MUSIC » FROM THE VAULT FarOut Magazine
No one’s going to say that making it to the top of the musical world will be easy. The entire process comes down to hard work that’s enough to leave you in shambles and more than a little bit of fate and luck to get a decent shot on the hit parade, never mind the chances of being a global superstar. While Born to Run marked the moment Bruce Springsteen joined the big leagues of rock and roll songwriters, he admitted that his biggest success nearly broke him before it came out.
For any uninitiated Springsteen fans, though, can you name any of his songs before ‘Born to Run’? This isn’t trying to be derogatory towards his previous work, but when’s the last time a song like ‘Growin’ Up’ or ‘Blinded by the Light’ has left a major impact on the rock industry at large, aside from the latter being covered by Manfred Mann well after the fact?
These are still good songs, but they weren’t the kind of thing that translated into hits. Considering most of them ran on well past three minutes and featured Springsteen rambling his way through every verse, he was coming dangerously close to sounding like a rip-off of Bob Dylan. With Dylan himself was going through a career renaissance with Blood on the Tracks, Springsteen was running out of options.
We didn’t need two Dylans, and it seemed Springsteen agreed. Utilising the power of the E Street Band, Born to Run was intended to be the album that Springsteen himself always wanted to hear, featuring different pieces of rock’s past against the backdrop of his home in New Jersey.
The band’s live shows may have captured their intensity just right, but translating that urgency into a pop song was absolute torture. Throughout the process, Springsteen worked himself and his band down to the bone, even refraining from sleeping half the time to get the sound he heard in his head absolutely perfect.
For all the work that Springsteen put into it, he admitted that he was far too scared to release it when it was finished, telling Rolling Stone, “Part of it was, I was afraid of releasing the record and just saying, ‘Well, this is who I am’,…I lost the ability to hear it clearly, certainly towards the end of the production. After the long period of time we spent on it, I could only hear what was wrong with it or what I thought was weak with it”.
Despite Springsteen’s reluctance, the fact that the band leaked the title track to radio stations gave them at least a bit of hope. The album wasn’t even finished yet, and yet people were talking about Springsteen like he was re-energizing rock and roll all over again.
Once the rest of the record followed suit, fans were greeted with the kind of record with rock and roll energy pouring out of every second, from the drama of ‘Meeting Across the River’ to the earnestness behind the opener ‘Thunder Road’. Springsteen certainly had his magnum opus on his hands here, but it’s almost comforting to know that even some of the best in their field still struggle with imposter syndrome now and again.
You Can listen to the album here:
