Forty, Still Runnin'

Born to Run turns 40 years old today, its iconic status as music in its own right and a launching pad for Bruce Springsteen's big-league career firm on the earth and in the airwaves. As many of the items noting the anniversary point out, that status was never assured until the record was released, and the 14 months taken to create it led a lot of people to wonder if it would ever come out or if Springsteen's career would consist of two well-received but commercially underwhelming records of R&B street poetry.

But an early version of the title track had been in significant rotation on some influential East coast radio stations for several months, meaning that when the single and album released on the same day following Columbia Records' promotional campaign, the best description was "detonation." Born to Run was a Top 10 album in its second week of release and led to the fortunate/unfortunate Time and Newsweek cover twinbill.

"Thunder Road" opens the album with a quiet piano and harmonica sequence before "A screen door slams" and we are off with Mary and her lover, the narrator. As their story progresses, other instruments gather and the sound builds until the singer offers Mary her chance to escape the town he feels is a trap for them both. "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" follows, the musical biography of the formation of the E Street Band in its best-known lineup.

The third track, "Night," is one of the album's lesser-known songs along with "Meeting Across the River." Its narrator has no Wendy like his counterpart from the title song, and he still seeks her while he tries to inject life into his existence through his time behind the wheel. "Backstreets" closes side one with a story of two lovers who have each other and little else. A later Sprinsgteen might contemplate whether that would be enough but here he just tells the tale in wistfully bitter words.

Side two opens with Ernest "Boom" Carter's staccato roll before the Wall of Sound guitars and keyboards kick in -- no delicate lead in here, and we are caught up immediately into the urgency and passion of the title track. The singer is convinced that not only is there something better than his current workday life, he and Wendy will never find it where they are now -- leading to the irony of one of New Jersey's best-known songs being about leaving New Jersey. Instrumentally, "Born to Run" alternately swirls and hammers, leaning on the sweep of horns and strings as the narrator cajoles and promises Wendy a better life and then pummeling sequences of guitars and drums to emphasize the street racing and highway dreams aspect that's the closest thing to salvation their current life can offer.

"She's the One"'s icy piano base dances around a fairly standard tale of a man who loves a woman that doesn't return his affection equally, if at all. Again, a later Springsteen would probably have added some depth to both characters, with both the man's passion and the woman's coldness being more than they seem at first, but here we only see them as presented. It's not the most fully realized picture on the album, but within its limitations it offers some vivid images. Most of those come from the music itself more than the lyrics Springsteen sings.

"Meeting Across the River" tells the story of a small-time guy looking for a bigger score, but with such a somber air that it seems as much pre-eulogy as narration. It's the other "other" track, along with "Night." Although Album-Oriented Rock (AOR) stations often played many songs from an album instead of just the singles, neither "Meeting" nor "Night" showed up on the dial very often.

Born to Run closes with "Jungleland," the last "epic" Springsteen would try until 2009's "Outlaw Pete." In it the Rat, a hood with gang affiliations, meets his love the Barefoot Girl and drives away, following one of Springsteen's most common symbols of true love triumphing. But the Rat has not come to the night with clean hands, and both the police and his gangland life have made it impossible for this dream to come true. "Jungleland" was also one of the last of Springsteen's lyrically dense story songs, with the characters who came in later albums having much more of an Everyman or Everywoman identity. The word-packed images gave way to plain-spoken declarative sentences. It's easily one of the most majestic songs instrumentally the E Street Band created, with what is probably Clarence Clemons' finest saxophone solo moving the Rat's story to his end and epitaph.

Though Springsteen's discomfort with Columbia's promotional efforts led to an early end of the campaign, "Born to Run" stayed on the charts for 29 weeks. The willingness of that old AOR format to play songs other than an album's hit singles kept almost all of the tracks in front of listeners, and Springsteen's ability to infuse his performances with a religious zeal made sure that his fans stayed in love with its best tracks. Although singles chart success would have to wait for 1980 and "Hungry Heart," Born to Run kept Bruce Springsteen in the music business. It also added a challenging level of instrumental and lyrical complexity to the rock side of rock and roll, until that point (with the exception of The Who), found mostly in mid-tempo folk and Ozymandian progressive rock extravaganzas. Myth and poetry in popular music no longer required misty shores and mountains -- it could be found on the asphalt and under a street rod's shiny hood.