Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run, 50 Years Later｜Vinyl Monday

1. 

   @abigaildevoe

   September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

   what’s your favorite song by the boss? (phrasing it this way bc “because the night” totally counts)
   comment below!

2. 

   @spacemissing

   September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

   Springsteen doesn't thrill me at all.
   The one song I like, and bought a 45 of, is I'm On Fire.

3. 

   @jeffspencer646

   September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

   Great job , Abby—one quibble. The show that changed Jon Landau's life was not Joe's Place, but it was in Cambridge, at the Harvard Square Theater, where Bruce opened(!) for Bonnie Raitt.

4. 

   @marcussimendinger3065

   September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

   I was 10 when I first heard it and it spawned a lifelong love of rock and roll.

5. 

   @henrykujawa4427

   September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

   Bruce Springsteen was one of many artists my brother introduced me to over the decades. However, he was one who, for me, didn't "take". Some bands you like, others… oh well. But over the years, I did buy 2 of his 45s. "Born To Run" was one. Now that's a GREAT song. The other was "Cover Me" (1984). That was okay. I bought a LOT of 45s in the 80s… in addition to a lot of LPs. (I didn't get into CDs until mid-1991. Once I did… wow.)

   GREAT history & analysis. You did the work so I didn't have to. I never thought of Phil Spector, but I can see it now. The story (stories) connected with the songs, tragically, I can't relate to, except in hope & dreams. My Dad was so negative, so oppressive, so restrictive, so hateful, he destroyed any chance I ever had of having a normal life. I only recently learned he had Narcissistic Personality Disorder… more than 20 years after he was gone. You do what you can. But at times, it gets really maddenning to be fighting so hard just to stay even… never mind trying to get ahead.

   Check out Big Daddy's cover of "Born To Run". As with all their recordings, they did it in the style of earlier artists & recordings. In the case of this song… in the style of Rick Nelson's "Travelin' Man". If you've never heard it, it'll flip you out!

   I used to see Max Weinberg ALL THE TIME as part of CONAN O'BRIEN's talk show studio band!

6. 

   @soulhealer20

   September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

   Born to Run was a huge event for me. I had been working in a record store for a chunk a time before the album was released. I kept hearing all the hype about it but time kept moving on. I had to make a major move from Vancouver to Calgary. The week I arrived in my new hometown, Bruce was on the cover of Time and Newsweek and I read everything I could about it and him, but . . . Calgary did not have a good rock radio station and it took a long time for me to hear any of BTR. Finally, one day I started searching through distant radio stations. I got on somewhere in the USA and the I heard that drum roll. In a flash I heard and knew what was coming. I did buy the BTR songbook and it has been a huge influence and pleasure to listen to. Thanks for bringing back the memories.

7. 

   @konowd

   September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

   There’s a funny thing on social media where every movies better with Born to Run. The one that cracked me up is seeing Jack Nicholson frozen to death in The Shining then it breaks into Born to Run

8. 

   @konowd

   September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

   Paul Schrader wanted Bruce in what became the movie Light of Day. It was originally called Born in the USA. Bruce didn’t read the script but the title kept jumping up at him, Born in the USA, Born in the USA…

9. 

   @danielferguson6811

   September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

   Superb episode. Your best and most insightful review. Thanks.

10. 

    @pauldaniels2019

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    This album came out between high school and college and I became an instant fan. I still have those Time and Newsweek issues. The songs that start and end each side could be a career for most people. Check out his versions of Backstreets that he did on the ‘78 tour. It has an intense Sad Eyes/Drive All Night interlude in the middle. And I don’t think any two performances of that are alike.

11. 

    @03waggs

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Coming out of a Led Zep and Pink Floyd haze and being my first band trying to cover them seemed like a tall order but we persevered and work u p our own versions of some of there music was passable i guess When I first heard the Springsteen music the bells sounded a little strange but grew on me over time. I've seen them perform jungleland on 2 different occasions they are always the best part of the show.

    jug

    jugleland

12. 

    @chalkychildren

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    please do Patti Smith's Horses and Joni Mitchell's Hissing of Summer Lawns for their 50th anniversaries! 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

13. 

    @soulcatradio

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Great episode for a landmark LP. "Thunder Road" is still one of my all-time favorite songs. I often say that Bruce got me through high school, Tom Waits got me through college and Elvis Costello got me through young adulthood. They are all still important to me now. When I was deep in my Bruce phase, 30 years ago, I got a CD bootleg called "Born In The Studio." It's got some great early versions of "Born To Run" and "Thunder Road" with different lyrics as well as a few songs that didn't make it onto the album. Some of those songs did appear on the "Tracks" set. An early version of "Thunder Road" has some interesting alternative lyrics. The stanza that begins, "oooh oooh just take my hand, we're riding out tonight to case the promised land…" goes on to say, "When you're born with nothing in your hands, baby it's your only chance." He replaces that line later with "oh oh oh Thunder Road! Oh Thunder Road" which I never minded until I heard the original or early lyrics. The "born with nothing in your hands," deepens the song in my view. "Baby it's your only chance" I think he's saying that the poor don't have a choice. Maybe Mary, who's name in this early version is actually "Chrissy." So maybe Chrissy doesn't have a choice either and Bruce is reminding her of that. "Baby, this is the only chance our kind of people can will get…" Maybe? I love it! "Thunder Road" is still the best song he's ever written. Its depth, sentimentality and desperation are palpable. This is pure rock n' roll poetry, just like the title track, "Jungleland," "Night" and hell the entire LP. Classic poetry.

14. 

    @terryhu57

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    I grew up in Central Jersey in the 70s. Bruce was considered a God in my crowd. That was even when the first album came out. We had no idea why the rest of the world had not caught on. The man who stuck to his guns, his whole life God bless him.

    Hint hint. Patti Smith and her horses album have its 50th anniversary release on October 10. Horses, horses, horses, horses coming in and all directions……

15. 

    @keithpick6673

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    After watching your review Abby, I pulled "Born to Run" out of my old record stack and listen to it for the first time in at least two decades. The album is so evocative of the mid-seventies. For me it brought back memories graduating from high school and being on my own for the first time. Well done Abby, thank you.

16. 

    @kevindeforest6489

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Your art historical analysis of the Born to Run song 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

17. 

    @robertpeterson8640

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Great show about a great record, Abigail. Oddly, as a small town midwestern kid, I had all his records when this came out and it did not disappoint. It was much more focused than the previous two. And really, what a band they were!

18. 

    @stansnotmyname

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Abby – You have to listen to a great 1974 Boss bootleg from The Main Point. It has a great, live fully formed “Born To Run;” an early version of “Thunder Road” (“Wings For Wheels”) with very different lyrics and a different sax solo, “She’s The One” with different lyrics, and “Jungleland” with Clarence’s sax solo played on guitar! It’s a really cool look into how these songs evolved.

19. 

    @danielgleb

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Please do Tusk!

20. 

    @davidmurphree6020

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    You absolutely nailed the sense of futility contained in "Jungleland." Poor Rat is nothing more than a hapless martyr, not even lucky enough to die.

21. 

    @robinlundy2782

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Ms. Devoe,

    I am first-time visitor to your podcast. I knew that yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the release of "Born to Run" and I want to pay it homage. I dare not improve upon your comments on the Boss' masterpiece.

    "Born to Run" is almost a concept album, albeit so mercifully bereft of the "concept album" tropes that had become tired by 1975. I have often thought how the songs could be featured in a musical film, even as such a film is really not necessary to elaborate upon the already vivid lyrics and music which emerges from the vinyl. This album captures the zeitgeist of its setting: Northern New Jersey in 1975, a time when, as John Updike would write in his end-of-the-70's novel, "Rabbit is Rich," "The great American ride is over." Everyone was out on the road (that) night, but there was no where left to hide.

    Springsteen's matrilineage is Italian, and I place his 70's work very much in what I regard as the 1970's Italian-American Artistic Renaissance alongside such artists as Scorsese, Coppola, De Niro, Pacino, et al. Moreover, most of these creators came of age in what used to be the industrial Northeast. The Exxon sign illuminating the night in lieu of the Moon in "Jungleland" shines almost like a natural feature. However faintly, there is the presence of the Church, a source of both solace and guilt, that insinuates through Danny Federico's organ swells. And what, exactly, transpires on that summer night in "Jungleland"? I must confess that your suggestion that the protagonist who gives Wendy a ride on his chopper may be involved in some nefarious activity "across the river" that comes to a fatal end is a possibility that I had never previously considered.

    I grew up in the 1970's, anchored in the middle of the country between the two coasts. In my consumption of the popular culture of that era was of a perpetual summer of sunshine found in Southern California, where wealth was a given. This was contraposed to the grit of the Northeast, with its four distinct seasons and its economic stagnation and social discord, as I observed on television in "All in the Family" and "Kojak". Not yet a teenager, I was aware of the shabby state in which my republic found itself in as it approached the bicentennial of its Declaration of Independence. Needless to say, the motorcycle-like rumble in the opening seconds of "Born to Run" resonated with me in a way that the SoCal music of the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac could not.

    "Show a little faith, there's magic in the night…" Even if I had never heard the title track on the radio, those lyrics in "Thunder Road" draw me in and take me for a ride, somewhere, to Tenth Avenue or to the Backstreets, down Highway Nine to that Meeting Across the River adjacent to Jungleland. "Born to Run" is a work of beauty, including that great cover photograph which caught the attention of someone flipping through the album bins in a record store: A man with a guitar is looking to the left, out of frame, grinning and resting his arm on something or someone. Turning the cover over, one sees Clarence Clemons playing a saxophone. Exactly as advertised, the sounds contained inside the album are going to enrich one's ears, and soul.

22. 

    @phil4208

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    I didn't listen to Bruce until born to run and I was immediately a fan , he's an American treasure, I was set to watch him recently but he got extremely ill , the way my favorites keep passing away, I've got to see him , NY

23. 

    @barrymoore4470

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Wonderful analysis of this great album, one of my all-time favorites. The title track is so rousing, and yet tinged with an underlying melancholy flavor which enhances the poetry of the lyrics. Springsteen is one of the relatively few rock lyricists who can legitimately be called a poet, and for sheer ambition alone, this classic LP securely ranks as his magnum opus.

24. 

    @rickdrais9737

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    First Springsteen album I ever bought. Listened to it more times than I can count. Now, I know a lot of early Springsteen purists prefer Darkness and call it his best, for me Born to Run is his greatest album. Maybe it isn’t as mature or layered as his later work, but I can still listen from beginning to end any time. At one point the song was made the (unofficial) state song of New Jersey, but it couldn’t be approved by the state senate. Buncha old guys who said the song is about leaving Jersey and therefore not appropriate. Sigh…

25. 

    @nvm9040

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Yeah Born to Run is an album where rock meets jazz.
    What a nice album to hear from Bruce

26. 

    @DavidRoe1111

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Small quibble. No synthesizer in 1974 could create a useful piano sound, let alone piano and strings. Those are real piano and violin.
    And,sappy? I disagree. The E Street keys cover all emotions and styles. Like all the best bands, piano organ accordion and glockenspiel provide the platform for guitars and horns and vocals to shine.

27. 

    @___l___

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Ever heard of purple prose? You should look it up.

28. 

    @joeodonnell921

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Stocism has it's place and is definitely a useful practice if applied well, I get it went to far at certain stages and probably emotionally crippled a generation going back to ww2 and generations before them (tho keeping in mind what they had to go through can you really blame them) but we can't lean to far the other side of that, yes men and boys should be able to express emotions but leaving that lid off is just going to bring forward more problems, balance is the key.

29. 

    @charleshall3372

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    Where or how can I find the 60 second review?

30. 

    @germanchocolatecake8143

    September 1, 2025 at 9:34 am

    You somehow forgot to mention that "Jungleland" contains the most beautiful, heartbreaking saxophone solo ever put to tape.

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