not sure you're ever going to amount
to anything. So there's a sort of quivering vulnerability on
the cusp of your adult life.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Bun Rock Podcast will be back after this.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
It's intermission time.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Sean Egan is the author of Bruce Springsteen and Born
to Run. Fifty years we flipped the album over to
side too. It opens with Bruce's breakthrough song on the
title track, Born to Run, and you note that it
was inspired really by the animals cover of House of
the Rising Sun, along with We've got to get out
of this place and it's my life. You're right quote.
We're back in the same psychological territory as night, but
(14:11):
it has greater impact.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah, the Animals were one of the few people who
made proletarian rock before Born to Run, even though they
didn't actually write the songs. But songs like it's my
life and We've got to get out of this place
they do sum up the sort of despair and the
misery and the lack of fulfilm and the yearning ambition
(14:36):
for something more in life of a lot of working
class people, especially younger people, and Bruce taps into that.
I think the most interesting thing about the Born to
Run song is that that was the song which he
wrote for the single that Columbia insisted that he make,
(14:59):
and he absolutely overhauled everything about his style with that
song because he said to his manager, I want to
do a Phil Spector type record, and his manager said
to him, well, Bruce's there's like only twenty words in
a Phil Spector song, whereas there's dozens and hundreds in
(15:22):
your songs. Because if you listen to those first two albums,
his songs are very florrid that you know, the words
are bursting over the margins of the songs almost.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
So he took his manager's.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Advice and he wrote this very stripped down lyric is
a great lyric and it says a lot, but it
was very spare by his standards, you know, because he
was known as a bit of a poet, and that's
where part of the new New Dylan tag came from.
(15:57):
And when you think about it, that is credible achievements
and just change your style overnight like that, and he
never really went back to that florid style that you
hear on those first two albums. That was a new
beginning for him which he stuck to.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
And the next track, She's the One Boy. Didley was
a strong influence on this song. You say Bruce falls
short lyrically on this track, but you praise the musicianship
on this song, with Roy Bitten's piano work being the highlight.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah, I mean Boe Didly of course famous for the
shaven a haircut to bits rhythm sometimes known as hand bone,
which he didn't really invent, but it certainly became his trademark.
And Bruce decides to do his own bo Diddley beat
song with that. The lyric it doesn't fully work. It
(16:47):
is a little bit awkward, you know, that line about
she knows that it kills me kills being the rhyme
with the preceding line, but then he adds this feeble me,
and you know, it's all a bit awkward, and it's
a bit in congress in the context of this album,
which is all about perfectionism and doing things over and
(17:10):
over again. I think he could have put that lyric
through a few more drafts before it before it was
ready to be aired to the world.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
But yeah, it's the E.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Street Band, which which really came together with this album
because he lost two members after the last album and
he needed to to add Roy Batan and.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
And Max Weinberg the drummer.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
So so with a great band like that, even a
mediocre thing like She's the One could be could be
turned into any enjoyable few minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Interesting piece of trivia. Max is not on the title track.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah, that's the only song that Max doesn't drum on
the album, and he never really could replicate the drum
sounds of that title track. But I think history shows
that Max was a very valuable addition to the E
(18:19):
Street Band. We couldn't imagine the E Street Band without
seeing really.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, and I'm drawing a blank on who was the
original drummer. Boom Carter yeah, Ernest Boom.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Carter Boom boom, because the police came round to his
place one day after reports of gunfire and it turned
out that it was just Carter banging on his drums.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
The next track, another film noir title, Meeting Across the River,
talk about how this track is called more static geographically
than the other material on the album, yet it's more
layered in more of a true narrative than any other track.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Well, it's basically a conversation between the narrator and is
his friend and they're talking. The narrator is basically talking
to his friend saying, I hear there's an easy heist
over the river. And it becomes it becomes apparent during
(19:17):
the course of this song that what a nasty piece
of work this narrata is. And this is the This
is the opposite of the narrator in Born to run
the song, who might also be a loser, but he
doesn't really have that nastiness to him. This is a
(19:39):
this is a low life who doesn't care who he hurts,
whether it be his girlfriend whose radio he's just HoTT
or whether it be the people who is going to
planning to terrorize when he when he does this stick
up that he's talking about, and very noir in the
sense that Bruce is only on it in the in
(20:01):
the sense of a vocal. Instead you've got you get
a very spare, jazzy soundscape, which sounds sort of like
the soundtracks wherevery noir movie that you've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
And then you asked the question how to end an
album like Born to Run? We know he chooses the
epitrac jungle Land. So tell me how you feel about
that choice to end the album. I think it.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
I don't think it could have ended any other way, really,
in the sense that you couldn't put that track in
any other place. It's an absolute epic in the same
way that Highway sixty one by Bob Dylan has to
end with Desolation Row, so.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
This one has to end with jungle Land.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
And it's basically it's a street opera. It's a little
bit stylized in the in the way of West Side Story.
You can imagine the protagonists of this of this vista
in pirouettes as they deliver their lines. But at the
same time it has got a certain grittiness to it,
(21:06):
and it's a beautiful piece Musically. It feels like an opera.
It's got several movements, it's got contrasting musical styles, and
it truly sounds epic.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
It has its critics, though you point that out on
the book. What are the criticisms and why do you
say they're missing the point?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Well? They Bob Geldoff famously said about Bob Dylan, he
writes fiction the Magic Rat did not cross over the
New Jersey River in his Sleek Machine. You know, he's
quoting lines from jungle Land in that, and you can
(21:49):
sort of see what he means, because it does feel
very stylized. Some people actually like that about the song.
But the thing is, Bruce was inventing political rock as
he was going along. He had very few antecedents to
(22:10):
provide a template for him. And Bob, of course was
in the New Wave that came right after him, and
punk and new wave did create new rules for political
rock well, one of which, of course, was that everything
should be gritty and naturalistic, and that by definition militated
(22:37):
against the kind of bombasture here in jungle Land. But
you have to say, would punk rock have happened without
Born to Run? Because Born to Run to a very
great extent, made it possible.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
The gate fold sleeve one of the best. You say,
it's emblematic of the album's vivid and widescreen nature. That
great shot of Bruce and saxophone as Clarence Clemmons. This,
you say, appears to have occurred more through serendipity than calculation.
What's the story behind that? Gatefold sleeves usually was done
for double albums, not single albums.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah, he had to get special dispensation to make this
one a gatefold sleeve because they were quite expensive to
do and he didn't really have much.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
In mind for the album.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
He went to the photographic studio of Eric Meola, who
was a photographer that he vaguely knew, and he just
turned up in his street clothes. He was wearing a
leather jacket with an Elvis Presley fan club button on it,
and Clarence came with him. The only thing that Bruce
(23:52):
knew that he wanted to do was to have something
a picture with him and Clarence in it, not the
East Eat band and not Bruce on his own. So
he was clearly trying to communicate something with that, and
in fact a lot of people must have been puzzled
when they saw that album. Because he wasn't that well
(24:13):
known a person, A lot of people must have been
wondering which one is Bruce. Unthinkable is that seems today?
But Meola took plenty of pictures. There's some fascinating outtakes
from that session, but the one that we all became
familiar with was Bruce leaning against Clarence. Well, Clarence plays
(24:35):
the sacks, Bruce is actually standing on a box because
he's quite a bit shorter than Clarence was, and so
you only see Bruce on the front. But then you
open the sleeve out and there's saxophone that there's Clarence
with his saxophone on the back cover. It's a very
minimalist design. They're surrounded by white. Just there two figures
(25:00):
and then there's the then there's the track listing on
the back. But it works perfectly because you see that
that sleeve, you're intrigued by it, and of course you
never forget it, and it's past the test of so
many iconic sleeves. It's been much parodied. There's plenty of
(25:21):
people who have imitated that album sleeve, including Sesame Street.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
That's right. One thing I was surprised to read I
always assumed that the critics loved this album right out
of the gate, but that wasn't the case right away.
What was the response by critics.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Well, it got a mixed reception because, first of all,
Born to Run is very much a self conscious epic
and a self conscious classic. In fact, when Bruce was
right recording the single, the title track single, he actually said,
I'm gonna if I'm going to be forced to record
(25:58):
a single, I'm going to make the greatest rock and
roll records you ever heard. So he was he was
aiming high with this album, and you can hear that
on the album that this man is clearly trying to
trying to create a classic.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Very often he succeeds.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
But some people don't like that, of course, They somehow
feel that there's that there's some kind of pure process
involved in making music and it's got nothing to do
with personal ambition or avarice or egotism. Of course, he's
got everything to do with those things as well as
(26:41):
as well as artistic inspiration. Yeah, and it's also absolutely
dripping with rock and roll self referentialism, whether it be
the Specterish production, whether it be the Bow Did track,
whether it be the.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Nods to.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Like in thunder Road where he quotes Roy Orbison. You know,
it's that kind of we would call that meta these days,
but that kind of meta approach or postmodernism, whatever you
want to call it, it wasn't that common in those days,
and to a lot of critics that just came across
(27:27):
as a bit cute.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Much more than a deep dive into the tracks. In
this book, you get into the reception of the album,
the tour, Bruce getting on the cover of Time and Newsweek,
a chapter on Bruce meeting Bob Dylan, Phil Spector, almost Elvis,
how Bruce boosted and altered the development of an entire
genre known as Hartley and rock. Beautiful color photos. So
there's so much more in this book for maybe the
(27:49):
new fan of Bruce, but also the longtime fans. This
is something to really add as part of your collection.
Bruce Brinsteen and Born to Run fifty years out. Now
find out Wheriver books are sold. Look for it nearest bookstore.
You can also find your nearest independent bookstore at bookdown
Rock dot com. Sewan Egan, thank you so much for
doing this. I know we're five hours apart, so you're
doing this interview very late, so I really appreciate you
(28:12):
stepping up and giving another fantastic interview. I had you
on last time for your Bob Dylan book, so thank
you for coming back on.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Good still to you. That's it. It's in the books.
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