08/25/2025
ON THIS DATE (50 YEARS AGO)
August 25, 1975 - Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run is released.
# ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 5/5
# Allmusic 5/5 stars
# Rolling Stone (see original review below)
LISTEN/BUY
https://amzn.to/4fNs7hC
"The definitive American rock LP. Wanna fight?"
- Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 12/15/77.
Born to Run is the third album by Bruce Springsteen, released on August 26, 1975. It reached #3 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart and features the title track, which reached #23 on the Billboard Hot 100. It is listed in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry of historic recordings.
Springsteen began work on the album after touring in support of its previous album, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, released in 1973. Given an enormous budget in a last-ditch effort at a commercially viable record, Springsteen became bogged down in the recording process while striving for a wall of sound production. But, fed by the release of an early mix of "Born to Run" to progressive rock radio, anticipation built toward the album's release. All in all the album took more than 14 months to record, with six months alone spent on the song "Born to Run" itself. During this time Springsteen battled with anger and frustration over the album, saying he heard "sounds in [his] head" that he could not explain to the others in the studio. During the process, Springsteen brought in Jon Landau to help with production. This was the beginning of the breakup of Springsteen's relationship with producer and manager Mike Appel, after which Landau assumed both roles.
Once released, Born to Run was a breakthrough hit and catapulted his career from a northeast regional act to an acclaimed national and worldwide recording artist. This was his first album to feature pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg (although David Sancious and Ernest "Boom" Carter played the piano and drums, respectively, on the title track). Born to Run was released to overwhelming critical acclaim which swiftly spiraled into hype. While his previous two albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, received good reviews, popular success had been scarce; Born to Run cemented Springsteen's reputation among critics and established his first mainstream fanbase.
The album's release was accompanied by a $250,000 promotional campaign by Columbia directed at both consumers and the music industry, making good use of Landau's "I saw rock 'n' roll's future—and its name is Bruce Springsteen" quote.
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COVER ART
The cover art of Born to Run is one of rock music's most popular and iconic images. It was taken by Eric Meola, who shot 900 frames in his three-hour session. These photos have been compiled in Born to Run: The Unseen Photos.
The photo shows Springsteen holding an electric guitar, a cross between a Fender Telecaster (body and pickups) and a Fender Esquire (neck), while leaning against saxophonist Clarence Clemons. That image became famous as the cover art. "Other things happened," says Meola, "but when we saw the contact sheets, that one just sort of popped. Instantly, we knew that was the shot." Ultra-thin lettering graced the mass-produced version: an unusual touch then; a design classic since.
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THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Eric Meola made one of the most iconic photographs in the history of rock ‘n’ roll: the cover photograph on Bruce Springsteen’s landmark 1975 album Born to Run.
Eric Meola is a highly regarded American photographer who is probably best known for his vibrant color images. His photographs are in many private and public collections including the International Center of Photography, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC and the George Eastman House.
Following are some quoted memories from Meola (taken from various sources):
Eric Meola sets the scene on one of the most important photo shoots in rock ‘n’ roll history.
“Around 10 or 11am on June 20th, 1975, Bruce and Clarence walked into my studio on the fourth floor at 134 Fifth Avenue, carrying their instruments and a few changes of clothing. I had the Rolling Stones album December’s Children playing.
The strobe lights were set up. It was just us – no stylist, no ‘hair and makeup’, no assistant.
There was a six to seven inch difference in their height, and Clarence wore a tall black fedora during much of the shoot. I kept several wooden boxes around the studio to adjust for height discrepancies, though for much of the shooting I did not use them. As Clarence riffed on several sequences of notes, I began shooting.
We made quick changes of clothing and in the space of an hour and a half I shot almost 600 images. Then, we went outside, and I shot another few rolls underneath the fire escape. As we walked back to the studio, I glanced at my watch. It had been just two hours.”
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RECORD WORLD, September 6, 1975 – HITS OF THE WEEK
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, "BORN TO RUN." Springsteen has made the crucial distinction between live and recorded performance. Having perfected the former he here establishes a forceful aural image. There is an incredible focus (read accessibility) that was previously lacking. "Thunder Road" and "Born" are natural singles; "Jungleland" a great FM shot. Columbia PC 33795 (6.98).
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ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW
Born To Run is a magnificent album that pays off on every bet ever placed on Bruce Springsteen -- a '57 Chevy running on melted down Crystals records that shuts down every claim that has been made. And it should crack his future wide open.
The song titles by themselves -- "Thunder Road," "Night," "Backstreets," "Born to Run," "Jungleland" -- suggest the extraordinary dramatic authority that is at the heart of Springsteen's new music. It is the drama that counts; the stories Springsteen is telling are nothing new, though no one has ever told them better or made them matter more. Their familiar romance is half their power: The promise and the threat of the night; the lure of the road; the quest for a chance worth taking and the lust to pay its price; girls glimpsed once at 80 miles and hour and never forgotten; the city streets as the last, permanent American frontier. We know the story: one thousand and one American nights, one long night of fear and love.
What is new is the majesty Springsteen and his band have brought to this story. Springsteen's singing, his words and the band's music have turned the dreams and failures two generations have dropped along the road into an epic -- an epic that began when that car went over the cliff in Rebel without a Cause. One feels that all it ever meant, all it ever had to say, is on this album, brought forth with a determination one would have thought was burnt out years ago. One feels that the music Springsteen has made from this long story has outstripped the story; that it is, in all its fire, a demand for something new.
In one sense, all this talk of epic comes down to sound. Rolling Stone contributing editor Jon Landau, Mike Appel and Springsteen produced Born to Run in a style as close to mono as anyone can get these days; the result is a sound full of grandeur. For all it owes to Phil Spector, it can be compared only to the music Bob Dylan & the Hawks made onstage in 1965 and '66. With that sound, Springsteen has achieved something very special. He has touched his world with glory, without glorifying anything: not the unbearable pathos of the street fight in "Jungleland," not the scared young lovers of "Backstreets" and not himself.
"Born to Run" is the motto that speaks for the album's tales, just as the guitar figure that runs through the title song -- the finest compression of rock & roll thrill since the opening riffs of "Layla" -- speaks for its music. But "Born to Run" is uncomfortably close to another talisman of the lost kids that careen across this record, a slogan Springsteen's motto inevitably suggests. It is an old tattoo: "Born to Lose." Springsteen's songs -- filled with recurring images of people stranded, huddled, scared, crying, dying -- take place in the space between "Born to Run" and "Born to Lose," as if to say, the only run worth making is the one that forces you to risk losing everything you have. Only by taking that risk can you hold on to the faith that you have something left to lose. Springsteen's heroes and heroines face terror and survive it, face delight and die by its hand, and then watch as the process is reversed, understanding finally that they are paying the price of romanticizing their own fear.
One soft infested summer
Me and Terry became friends
Trying in vain to breathe
The fire we was born in...
Remember all the movies, Terry
We'd go see
Trying to learn to walk like the heroes
We thought we had to be
Well after all this time
To find we're just like all the rest
Stranded in the park
And forced to confess
To Hiding on the backstreets
Hiding on the backstreets
Where we swore forever friends....
Those are a few lines from "Backstreets," a song that begins with music so stately, so heartbreaking, that it might be the prelude to a rock & roll version of The Illiad. Once the piano and organ have established the theme the entire band comes and plays the theme again. There is an overwhelming sense of recognition: No, you've never heard anything like this before, but you understand it instantly, because this music -- or Springsteen crying, singing wordlessly, moaning over the last guitar lines of "Born to Run," or the astonishing chords that follow each verse of "Jungleland," or the opening of "Thunder Road" -- is what rock & roll is supposed to sound like.
The songs, the best of them, are adventures in the dark, incidents of wasted fury. Tales of kids born to run who lose anyway, the songs can, as with "Backstreets," hit so hard and fast that it is almost impossible to sit through them without weeping. And yet the music is exhilarating. You may find yourself shaking your head in wonder, smiling through tears at the beauty of it all. I'm not talking about lyrics; they're buried, as they should be, hard to hear for the first dozen playings or so, coming out in bits and pieces. To hear Springsteen sing the line "Hiding on the backstreets" is to be captured by an image; the details can come later. Who needed to figure out all the words to "Like a Rolling Stone" to understand it?
It is a measure of Springsteen's ability to make his music bleed that "Backstreets," which is about friendship and betrayal between a boy and a girl, is far more deathly than "Jungleland," which is about a gang war. The music isn't "better," nor is the singing -- but it is more passionate, more deathly and, necessarily, more alive. That, if anything, might be the key to this music: As a ride through terror, it resolves itself finally as a ride into delight.
"Oh-o, come on, take my hand," Springsteen sings, "Riding out to case the promised land." And there, in a line, is Born to Run. You take what you find, but you never give up your demand for something better because you know, in your heart, you deserve it. That contradiction is what keeps Springsteen's story, and the promised land's, alive. Springsteen took what he found and made something better himself. This album is it.
~ Greil Marcus (October 9, 1975)
TRACKS:
All songs written by Bruce Springsteen
Side one
"Thunder Road" – 4:49
"Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" – 3:11
"Night" – 3:00
"Backstreets" – 6:30
Side two
"Born to Run" – 4:31
"She's the One" – 4:30
"Meeting Across the River" – 3:18
"Jungleland" – 9:34
