Born to Run

Today is Bruce Springteen's 60th birthday, as the Sports Guy has taken great pains to point out on twitter.  I find it shocking that Springsteen’s only 60. How is he still that young? In recent years, the Boss has seemed kind of ancient; not exactly past his expiration date, but certainly long enough in the tooth to be celebrated as rock’s Methuselah-like patriarch.

Anyway, in honor of Springsteen's 60th, Slate recounts the story behind Bruce's magnus opus, "Born to Run," truly one of the greatest rock albums of all time and certainly the best to come out of the Garden State. I forget sometimes that Springsteen labored over this album, particularly its title track, the Boss’s signature song. I forget, too, that if Springsteen hadn’t come through with a commercially viable album—his third and possibly final one with Sony— he would today most likely be sharing the bill with Southside Johnny on Mike'd Up. 

It’s true. Before the success of "Born to Run," Sony, Springsteen's record label, was set to drop him, which, pre-Internet, would have been, for all intents and purposes, the end of Springsteen's career. The Boss's firing would have changed the trajectory of American music, and, on a more personal note, severely hindered my uncle’s social life throughout the 1980s, when he spent the better part of every summer attending Springsteen concerts, up and down the Jersey shore. Really, we all would have missed out. No album or piece of art impacted my adolescent world view or calibrated my expectations of all that was yet to come than "Born to Run," with the possible exception of Slaughterhouse Five, Pearl Jam’s "Ten," and, at certain moments, The Baltimore Cathechism. I honestly do not know who I would be, or how I would experience the world, without having heard this album. How often do you get to say that about anything?

Which is why the album's backstory is so interesting. Backed into a corner, Springsteen knew he had a good idea in "Born to Run," but he couldn’t quite nail it down, no matter how many times he tried, or how many instruments he introduced, including, oddly, a glockenspiel.

The alternate mixes of "Born To Run" that are available reveal some of the ways in which Springsteen experimented musically. In one, a female chorus joins him in the background when he sings, "get out while we're young," "got to know how it feels," and "walk in the sun." Musically, the strings at various points are more prominent than they would be in the final version. It's easy to see why Bruce rejected this mix: The chorus and strings make the song too ethereal and distance it from the driving force of the beat. In another mix, Springsteen's lead vocal is doubled, the chorus is still intact, and the strings at the end of the song are even more pronounced. Two other mixes play with the balance of strings and bass. At one point, the band experimented with different sound effects such as streetcars and drag racing.

The earliest live version of the song that is available dates from July 13, 1974, at the Bottom Line in New York, more than a year before a string of shows at the same venue that would astonish the industry. While musically the song is almost set, lyrically it is dramatically different from the final version, so much so that its meaning shifts. After "runaway American dream," Springsteen sings, "At night we stop and tremble in the heat/ With murder in our dreams." The song is darker. He is not singing to Wendy, whose name does not appear. The second verse opens, "So close your tired eyes little one/ And crawl within my reach. ... [W]e'll ride tonight on the beach/ Out where the surfers, sad, wet, and cold/ As they watch the skies/ There'll be a silence to match their own."

Eventually, though, he got it right. Springsteen credits Stevie Van Zandt with saving the song. A simple major/minor chord adjustment, suggested about six months after Springsteen first started writing the tune, made all the difference, according to the Boss. "Steve’s greatest contribution to my music."

Here's a clip of Springsteen explaining the difficulty he had in composing the song and a selection of the song's aborted arrangements. 

And here's an early, somewhat disturbing version of "Thunder Road," which was originally called "Wings for Wheels," a pretty terrible title.