The Story Behind 'Born To Run''s Iconic Album Sleeve [Highlight From Episode 322]

Author Sean Egan reveals the fascinating story behind the iconic album sleeve for Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run' album.

Listen to Episode 322: Bruce Springsteen's 'Born To Run' 50 Years Later: A Retrospective

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here was a highlight from a recent episode of book
Don Rock. John Egan is the author of Bruce Springsteen
and Born to Run fifty Years. The gatefold 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?

(00:22):
Gatefold sleeves usually was done for double albums, not single albums.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
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 in mind for
the album. He went to the photographic studio of Eric Meola,

(00:53):
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. That the only
thing that Bruce knew that he wanted to do was
to have something a picture with him and Clarence in it,

(01:16):
not the E Street Band and 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 known a person. A lot of people must have
been wondering which one is Bruce? Unthinkable was that seems today?

(01:38):
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
the sacks, Bruce is actually standing on a box because
he's quite a bit shorter than Clarence was. So you

(02:01):
only see Bruce on the front, but then you open
the sleeve out and there's saxophone that there's Clarence with
a saxophone on the back cover. It's a very minimalist design.
They're surrounded by white, just their two figures and then
there's the then there's the track listing on the back.

(02:24):
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 people who have
imitated that album sleeve, including Sesame Street