 | Thunder RoadBruce Springsteen |
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Tuesday, August 26, 1975
Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” released on Born to Run
Monday, August 25, 1975
Bruce Springsteen Released Born to Run
Born to Run |
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Released: August 25, 1975 Peak: 3 US, 17 UK, 31 CN, 7 AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 6.0 US, 0.3 UK, 10.4 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock |
Tracks:Click on a song titled for more details.
Total Running Time: 39:23 The Players:
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Rating: 4.590 out of 5.00 (average of 22 ratings)
Quotable:“No one before or since has tried to pack as much of the American experience into 39 minutes, and no one has come as close to succeeding.” – Josh Tyrangiel/ Alan Light, Time magazineAwards:(Click on award to learn more).
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The Make-or-Break Third AlbumThe rock singer/songwriter Bruce Springsteen emerged in the early 1970s, “a time when many believed that rock was in need of new lifeblood.” NRR When he was signed to CBS in 1972 by John Hammond, TB he was billed as “the next Bob Dylan.” NRR Such hype could have killed his career, but Springsteen turned out to be “just what audiences needed – a fresh face with a guy-next-door persona who sang about common people with their common hopes and fears.” CS He became “the undisputed poet laureate of the working class.” CSAt this point in his career, however, Springsteen hadn’t yet attained that kind of status. He was a seasoned performer who’d played in a number of bar bands and had “seven years of songwriting behind him.” TB He would start to build a reputation for his energetic and passionate live performances. However, he wouldn’t be anointed as rock’s savior on the covers of Time and Newsweek magazine simultaneously until 1975. He released two albums in 1973. They were ”noted for the feral, jazz-like musicianship of his E Street Band and his own brand of quirky, urban street poetry” CQ but were commercial failures “made for modest sums at a suburban studio.” AM It set up Born to Run as his “make-or-break third album” AM as his record label was on the verge of dropping him. This was his “last chance to craft a commercially viable record, and this go-for-broke outlook infects everything on the album.” CQ The RecordingSpringsteen started work on his third album in August 1974. As with his first two albums, Springsteen started recording at 914 Sound Studios at Blauvelt in New York State. However, he was dissatisfied with the “technical quality of the studio” CC and a gulf was widening between him and manager Mike Appel. CC Springsteen had found “a soul mate” in journalist Jon Landau, who’d famously written in 1974, “I saw the rock ‘n’ roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” TB Landau suggested moving recording to New York’s Record Plant CC where the album “was cut on a superstar budget.” AMThis was Springsteen’s first collaboration (but definitely not his last) with Landau as his producer. “Jimmy Iovine (then a recording engineer, now the head of Interscope Records) took care of hiding stacks of overdue bills from the record label.” TL Meanwhile Appel would eventually take legal action, upset about being muscles out of the picture, and it would stall Springsteen’s follow-up to Born to Run for three years. CC The E Street BandBorn to Run featured a “revamped lineup of the dynamic E Street Band.” NRR “His two virtuoso players, keyboardist David Sancious and drummer Vini Lopez, [were] replaced by the professional but less flashy Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg.” AM “Danny Federici and Roy Bittan’s dueling organ and keys lend a celebratory and church-like quality to just about everything.” CQ The band also featured “Miami” Steve Van Zandt on guitar, Garry Tallent on bass, and Clarence Clemons, whose “saxophone slices into the shadows of every song.” CQIn a review of a live performance after the release of Born to Run, Bud Scoppa said, “What a band. Even without The Boss they’d be one of the best in the business; with him, they’re practically unrivalled.” CS New SoundLandau helped Springsteen attain the “full, highly produced” AM “Wall of Sound atmosphere for which the singer yearned.” CQ The effect “required months of studio tinkering to perfect” TL as the album is filled with “layers of guitar, layers of echo on the vocals, lots of keyboards, thunderous drums.” AM It was the first album in which Springsteen “fully realized the sound that would earn him the title of ‘the Boss.’” NRR It “represented a sonic leap from his first two.” AMSpringsteen later described “the sound he wanted for his third record” TL “as ‘Roy Orbison singing Bob Dylan produced by Phil Spector,’” TL the producer known for the Wall of Sound. By all accounts, Springsteen succeeded, delivering and album of “epic grandeur and big screen rock’n’ roll that hadn’t been heard since Phil Spector’s teen symphonies of the early Sixties.” CC Bruce Springsteen, Storyteller“Born to Run had a big sound, and Springsteen wrote big songs to match it.” AM “Most of what makes the record great is the lyrical theme running through the album, the romantic spinnings of urban outcasts, their girls and their cars.” PK “It dramatizes the romantic longings of urban life, offering snapshots of tenements, streets, and highways, where radios blare through summer windows, bikers pose with their machines, and lovers make out on the beach.” TB “If Lou Reed represents the dark side of New York, full of sexual ambiguity and drugs, Springsteen’s New Jersey offers us the romantic counterpoint, a pseudo-nostalgic world populated by drag races instead of drag queens, fast cars instead of speed.” PKSpringsteen “distilled his music into something cohesive and relatable, a love letter to every loser and working class anti-hero from Jersey and beyond. Whereas his previous lyrics had been rooted in imagery and little else, Born to Run had stories to tell, stories that painted everyday people with broad strokes and high stakes, giving the record a sense of epic narrative that had never been heard in American rock and roll.” CQ “Springsteen took everyday characters, incidents and locations and transformed them into myth” CC via ‘mini-operas for the alleys.” CM “Songs like ‘Thunder Road,’ ‘Backstreets,’ and the bombastic title track are really just about bored kids hanging out and wanting to escape their town, but with lyrics like, ‘The ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away/ They haunt this dusty beach road and the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets,’ you’d think Springsteen was filming his own Spaghetti Western.” CQ “The overall theme of the album was similar to that of The E Street Shuffle; Springsteen was describing, and saying farewell to, a romanticized teenage street life. But where he had been affectionate, even humorous before, he was becoming increasingly bitter. If Springsteen had celebrated his dead-end kids on his first album and viewed them nostalgically on his second, on his third he seemed to despise their failure, perhaps because he was beginning to fear he was trapped himself. Nevertheless, he now felt removed, composing an updated West Side Story with spectacular music that owed more to Bernstein than to Berry.” AM Springsteen said of the writing process, “I wrote it and I rewrote it and I rewrote it. What I kept stripping away was cliché, cliché, cliché. I just kept stripping it down until it started to feel emotionally real.” CM He was asking big questions like “What do you do when your dreams come true? What do you do when they don’t? Is love real?” CM An Embodiment of the American DreamBorn to Run “declared its own greatness with songs and a sound that lived up to Springsteen’s promise.” AM With “an unapologetically romantic vision and a strong blue-collar work ethic” VB he delivered a “breakthrough album, starring optimistic tramps and engine-revving sax solos, [that] is the greatest living embodiment of the American dream.” EW’12 “Born to Run dares you to leave your youth behind and embrace the reachable horizon resting before you.” PM “No one before or since has tried to pack as much of the American experience into 39 minutes, and no one has come as close to succeeding.” TLThe SongsHere’s a breakdown of each of the individual songs. |
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Thunder RoadBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen (see lyrics here) Recorded: April 18-19, 1975; 4/23/1975; July 15-16, 1975 (?) at the Record Plant in New York Released: Born to Run (1975), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986), In Concert/MTV Plugged (live, 1993), Greatest Hits (1995), The Essential (2003), Greatest Hits (2009), The Collection (2012), The Essential (2015), Best of (2024) Peak: 1 CL, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 1.0 US Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 5.20 video, 178.45 streaming Covered by: Melissa Etheridge (1995, live with Bruce Springsteen), Bob Walkenhorst (2006) |
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
Awards (Melissa Etheridge, unplugged): 
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About the Song:Springsteen tears into this opening, “full-throated rocker” CC with “the tenacity of a terrier with a leg of lamb.” CC While never a single, it has become one of Springsteen’s most-beloved songs, establishing itself as a staple at classic rock radio and in concert. In 2004, WXPN, the University of Pennyslvania’s public radio station, ranked it #1 on their list of all-time greatest songs. WKThe song started out in 1972 as “Angelina” and re-emerged in October 1974 later as “Chrissie’s Song.” Over the next three months, Springsteen combined that and lyrics from “Walking in the Street” to create a new song. WK The song was tentatively titled “Wings for Wheels” before being “rightly renamed after a New Jersey drag strip,” TC inspired by a poster of the 1958 Robert Mitchum film of the same name, although Springsteen didn’t see the movie. SF In his autobiography, Springsteen said he envisioned the Born to Run album as a collection of vignettes following its character throughout the day. As the opener, “Thunder Road” was “an epic like he used to do, but it’s stripped back, less jazzy and more forceful.” TC It opens the album with a harmonica that suggested the beginning of the new day and invited listeners to the album. WK Vocally, Springsteen was inspired by Roy Orbison, who he references in the line “the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely.” SF Keyboardist Roy Bittan said Bruce “wanted a record where the singing sounded like Roy Orbison and the music sounded like Phil Spector.” TC The lyrics discuss Mary and her boyfriend and their “one last chance to make it real,” WK “two people acknowledging their imperfections, abandoning romance and also looking back to the ‘50s.” TC Springsteen wrote “The Promise” as a sequel to “Thunder Road.” It was performed during his 1978 tour but didn’t see release until 1999 when a re-recorded version appeard on 18 Tracks and then again in 2010 on the album The Promsie, which was a collection of unreleased material from the Darkness on the Edge of Town era (1977-78). In 1995, Melissa Etheridge brought Bruce Springsteen out as a surprise guest for her Unplugged special after telling the audience a story about how much he inspired her. She has cited her performance with Springsteen as the highlight of her career. RS They had to start the performance a second time because she was so nervous she flubbed the words on the first run-through. RS It was taped February 2, 1995, and aired on MTV on March 21, 1995.
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Tenth Avenue Freeze-OutBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 5/5/1975 and 5/16/1975 at the Record Plant in New York Released: January 1976 as a single, Born to Run (1975), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986), Live in New York City (2000), The Essential (2015), Best of (2024) Peak: 83 BB, 63 CB, 5 CL, 82 CN, 6 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 8.29 video, 45.06 streaming About the Song:This is “updated Stax soul” TB and “one of those Big Apple melodramas that Springsteen can churn out by the yard.” CC It features “strong-fisted brass from Clarence Clemons (whose joining the E Street Band features in the third verse), plus top-rated session men the Brecker brothers and saxophonist David Sanborn.” CC
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NightBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 5/10/1975 at the Record Plant in New York Released: Born to Run (1975) About the Song:This feels similarities to “Factory,” which appeared on 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. “Outside the factory gates, the only freedom lies in the highway, and the life lived outside working hours, managing to survive until the weekend.” CC
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BackstreetsBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 4/25/1975, 5/19/1975, 5/23/1975, 7/6/1975, and 7/18/1975 at the Record Plant in New York Released: Born to Run (1975), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986) Peak: 12 CL, 18 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song:This “is one of those big songs that fuel Born to Run.” CC In The Review, Clarke Speicher even called Backstreets an ode to Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” RV This was Springsteen writ large, the sort of rock ‘n’ roll record that hadn’t been heard on the airwaves since they had bounced off Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound a decade before. The piano and organ of Bittan…usher in Clemon’s sultry saxophone and Springsteen’s raw-throated vocal. All the Springsteen hallmarks are here: the intense infatuation, the precision of location, the street gangs, the loyalty, the cars.” CC |
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Born to RunBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen (see lyrics here) Recorded: 5/21/1974 and 8/6/1974 at 914 Sound Recordings Studio in Blauvelt, NY Released: 8/25/1975 as a single, Born to Run (1975), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986), Greatest Hits (1995), Live in New York City (2000), The Essential (2003), Greatest Hits (2009), The Collection (2012), The Essential (2015), Chapter and Verse (2016), Best of (2024) B-side: “Meeting Across the River” Peak: 23 BB, 17 CB, 27 GR, 22 HR, 26 RR, 1 CL, 16 UK, 53 CN, 38 AU, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, 0.2 UK, 2.2 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 62.60 video, 432.78 streaming Covered by: Frankie Goes to Hollywood (1984), Melissa Etheridge (2001), Bob Walkenhorst (2010) |
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Song:Springsteen took six months to write TB-S and 3 ½ to record RS500 his bonafide classic. The song underwent fifty pages of fine-tuning in his notebook TB-S as he crafted his tale of the ficticious Wendy KN and the “young lovers on the highways of New Jersey.” RS500 However, as he told Rolling Stone, “I don’t know how important the settings are…It’s the idea behind the settings. It could be New Jersey, it could be California, it could be Alaska.” RS500
Indeed, “Born to Run” was more about a philosophy than a place. It served as more than just The Boss’ signature song – it was his declarative anthem about outwardly rebelling against whatever held back those young, romantic New Jersians. It is “an ode to the road that rambles on like a man trying to outrun his past.”
Part of the reason the song became such a touchstone for people, though, is because of “an equally powerful melancholy; the future seems so bright largely because the present’s so dismal.” DM The song’s protagonist is “the age-old symbol of the solitary man struggling against all the forces of society to find his own way. He is fearful of what might happen in the effort to escape, but more fearful still of the consequences of not trying.” SS
Beyond the lyrics, though, this was also Springsteen’s ode to the musical giants who’d shaped him. The song’s opening guitar riff was inspired by Duean Eddy’s “Because They’re Young” SS and features “Dylanesque lyrics, Roy Orbison vocal histrionics, ...Stones-style rhythm section, [and a] King Curtis sax break.” DM It’s all stitched together with a Phil Spector-esque Wall of Sound – “strings, glockenspiel, multiple keyboards – and more than a dozen guitar tracks.” RS500 The result is a song with “the audible ambition of recapitulating the first twenty-some years of rock and roll.” DM Music historian Steve Sullivan said, “it is an extraordinary vision that is at once deeply personal and all-eoncmpassingly universal.” SS It is “the ultimate epic of rock ‘n’ roll.” SS “Know this song, and you know rock and roll.” SS
Springsteen had released two albums to critical acclaim, but low sales. “Born to Run” was what he called his “shot at the title…at the greatest rock ’n’ roll record ever.” TB-S Paste magazine’s Matt Mitchell called this “the greatest title-track of all time.” PM “Few rock ‘n’ roll songs can match the exhilaration and the sheer, resurgent magnificence of ‘Born to Run’” CC with “its Duane Eddy riff and unpredictable twisting and turning bridge.” TB
His first live performance of the song convinced rock critic Jon Landau, who became Bruce’s manager. When Landau caught The Boss opening for Bonnie Raitt on May 9, 1974, he wrote in the Real Paper out of Boston: “ I saw rock and roll’s future – and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” Landau was right. After the Born to Run album was released, Bruce Springsteen became the first musician to simultaneously appear on the covers of Time and Newsweek. It was also the first album to be officially certified as platinum. SS
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She’s the OneBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: March to May, 1975 and July 24-25, 1975 at the Record Plant in New York Released: January 1976 as the B-side of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” Born to Run (1975) Peak: 12 CL, 31 DF Click for codes to charts. Covered by: Bob Walkenhorst (2006) About the Song:This “love song of fierce, possessive intensity…[isn’t] up there with the all-time best-ever Springsteen songs,” CC but leans on Bo Diddley as “the main rhythm reference.” TB Springsteen also borrowed from his own song “Hey Santa Anna” and said he wrote “She’s the One” “because I wanted to hear Clarence play the sax in that solo.” CC |
Meeting Across the RiverBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 5/28/1975 and July 1975 at the Record Plant in New York Released: 8/25/1975 as the B-side of “Born to Run,” Born to Run (1975) Peak: 21 CL Click for codes to charts. About the Song:“A cool jazz influence breathes through the wistful Meeting Across the River.” TB It is an “instrumentally sparse and stripped down,” CC an “uncharacteristic Springsteen song.” CC While this lacks “the urgency of Lou Reed’s ‘Waiting for the Man,’ ‘Meeting Across the River’ is nonetheless a more considered depiction of a drug deal.” CC |
JunglelandBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 4/18/1975, 4/23/1975, 4/23/1975, 7/14/1975, July 19-20, 1975 at the Record Plant in New York Released: Born to Run (1975), Live in New York City (2000), The Essential (2003) Peak: 4 CL, 3 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song:“The nearly 10-minute closing track…still holds the title for the most lush, grandiose thing The Boss has ever recorded.” CQ Clarence Clemons’ saxophone solo alone took 16 hours to record. CM Jungleland “acts as a mini-suite, starting off with the tear-filled croon of Suki Lahav’s violin before each instrument twinkles in one by one, detailing the downfall of The Rat, a common street hood looking for a little romance.” CQ“As a gang war erupts, the lyrics and instrumentation explode into a diesel-fueled anthem that could fill a hundred stadiums. By the end of the song, The Rat is gunned down with the whisper of Bittan’s piano (the only instrument still playing before the band kicks back in for the finale): ‘The streets are on fire in a real death waltz.’ We end exhausted, having been through a whirlwind of stories.” CQ “This was Springsteen’s opera out on the Turnpike.” CC
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Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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Notes:The 30th anniversary edition added a live DVD of a performance at London's Hammersmith Odeon in November 1975.Resources/References:
Related DMDB Pages:
First posted 3/23/2008; last updated 8/2/2025. |
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