Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run

I’ve covered a lot of Springsteen’s songs and I was going to look at my post of this one. I never covered it so I’m correcting that mistake today. This is one of those epic songs like A Day In The Life, Stairway To Heaven, Layla, and Free Bird.

1975 was the year of Bruce Springsteen. He was featured in Newsweek and Time magazine to his horror. The magazines were each granted interviews with Springsteen. Although they both featured similar details about his background and newfound stardom after his first two albums failed, the two articles were strikingly different in tone.

Time magazine wrote an article called “Rock’s New Sensation” in which he heaped praise on the new star. The writer knew music and realized how great Bruce was at the time. Newsweek was a different story. They wrote a story called “The Making of a Rock Star,” and looked at Columbia Records’ marketing campaign for ‘Born to Run’ and concluded it was pretty much hype. The ironic thing was that Bruce hated hype. Before he played the Hammersmith Odeon in London he ripped down a Springsteen promotional poster inside the Theatre before going upstairs and joining his party, after talking to a couple of the Record Company Executives he told his manager to instruct CBS to stop the hype and let the music sell itself.

Springsteen did try to use the Time and Newsweek covers to his advantage the next year. While touring Memphis he went to Graceland and jumped the fence but Elvis’s people were not amused. They escorted him out and told him that Elvis was in Lake Tahoe…which he was at the time. Bruce wanted to give him a song that he later gave the Pointer Sisters…Fire.

Now the song Born to Run. I think it’s fair to say that Born to Run is the song and album that broke him into stardom. On this album he had rock critic Jon Landau help him with the recording. That set off problems between Bruce and his manager Mike Appel…Appel wanted to stop Landau from working with Bruce after the album was made. That started a long saga of Bruce suing Appel which he didn’t want to do but he had to.

We all know Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” Well Bruce did his own Wall of Sound in this one. Springsteen has said that he counted 24 guitar overdubs in this track…that is why it sounds so huge. This was the only song on the album that Ernest “Boom” Carter played on. The original drummer Vini “Maddog” Lopez was fired in 1974 and Carter came in and helped out. He played this one song and then Max Weinberg took over the drums and still holds that spot. Carter left for a career in jazz. The keyboard player David Sancious only played on this song also and left for a very successful career in jazz. He would work on Springsteen’s solo albums later on.

Springsteen had other names for the album until deciding on this song as the title song. Other names he had were War And Roses, The Hungry, The Hunted, American Summer, and Sometimes At Night.

The song peaked at #23 on the Billboard 100 and #53 in Canada in 1975. It didn’t chart in the UK until 1987 when a live version peaked at #16. There was talk of making this the official state song of New Jersey.

Bruce Springsteen:  “One day I was playing my guitar on the edge of the bed, working on some song ideas, and the words ‘born to run’ came to me,” he recalled. “At first I thought it was the name of a movie or something I’d seen on a car spinning around the circuit. I liked the phrase because it suggested a cinematic drama that I thought would work with the music that I’d been hearing in my head.”

Bruce Springsteen: “This is a song that has changed a lot over the years. As I’ve sung it, it seems to have been able to open up and let the time in. When I wrote it, I was 24 years old, sitting in my bedroom in Long Branch, New Jersey. When I think back, it surprises me how much I knew about what I wanted, because the questions I ask myself in this song, it seems I’ve been trying to find the answers to them ever since. When I wrote this song, I was writing about a guy and a girl that wanted to run and keep on running, never come back. That was a nice, romantic idea, but I realized after I put all those people in all those cars, I was going to have to figure out someplace for them to go, and I realized in the end that individual freedom, when it’s not connected to some sort of community, can be pretty meaningless. So, I guess that guy and that girl out there were looking for connection, and I guess that’s what I’m doing here. So, this is a song about two people trying to find their way home. It’s kept me good company on my search, and I hope it keeps you good company on yours.”

Before playing this song on December 9, 1980, Springsteen said before starting this song:  “If it wasn’t for John Lennon, a lot of us would be someplace much different tonight. It’s a hard world that asks you to live with a lot of things that are unlivable. And it’s hard to come out here and play tonight, but there’s nothing else to do.”

Steven Van Zandt: “Bruce and I were just friends at this point. He said I wanna play you my new record. And he played ‘Born to Run’ for me, with me lying on the floor of the studio. He’d been working on it for months – I mean, literally months on one song, which is incredible now. But he played it from me, and I said, Oh, that’s great. I particularly love that minor riff, very Roy Orbison, something The Beatles would do. And he said, ‘What minor riff? What do you mean?’

What was happening was he was doing a Duane Eddy style riff, with a bunch of echo on it, and he was bending up to the last note. But you never heard him bending up to the notes, it didn’t register in your ear. He said, ‘Oh my f—ing God,’ and then played it how I heard it for the other guys, and I guess they all started to hear it the way I was, which was the way the whole world was gonna hear it! So they had to redo the guitar part and then the whole f–‘ing mix. The mix alone took them a couple of weeks, because in those days there was no automation and there was a lot going on in the song.”

Born To Run

In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages out on highway nine,
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected, and steppin’ out over the line
Oh, baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run

Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend
I want to guard your dreams and visions
Just wrap your legs ’round these velvet rims
And strap your hands ‘cross my engines
Together we could break this trap
We’ll run till we drop, baby we’ll never go back
Oh, will you walk with me out on the wire
Girl I’m just a scared and lonely rider
I gotta find out how it feels
I want to know if love is wild
I want to know if love is real

Oh can you show me?

Beyond the palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard
Girls comb their hair in rear view mirrors
Boys try to look so hard
The amusement park rises bold and stark
Kids are huddled on the beach in a mist
I wanna die with you Wendy on the street tonight
In an everlasting kiss

One, two, three

Highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive
Everybody’s out on the run tonight
But there’s no place left to hide
Together wendy we can live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
Oh, someday girl I don’t know when
We’re gonna get to that place
Where we really wanna go
We’ll walk in the sun
But till then tramps like us
Baby we were born to run

Tramps like us baby we were born to run
Tramps like us baby we were born to run

(Oh oh oh oh)

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

41 thoughts on “Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run”

  4. definitely a classic both as a song and an entry point for an artist who’d go on to be such a giant for years. Interesting to read about the different approaches of the 2 newsmagazines, I’ve heard about that (him being on the cover of both simultaneously) but never read those articles. As for me, I don’t think I heard of him, or anything by him until ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’… as the charts show, back then Bruce wasn’t quite as big in Canada.

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    1. Oh we heard Born to Run here even on AM radio….once in a while we would even hear Rosalita on FM stations here a little earlier. This album I think got people looking at the earlier two.
      He was pretty much an album guy more than singles for sure…well he always has been but was both after a while.

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  7. I remember waiting for the release of this album. When it came out it was like a musical explosion to me. When this cut made it onto the radio, this Springsteen guy I liked started to get some traction. What a great tune! After countless listens it still does it for me.

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    1. How exciting that must have been to hear this on the radio when it came out. If you look at his other two albums…this is what they were building to…the production on this album is great.

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      1. Yeah I was a confirmed fan banging his drum on his previous two albums (they all hold a place of their own for me) so I was in the line up for this one. Bigger sound and a change in him. The wait for this record wasnt as painful as the wait for the next one. “Come on Wendy …”

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  8. You’re absolutely right about where this song stands in the list of ‘greats.’

    I have to say, I know very little of Bruce Springsteen and although I have the obligatory ‘Best of ..’ compilation CD, I can’t count myself as a fan. There are some songs I do really like – this one in particular. And I bet I’m not the only saddo who tries every time I hear it, to get the timing of the ‘HUH!’ and ‘One, Two, Three, Four’ vocals bang on the money. 😀

    I DO also have a lot of time for the guy: I love the no-hype attitude; from what I hear from those who’ve been to his show, he plays mega-long sets, giving excellent value for money. He just comes across as an all round good guy.

    Hey – maybe I’m more of a fan than I think! 😉 😀

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    1. The song is so damn aggressive! It’s so in your face that you cannot ignore it.
      I will give you a first hand account…if you ever get a chance to see him…do. He played for around 3.5 to 4 hours when I saw him in 2000.
      He does give you your moneys worth.

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  9. Agree with everything you say here, Max. It ranks right up there at the top. A beautiful piece of music that has such marvelous changes in there. I love what he says about he put all of those people in cars but where were they going. The live video is AAA+++ He gave it the right title for sure. Love that album cover photo also.

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  10. I was listening to ‘Freebird’ again from that California concert when the young people looked chirpy and pre-diatetic unlike today because of the staple American diet. I’m afraid to admit ‘Born to Run’ is one of my least liked from the record since it’s so anthemic and what I listen to least of from the record. I think it’s his most overrated song although I understand why it’s one of his most popular. I have hardly heard it since I heard the album back in my teens. It’s just not my thing as I grew older. But I get it.

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    1. I’ve heard it so many times but…I hafe to admit I still like it…mostly because of the intensity he puts into it…the music and the voice.

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      4. Ok lets look at ‘Bridges’. That separates the wheat from the chaff in my book. Check out Perri’s bridge in ‘Miles’ at 2:20 in her song then Springsteen’s in ‘Counting on a Miracle’. Both are at the peak of musical accomplishment. I’ve never heard their equal.

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  11. Born To Run. No introduction needed. The session drummer Ernest “Boom”Carter’s rattling drum introduction sends us speeding down the freeway in search of a “runaway American dream” with the vivacious Wendy in the passenger seat. The youthful optimism of Born To Run lives forever. We will always know that love is wild and love is real.

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  12. Its full on from the get-go and just keeps pulling away. A full sound, no time to breath, foot down and gone. As you write, Bruce don’t quite know where he/we’re going, but it’s one hell of an intro.

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  15. A Masterpiece and still my fave Bruce track. A wall of sound exciting rush that got radio play in the UK but didn’t sell. It made my charts and I bought the single, so I can brag I was 5 years ahead of the UK record-buying public – Hungry Heart was the one that charted, though I think if the charts had been a Top 75 in 1975 this woulda made it too – but it was sadly just a 50. One of those classic records I never tire of hearing….

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