August 25, 1975: Bruce Springsteen Releases "Born to Run"

August 25, 1975, 50 years ago: Born to Run is released, the 3rd album by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. It launches "The Boss" and his boys from "cult band" status to superstardom. Within 2 months, Bruce will be on the cover of Time and Newsweek magazines in the same week, a rare feat for someone not a politician.

Born in Long Beach, New Jersey, and raised across Monmouth County in the Borough of Freehold, Springsteen had felt as though he never fit in anywhere, until he saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. As he went through his teenage years, he was in bands named The Rogues, The Castiles, Earth (not to be confused with Rare Earth, or with Earth, Wind and Fire), Child, and Steel Mill.

With him in Steel Mill were guitarists Steve Van Zandt and Robbin Thompson, bass guitarist Vinnie Roslin, keyboard player Danny Federici, and drummer Vini Lopez. Although the Jersey Shore, especially Asbury Park, was their home base, they got gigs from coast to coast.

Bruce continued to fine-tune his band, forming Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom, the Sundance Blues Band, and the Bruce Springsteen Band. On bass guitar, Roslin was out, Garry Tallent was in. On keyboards, Federici was out, and David Sancious was in. As Bruce would later sing on "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," "A change was made in time, and the Big Man joined the band." The Big Man was saxophone player Clarence Clemons, making the band racially integrated.

In the Summer of 1972, with only his own name on it, Bruce released his 1st album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., recorded 82 miles north of that city, at 914 Sound Studios, named for its Area Code, in Blauvelt, Rockland County, New York.

It was released by Columbia Records on January 5, 1973, and while the critics were kind, the sales weren't much. The leadoff song was "Blinded by the Light," which, even then, sounded like Bruce thought that the secret to Bob Dylan's songwriting success was to cram as many syllables and rhymes as he could into every line. The song would hit Number 1 -- not for Bruce, but in a cover version by Manfred Mann's Earth Band in 1977, which was ironic, because Bruce had led a band named Earth.

Having renamed his group The E Street Band, after a little dead-end street in Freehold, they spent the Summer of '73 recording The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. It was received a little better, but still didn't sell much.

So it was back on the road. Now, the band was Springsteen, Van Zandt, Tallent, Federici, Clemons, Roy Bittan on keyboards, and new drummer Max Weinberg. In May 1974, they began recording the album that would become Born to Run. The title track basically sounded like if you took the 1st 20 years of rock and roll, put it in a blender, and put some espresso in it, and used it to wash down your "Jersey Breakfast": Pork roll, egg and cheese on a kaiser roll.

The E Street Band, 1975. Left to right:

Steven Van Zandt, Max Weinberg, Danny Federici, Bruce Springsteen,

Clarence Clemons, Roy Bittan, Garry Tallent.

Bruce wasn't kidding about "Highway 9" being a "death trap": Before U.S. Route 9 was widened in the early 1980s, there was a stretch of it from Howell to Lakewood that was just 1 lane in each direction. It was so dangerous (How dangerous was it?), someone bought a billboard identifying the road as "The New Jersey Death Highway." For all we know, that someone might not have even heard "Born to Run" the song.

Somehow, a disc jockey in Cleveland got hold of a copy of "Born to Run" the song, and kept playing it. And when the E Street Band played Cleveland, they noticed that the entire audience seemed to be singing along with a song that they hadn't released yet. That's when they knew they were going to make it.

Bruce got smart: Instead of trying to copy Dylan's polysyllabic style and rapid-fire delivery, and dropping multiple references to places in New Jersey, he seemed more to copy Harry Chapin, telling stories and writing what he felt. But with a full rock background, including horns.

Or, in his own words, "I wanted words like Bob Dylan that sounded like Phil Spector, but, most of all, I wanted to sing like Roy Orbison. Now, everybody knows that nobody sings like Roy Orbison." But, as a contemporary, Marvin Lee Aday, a.k.a. Meat Loaf, put it, "Don't be sad, 'cause two out of three ain't bad."

The results produced 39 minutes and 23 seconds of rock and roll that sold 6 million copies, and has consistently ranked high on lists of the top albums of all time:

Side One: "Thunder Road," "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," "Night," "Backstreets."

Side Two: "Born to Run," "She's the One," "Meeting Across the River," and "Jungleland," 9 1/2 minutes of the life and death of a guy called the Magic Rat.

(In 1996, a rock radio station, at 95.9 FM, based in the Jersey Shore town of Lake Como, 4 miles from the Stone Pony, Bruce's old stomping grounds in Asbury Park, took on the call letters WRAT. It doesn't officially have anything to do with "Jungleland," but the logo is a rat with shades and a leather jacket, so, you tell me.)

Bruce mentioned "a runaway American Dream" in the opening line of "Born to Run." The album was recorded during Watergate, and released a year later, as the post-Watergate and post-Vietnam War hangover was joined by a nasty recession.

Like the sad stories of Chapin and Billy Joel, whose Piano Man was released on November 9, 1973, Born to Run seemed to follow new President Gerald Ford's line, "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over" with a question: "Well, now, we've woken up, and what do we do now?" After all, as Bruce said, "Everybody's out on the run tonight, but there's no place left to hide."

In hindsight, one can look at a scene in the film Watchmen, taking place in an alternate-history 1977, 2 years after the song's official release in our world. One superhero, Nite Owl (played by Patrick Wilson), sees a riot in the streets of Manhattan, and says to another, The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), "What the hell happened to us? Whatever happened to the American Dream?" And The Comedian responds, "It came true! You're lookin' at it!"

Melissa Etheridge has been called "the female Bruce Springsteen." Hopefully, for her talent and her passion, and not for her nose. She once said, "When Bruce Springsteen does those wordless wails, like at the end of 'Jungleland,' that's the definition of rock and roll to me. He uses his whole body when he sings, and he puts out this enormous amount of force and emotion and passion."

I'm from East Brunswick, New Jersey, 14 miles from Springsteen's Freehold, and 69 miles from Joel's Hicksville, Long Island, New York. Hicksville is 27 miles from Times Square, and Freehold is 48 miles away. Both men were born in 1949: Billy on May 9, and Bruce on September 23. They don't play the same instruments, and their writing styles are a little different. But they were the great rock poets of the Northeast in the 1970s and '80s.

One big difference: Bruce is still at it, having released an album as recently as November 11, 2022, Only the Strong Survive; while Billy hasn't released an album since River of Dreams on August 10, 1993, and has only played old songs since. He released a single on February 11, 2024, "Turn the Lights Back On." It only hit Number 62.

Danny died in 2008, Clarence in 2011. Co-producers Mike Appel and Jon Landau are 82 and 78 years old, respectively. Roy is 77. Bruce will be 77 in a few days. Garry will be 77 a few days after that. "Little Steven" and "Mighty Max" are 74.

It took me until 2024 to think of this, but the 1970s were Schrödinger's Decade. There was too much overwrought music, and, at the same time, not enough of it.