Any real music fan should be able to make a list of the songs or albums that were the most formative for them. Bruce Springsteen's album "Born to Run" is definitely one of mine. I didn't discover it until it had been around for ten years or so, and catching me right square in the middle of high school made it no small influence on how I came to perceive the world around me. I saw online that today is the 40th anniversary of its release and decided that was reason enough to dig it out and give it a good focused listen. In doing so, I remembered how the album comes together as something greater than the sum of its parts.
SIDE 1
1. THUNDER ROAD
My eyes reflexively burn a little at the sound of the piano/harmonica duet that opens the song. I think the ethos of everything about Bruce's music can be found here: "I'm not perfect, but I'm here and I care about you, and maybe together we can become something special." The song is filled with so much romantic and dramatic imagery. I hear that saxophone come screaming in at the end and I still picture the roads I learned to drive on back in high school, the girls I dated, the unrequited crushes I survived, and the undefined promise of what was waiting for me in the outside world when it was time to move on and leave everything about my hometown behind.
2. TENTH AVENUE FREEZE OUT
I'll admit, this was always kind of a low point on the album for me. Luckily back in the days of vinyl it was easy to read the grooves on the record and pick up the needle at the end of one song to skip over the one you didn't want to hear. This song didn't come to life for me until 1986, when Bruce released a live boxed set that, on vinyl, took five entire records to tell all the stories. This was one of the first songs from that set that rock radio in the Cities would play. Being electrified by the live version of a song I had tepid feelings about was all the convincing I needed to buy that boxed set the day it came out.
3. NIGHT
Maybe it's because of the title, but this song worked best for me in the dark, out driving on those quiet and empty roads surrounding the town where I lived, coming at me from the cassette I'd dubbed from the record album, back when such cassettes would capture every subtle crack, pop, and hiss that you'd hear on the album itself. I never really connected with it on a visceral level the way I had with so many other Bruce songs, but it was great for driving. The most recent live show of his I saw was a few years ago, and he opened it with this. I thought it was a weird choice since I never considered the song a landmark, but I'm sure there were other people at the show who disagreed with me.
4. BACKSTREETS
For me, this is the definitive song about friendship. The opening piano is tender and powerful and full of longing, and builds into an emotional crash. Even though the story in the song tells of very specific things that these characters had done in their time together, I always saw it as wider and more metaphorical. It wasn't just about friendship, but about how powerful a friendship had once been before evolving into a natural end, as so many do. This was the song I referenced when I signed my high school best friend's yearbook at the end of our senior year.
SIDE 2
It's worth mentioning that I feel asleep to Side 2 of "Born to Run" on almost every Friday night of my senior year of high school. Right before bed I'd put it on my cheap drugstore turntable stereo that I thought was awesome, then turned down the volume to the perfect level that would let me hear the music clearly without anyone else in the house knowing it was on.
5. BORN TO RUN
We all know this one. It's as much of a rock and roll National Anthem as there ever was, the kind of song that 70,000 people in a stadium can hear and sing along with. It's always been harder for me to have a personal connection to it since it's such a well-known song, but I still fell for the imagery that spins through it. Not to mention this has one of rock music immortal lines: "I wanna die with you Wendy on the street tonight, in an everlasting kiss." I had to take a class on reading and analyzing poetry as a part of my English minor, and I gave up on the old fart of a professor when the lyrics to "Born to Run" came up in the text and he dismissed them as not worthy of inclusion. It was a formative moment for me since that was the day when song lyrics became more important in my world than poetry ever would be.
6. SHE'S THE ONE
This song is responsible for one of the four greatest moments of my life. It was May of 1988 at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minnesota during the Tunnel of Love Express Tour. While the E Street band played, I stood dancing in the nosebleed seats letting this sonic freight train permeate my being. I swear there was a moment when I closed my eyes to focus only on the song, and in doing so I nearly saw the face of God.
7. MEETING ACROSS THE RIVER
One of the most narrative songs Bruce ever wrote, and a real left turn when compared to the rest of the album. Quiet in tone and mostly driven by piano, nearly every phrase is punctuated by a trumpet sounding like it's being played by someone sitting out on their fire escape at night half a block away. This song was a big influence on me in a playwriting class I took. One assignment was to create a scene in which one character tried to get another to leave a room, when the second character really didn't want to. I thought of this song and put my two characters in the middle of a criminal escapade much like what's alluded to here.
8. JUNGLELAND
More of a monument than a song. The first four minutes would be enough to stand on its own as great, but then Clarence comes in with one of the most powerful, fluid, and evocative sax solos ever recorded. Seeing him play it live made him seem superhuman. Hearing it reminds me how he's gone now, and how important his playing was to me as I was coming of age. The quiet ending that follows the solo was one of the first songs I burned into my musical DNA where the quiet between the notes and the interchange in dynamics was just as important as the notes themselves.
If you know these songs, you probably recognize what I had to say about them. If you don't? Well, you've had 40 years to catch up. Maybe it's time.
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