Published on Apr 12, 2005
[Adapted in part from a review that originally appeared in
On The Town Magazine
on 4/29/97]
In the liner notes to his 1995
Greatest Hits album, Bruce Springsteen describes the song
“Born To Run” as “my shot at the title. A 24-year-old kid aiming at
‘the greatest rock’n’roll record ever.'”
The kid didn’t do too bad.
Born To Run — the album and the song — is a rock and roll
fever dream, the most evangelical sermon ever preached in the Holy
Church of Rock as Redemption. On this album, a brash young
singer-songwriter fresh out of the New Jersey club scene set some
of the most evocative American street poetry of the 20th century to
an electrifying set of recklessly expansive rock and roll.
The musical and thematic rhythms of the classic opener “Thunder
Road” mirror the album’s as a whole: the young narrator wages a
determined battle against the despair around him until he-and the
music-finally erupt in life-affirming passion. The key instruments
— guitar, piano and sax — play off one another in a flurry of
mood-shifts that dazzle with both their audacity (after all, it’s
only rock and roll) and their precise emulation of the lyrics’
emotional tenor. The reconstituted E Street Band — now featuring
Roy Bittan on piano and Max Weinberg behind the drum kit — tears
into the song’s climax as if the players’ lives depend on it. The
lyric’s themes — the desperate fight to keep hope alive in a dark
and dangerous world, the redemptive powers of love and faith — are
timeless and expressed in a one-of-a-kind, street-wise yet highly
literate and sensitive voice.
From that remarkable beginning, the momentum only builds.
“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” shows off Springsteen’s love of rhythm
and blues with a dynamite groove and swinging horn section. A
quarter-century later it had become a standard, one of the staples
of the 1999-2000 E Street Band reunion tour. Turning the energy up
even higher, “Night” and companion piece “She’s the One” play the
irrational cockiness of youth against the unquestionable certainty
of a driving rock beat.
“Backstreets” and “Jungleland” are where I start to run out of
superlatives. They are impossibly grand, ambitious and intense
goodbyes to the Jersey shore street life romanticized so
effectively by Springsteen on his first two albums, beautiful cries
of agony and frustration at the loss of his friends, his youth, his
world. Together, this pair of extended suites constitutes one of
the most musically and emotionally complex mini-rock operas on
record. Both feature remarkably patient, evocative arrangements
that allow the songs to build and support the lyrics until they
take on a mesmerizing, epic quality that has rarely, if ever, been
matched.
And the title track? A simply amazing lyric (this is great
American poetry here, folks) set to a four-minute full-out
multiple-crescendoing rock and roll symphony. For one person at
least, the ambitious young kid hit his target. “Born To Run” is
pure musical ecstasy and, for my money, the greatest rock’n’roll
record ever.
The corner Bruce Springsteen turned artistically on
Born To Run would shape the rest of his career. His songs
were expansive but no longer cluttered, and every note played by
the E Street Band was fueled with an unstoppable energy and
determination. That in itself makes for great music. The capper was
that Springsteen dared to make it all sound like it mattered, like
rock could and should aim higher than it ever had before. He dared
us all to believe in rock and roll as art, maybe even salvation.
Some of us still do.