Hello, I’m Stevie Nix and welcome to Song Sung New, the podcast where we take a song and run with it – or, more particularly, see how others have run with it.
Today we’re going to talk about one of the most important songs written in the past 50 years. Indeed it could very well be THE most important song in the past 50 years because without it we probably wouldn’t have The Promised Land, The River, Hungry Heart, State Trooper, Streets Of Philadelphia, Dancing In The Dark, Born In The USA, We Take Care Of Our Own and one of the best residencies in Broadway’s storied history.
We also wouldn’t have had this Traveling Wilburys song, which is basically Bob Dylan taking the piss. Springsteen was in good company in this regard. Dylan also parodied John Lennon on 1966’s 4th Time Around.
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Some songs are career-launching – they are often career-defining songs, too. Songs such as New Year’s Day by U2, Space Oddity David Bowie, I Wanna Hold Your Hand Beatles, Gold Digger Kanye West, Your Song Elton John, Satisfaction The Stones.
Born To Run is all of these and something else as well – it’s a career-saving song.
In some respects Born To Run is a metaphor for where Springsteen found himself professionally. This album, indeed this song, was Springsteen’s last chance power drive, to borrow a phrase from the song.
Springsteen had signed to CBS records after auditioning for the legendary John Hammond. But CBS was a label with high expectations. And one of those expectations was that you would deliver on not just their show of faith but, more importantly, their investment.
Springsteen was never going to be an indulgence and by the time he and the E-Street Band assembled to record Born To Run in May 1974, he had two strikes to his name (in terms of sales) – Greetings From Asbury Park and The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle.
He couldn’t afford a third.
As he says in the song, there was no place left to hide.
What Springsteen needed was blindingly obvious, but in no way simple. And it almost seemed beyond him.
He needed a hit single. The first two albums were riddled with excellent album tracks – but radio doesn’t play album tracks on high rotation. Album tracks don’t sell records – singles sell records.
And, if you look at the list of tracks on Born To Run – and there’s only 8 – if you look at them and skip over track one side two, there is not a single to be seen. Remove the opening track of side two – which was Born To Run – and replace it with any other song Springsteen had at his disposal at that time and the album fails. And most likely Springsteen is looking at a career playing clubs in New Jersey. And most likely the Springsteen we know and love to this day doesn’t exist outside of his ambitious mind.
Born To Run saved Springsteen. His entire career can be distilled into those four minutes and 31 seconds.
It’s not a walk in the sun, as he sings in the song. It’s a gift from God.
Springsteen later said the album, quote
“closely mirrors a lot of things I was going through. That’s why everybody is trying to get out. Everything is filled with that tension of somebody struggling, trying to find some other place.” end quote.
But the song didn’t come to him easily. As he explained in his excellent autobiography, titled, you guessed it, Born To Run, Springsteen talks about how he had to toil away at the song for months. quote
“I started out with cliché, cliché, cliché and then I caught a piece of myself and the moment. ‘In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream …’ It’s a ‘death trap,’ a ‘suicide rap.’ ‘I want to guard your dreams and visions.’ ”
Springsteen says when those phrases finally came to him, he knew he had a great song. quote:
“A smash feels like it was always there and as if you’ve never heard anything like it before.” end quote
Springsteen knew he had the ace up his sleeve he needed. He just had to make sure he didn’t blow it. And he made damn sure he didn’t blow it.
Recording Born To Run – the song and just the song – took six months and saw off two members of the band – David Sanshus and Ernest “Boom Boom” Carter. They were replaced by Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg.
The rest of the album, by comparison, took just seven months.
When recording eventually wound up on July 25, Springsteen was deeply dissatisfied. When he heard the playback, he grabbed the tape, walked outside and threw it in the alley. Another master was so bad he flung it out of his hotel room window and into a river.
He was so dismayed and dejected he told his then-manager he wanted to scrap half the album and substitute live recordings. Fortunately, he was talked around.
So what’s this song about?
It’s a song about youth escaping the drudgery of their surrounds – even if it’s for just one night. It’s a song about seeking salvation.
And it introduces another woman into Springsteen’s world: Wendy. By now we’ve already met Rosie, Mary, Sandy and Sherry and now we meet Wendy who, the narrator hopes, will show him if love is wild, if it’s real.
No pressure Wendy. And the narrator isn’t kidding. He later says he wants to die with Wendy on the street that night in an everlasting kiss.
Wendy … run.
Fortunately for Wendy she and the narrator are not alone on this quest for salvation. All the young turks are out this night – the “tramps like us”. The highway is jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive.
“Everyone’s out on the run tonight,” Springsteen observes. “And there’s no place left to hide.”
Looks like Wendy will be safe. I think the narrator just got a little excited and over zealous.
So that’s the story’s outline. How does Springsteen tell it?
Well, the first thing you hear is Carter’s drumming, which is quickly overtaken by the signature – and it must be said – very simple guitar riff.
And Danny Federici tapping out notes on a glockenspiel. If there’s ever been a better use of the glockenspiel in rock n roll please let me know.
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Then Springsteen starts to tell his tale. He’s earnest at first as he sets the scene
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He’s plotting a course, but save a slight upward inflection on “suicide machines” it’s all head down shoulder to the wheel storytelling. It sounds like he has a lot to get through.
But then he shifts gears – just like one of the motor vehicles he’s describing – and the song enters a new dimension. In just two lines - the next two lines – the song takes on another life. A glorious, uplifting embrace of what’s possible. A leap of absolute faith into the unknown, fuelled by the abandon only youth can deliver.
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Those words alone do not leap off the page. But they’re not prose – they’re lyrics. They are written to be sung. And when they’re sung as Springsteen sings them, they’re intoxicating.
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And we haven’t even reached the song’s most iconic moment – the primal scream - although we are about to. It’s next. It’s a scream that has launched a million fist pumps into the air.
It’s a scream that sets your heart racing and soul soaring. No matter where you are when you hear it, you are suddenly completely lost in the moment. You are untouchable. Invincible. Today just got a whole lot better and tomorrow? There is a promise in tomorrow.
Would the song be the same without it? Hell no.
Play same two lines again plus the scream and fade out
By the end of the first verse – and interestingly for such a radio smash, this song has no chorus – by the end of the first verse, Springsteen steps in with that guitar riff again but this time it has an energy and grandiose presence it lacked at the start of the song.
Springsteen has described Born To Run as a “wide-screen rumble” and part of that wide-screen Panavision is painted by his lyrics, but part of it is also painted by the musicians – the E Street Band.
There’s Federici’s glockenspiel, as we said, but there’s also Clarence Clemon’s sax solo and the whole band taking the lead after the middle 8.
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These are not session musicians, they are Springsteen’s band, they produce his signature sound – but unlike say, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, they aren’t credited on any album cover. And there are two types of Springsteen albums – E Street Band albums and solo albums. But they’re all billed the same.
If you want to know what this songs sounds like without the E Street Band, take a listen to this.
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Even that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, doesn’t it.
Born To Run has inspired plenty of covers – a lot of them, an awful lot of them, karaoke. So we’ll run in another direction.
And, unfortunately, run into Suzi Quatro in 1979.
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Can you hear Born To Run in this?
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Jesus, now I can
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Five years later and things hadn’t improved much. Suzi had long disappeared and with her 70s pub rock, but the bands filling the void - a lot of them New Wave - weren’t much better. Well, not in my book.
If one group owned 1984 though it was Liverpool’s Frankie Goes To Hollywood. They came out of nowhere, released three singles - Relax, Two Tribes & The Power Of Love - and all of them went to No.1 in the UK. A then-record.
Their debut album, Welcome To The Pleasuredome, was a double and, it has to be said, bloated. It contained four covers and more filler than a Hollywood actress. And part of that filler was Born To Run.
Here’s a taste.
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Metal is a genre you either love or hate. And I fucking hate it. I get that it’s an attitude, but really, to these ears, every song sounds the same. It’s like unleashing a jackhammer in your living room. What’s the point?
Take Cowboy Mouth – and if that's some sort of sexual innuendo then I’m not aware of it. But then, I’m not really up with these things.
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Neil Cicierega has released a couple of albums under the moniker Lemon Demon, but he’s also had some success with mashup records that have garnered him a cult following. Some of them are quite inventive, and enjoyable.
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Born To Run works best with the full band behind it, but Springsteen proved during his Broadway performances it also holds up when accompanied by just an acoustic guitar.
It’s a treatment Spanish singer Rita Ojanguren employed in 2019. Her cover is fragile, cautious. This song speaks of a death trap. A suicide rap. It’s best to beware.
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Scottish singer Amy MacDonald went into France’s wee.fm in 2014 and gave a more energetic acoustic performance.
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Sean Rooney is an Irishman who also prefers minimal accompaniment. Instead of an acoustic guitar though, he uses an electric one. A bit like early Billy Bragg. This recording came out in 2016.
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Anne McCue is an Aussie who now bases herself in Nashville. So it won’t come as a surprise to learn she’s a country music artist.
Like Ojanguren, McCue zeroes in on the vulnerable aspects of this story. It’s interesting to see how women approach this song at a different angle to Springsteen and his male acolytes. This came out in 2012.
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Emily Saliers is probably best known as one half of the Indigo Girls and in 2019 she grabbed her ukulele - yes, her ukulele - and channeled Joanna Newsome.
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I’m not sure what I make of that.
Speaking of Newsome, Micol Arpa is an Italian musician who is showing the harp doesn’t have to be quarantined in an orchestra – it can be picked up and placed on stage in its own right – even in a modern music environment. I don’t think Springsteen heard a harp in his head when he wrote this song. But, as I said earlier, women are bringing a different - and interesting - perspective.
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Germany’s Elisa Hantsch, who goes by the stage name Miss Allie, has released three albums, all of them in German, so I’m not up to speed on them.
Allie sounds like a cross between Joanna Newsome - there’s that name again - and Aldous Harding. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but I love it. It’s eccentric, but interesting. Completely original. And you don’t hear original voices all too often.
I don’t know what it is about this performance but I absolutely love it. It’s just Ali, a guitar and an accent.
Here’s the first two verses, because one just isn’t enough.
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That’s a hard - or, at the very least, difficult - act to follow. But that’s the challenge before Sweden’s Moa Holmsten.
In 2015, Holmsten recorded a Springsteen tribute album called Bruised Arms and Broken Rhythm and, unlike most tribute albums, she didn’t just pick off the classics. She dug deeper and shone a light on album tracks such as Sad Eyes, Streets Of Fire, You’re Missing and Lift Me Up, among others.
The album was patchy, but when it worked it did the originals justice. And a good example was track six, Born To Run.
Again, like the other female artists featured today, she takes this song in a different direction.
Holmsten employs gorgeous multi-tracked harmonies that are best heard with earphones on. It’s something approaching the celestial. It beckons the heavens to open and let the sun burst through.
On her website, Holmsten said she and her collaborator, Tony Naima, were not diehard Springsteen fans before making the record, quote
“But I believe the fact that we are not intense and longtime followers of his work has been essential from the beginning. We could discover new songs and re-discover older ones, and work on them with a unique perspective.
“We could be brave and courageous, while not letting old emotions or presumed expectations stand in our way.
“This is how his songs spoke to me. Our relationship slowly progressed, and I have now totally fallen in love with him.” end quote
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Born To Run is an anthem that, unlike others, never gets diluted with repeated listening. It sets out its agenda from the start, stakes its claim for immortality before the first verse is even over and rides off into the sunset carrying everyone along with it. It’s been doing it night after night, performance after performance, cover after cover, since it first appeared in 1975.
It’s a song that refuses to grow old. It can’t grow old. It’s imbued with the eternity of youth.
Oh, someday, girl, I don't know when
We're gonna get to that place where we really wanna go
And we'll walk in the sun
But 'til then, tramps like us, baby, we were born to run
This is the song that saw Springsteen go from being the temp to The Boss. No wonder he never gets sick of playing it. He wouldn’t be playing the venues he now does without it. There is a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid in full.
Springsteen has recorded a further 17 albums since Born To Run came out. Now aged 71, he shows no sign of slowing down. If anything, he’s picked up the pace, releasing two critically-acclaimed albums in the past two years, with a third flagged for next year.
Rolling Stone once ranked Springsteen at No.23 on its list of the greatest artists of all time, ahead of Prince, Neil Young, Johnny Cash, David Bowie, Van Morrison and Elton John.
That is quite the accolade.
And speaking of accolades, official recognition came in 1999, when he was inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Bono was given the honour of giving the induction speech at the latter. It ran for nine heart-felt minutes and ended with this, quote
“They call him the Boss; well that's a bunch of crap. He's not the boss. He works for us. More than a boss, he's the owner, because more than anyone else, Bruce Springsteen owns America's heart.” end quote
There are no more awards of significance available to Springsteen. The only way left for us to recognise and celebrate his music is to play it.
So let’s play it. I’m going to finish this episode back where we started. Just Springsteen, a guitar, a harmonica and a song. Here he is, on stage at Madison Square Garden, almost 13 years to the day that Born To Run hit the shelves.
Like many performers, Springsteen has said he feels most at home on stage. And when you have an audience in the palm of your hand as he does here, it’s easy to understand why.
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