Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run Is The First Rock Album I Ever Bought

I can still remember it as clear as anything: I was about twelve years old and visiting friends in New Jersey. I wandered into a K-Mart and into the record department where I first caught glimpse of the album cover. "Yeah," I thought, "That's that Springsteen guy I've been hearing so much about." I had to wait a week until I got home to play the album, but when it did, my world changed. 

Albums I'd owned up until then included The Bay City Rollers, The Partridge Family, and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Disco and bubblegum... 

For the first time I heard rock. Meaningful songs about the optimism, promise, fun, and dreams of youth. Songs about making choices that were good and bad. Songs about life, not Get Up and Boogie. 

Springsteen's songs have always meant a great deal to me. He is easily my favorite musician of all time and my favorite songwriter. Only Glenn Tibrook and Chris Difford of Squeeze are able to paint a picture with their lyrics as eloquently as he does. Springsteen's backup - The E Street Band - are what put him over the top. There is not one weak musician in the group. 

These are the songs that I grew up with; the songs I heard over and over again; the songs I could relate to; the songs that made me wait a ridiculous amount of time to get tickets to concerts - and later pay ridiculous prices to scalpers; the songs that even now make my heart skip a beat when I hear those first few notes come over the airwaves. 

The album (yes, album, not CD - I still own more than 300 of them) starts off with my favorite song of all time, Thunder Road 

The screen door slams
Mary's dress waves... 

What a picture that paints! The rest of the song keeps painting the same picture and I can actually see the story unfolding in my mind as he sings of the optimism a boy feels after graduating high school and urging his girl to leave town with him. 

You ain't no beauty, but hey you're alright... 

This line is my favorite in any song ever. I guess I always felt that was like he was talking about me because that's how I saw myself. 

The next song is Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out 

When the change was made uptown
And the Big Man joined the band... 

Anyone who's a Springsteen fan knows that The Big Man is Clarence Clemons, his sax player. This song is something of the story of how Clarence joined the E-Street Band. It's a rollicking and fun number that does paint a picture of a kid walking through the city when he comes upon this great musician and gets him to join his band. 

Night comes next 

And the world is busting at its seams
And you're just a prisoner of your dreams
Holding on for your life
Cause you work all day
To blow em away in the night... 

Another song in many ways similar to Thunder Road. It seems like the same person could be singing both of these songs - maybe Mary in Thunder Roadwouldn't leave town. This is one of two songs that have not gotten much airplay from this album, but I really like it anyway. It was always a pleasure to hear this song coming from my cassette player as I got off work. 

Backstreets is next 

Running for our lives at night in them Backstreets... 

It's a song that romanticizes spending a summer "just hanging out" with a girl who eventually would end up cheating on the protagonist. It's a song that tells of pain and suffering and of fond memories that will always be tainted now. 

The second side starts with Springsteen's anthem Born to Run 

In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines... 

Cars or motorcycles and girls are the theme throughout most of Springsteen's songs, and this one ties them together better than any other. When he urgesWendy to 

Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims
And strap your hands across my engines... 

it is one of the most sweetest allegories I'd ever heard. This song is non-stop rock. Even when it seems to slow down it never really does, and then the music comes crashing back all the harder. 

On She's The One I can hear the influence of 50's music on Springsteen. The general bass line reminds me a lot of Born to Hand Jive. 

With her soft french cream
Standing in the door like a dream
I wish she'd just leave me alone... 

A song about a girl that he just can't get out of his head; someone he knows could break his heart intentionally, but he is falling in love with her. 

Meeting Across the River is a soft ballad about someone who's about to blow his whole life apart, and possibly take his friend Eddie down with him. The horn work on this song is fantastic. 

We gotta stay cool tonight, Eddie
Cause man we got ourselves out on that line... 

The protagonist wants to believe he's going to come through this fine, but the slowness of the music leads us to believe all will not be well. It's got a certain somber tone to it that denotes things will not go as planned. 

The album concludes with the epic, Jungleland. At over nine minutes, it's a long one, but definitely one of my favorites. Springsteen rarely does it in concert anymore but I'm glad to say I got the chance to hear it in my younger days. 

The midnight gang's assembled
And picked a rendezvous for the night
They'll meet neath that giant Exxon sign
That brings this fair city light... 

Again, I can see all of the events he talks about happening as the song unfolds. It's a song that starts out as a rock number, slows down with Clarence Clemons' sax solo, and then winds up almost as a ballad. 

I pulled out my album for this review and having been bought more than twenty years ago, the edges are yellowing and the record itself looks scratchy from being played so much. I don't recall it ever skipping, though. Thank God for CDs now, but there's something about pulling out this album and looking at it and thinking about how much it meant to me...