Scott Fallon: An Album, A Legacy

By Scott Fallon
28 August 2005
northjersey.com

Consider yourself in this position:

You're completing a project so important that it may make or break your career.

You're all of 25 years old, and not only do you have to write and perform this project, you also have to coordinate the work of five very talented people.

Then two of them leave without much notice. Your bosses begin to grow impatient. The money they invested in your first two projects was never returned. Accolades that once poured in are now replaced with rumors that you're a hair from being fired.

Pressure leads to anxiety, anxiety to doubt. What do you do at this point?

What can you do?

In 1975, Bruce Springsteen could have easily disappeared into obscurity thanks to the above scenario.

Instead, his response was "Born to Run," a milestone album that not only saved his career but justified every premature, over-the-top claim that he was the rightful successor to Presley, Holly, Berry and Dylan.

The album, which was released 30 years ago Thursday, is a treatise on escapism fueled by fear and desperation.

It took two grueling years to make "Born to Run" - a recording marathon that saw pianist David Sancious and drummer Ernest "Boom" Carter leave the E Street Band.

But Springsteen carried on by hiring Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg. Under the tutelage of producer-managers Mike Appel and Jon Landau, Springsteen began to craft a record that didn't sound like anything produced in the prior 10 years.

By the mid-'70s, much of rock music had become so pretentious, so obsequious, that every instrument needed time in the spotlight.
Springsteen, in turn, adopted Phil Spector's grandiose "Wall of Sound," which relied heavily on merging instruments into an almost orchestral force. Springsteen's guitar melted into Danny Federici's organ, which melted into Gary Tallent's bass, and on and on.

The result was a wave that slammed through the ear canals - a sound that had not been heard popularly since Bob Dylan released "Like a Rolling Stone" in 1965.

The opener, "Thunder Road," immediately set the tone for the album and arguably the rest of Springsteen's career.

The song begins so gently, just a harmonica and a piano, with images of a girl dancing on her porch and the narrator who longs for her. Tension builds as he lays out what's on the line. And it explodes with organ and drums as soon as he begins pleading for the girl's hand.

But this isn't just about two people.

"There were ghosts of the eyes of all the boys you sent away," Springsteen sings, his voice rising, nearly cracking. "They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned-out Chevrolets."

This is Springsteen's lost generation. They are the nameless, the ones who didn't make it, the children who would grow into the characters on "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "Nebraska."

And Springsteen empathizes with them because he was so close to joining their ranks.

The theme continues in "Backstreets" where Bittan's masterful piano work creates the bittersweet mood from the start.

A song of love and betrayal, "Backstreets" sees Springsteen at his most manic. He screams the chorus of a dream denied, repeats it 26 consecutive times before he is left yelping wildly at the end.

But all is not lost. The title track does not pretend to be anything less than grandiose.

"Born to Run" begins with two seconds of machine-gun drumming followed by what sounds like an organ and bass being hammered upon just as hard.

While the vivid imagery of teenage desperation carries the song, it is really the crescendo that sets it apart.

The bridge is among the greatest in rock music because it acts as a true dramatic arch. You realize everything is on the line. The world isn't fair. It'll tear your heart out. What happens next?

For Springsteen, it is a burst of optimism unlike any other in popular music then or now. An orchestra of strings carries the melody as if it had become sacred.

The cynics are gone. The self-loathers who wore "Born to Lose" across their chest are now transformed into "broken heroes."

Like "Thunder Road," the song became less about a guy and a girl and more about a generation that had fallen through the cracks. Everybody's out on the run tonight.

But we come to learn by the album's end that escapism has its price.

"Jungleland" begins with delicate string arrangement and is followed by a piano that seems so upbeat, as if it were going to introduce "The Fantasticks."

It's a true transition song in Springsteen's career. It references the long surrealistic narratives on "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle" as we are introduced to characters called Magic Rat, Maximum Lawman and the barefoot girl.

But over the song's 10 minutes, the mirth of this fantastical night becomes something darker. We arrive at a different song following Clarence Clemons' two-minute sax solo.

The piano now plays a dirge. Springsteen speaks more than sings. Ambulances pull away. Poets don't write anything at all. And worst of all, this is now a place where death is a better ending than being left wounded.

Perhaps "Jungleland" was foreshadowing what was to come in Springsteen's music, when romanticism was replaced with the harsh realities of trying to make it in the world.

In the end, "Born to Run" was just an album. Eight songs pressed into two sides of vinyl. You could pump your fist to some of them. You could dance to others. Maybe you're still humming a tune in the shower all these years later.

But that would be missing everything.

Springsteen had accomplished something few even tried. He was writing to the invisible class, the people no one paid much attention to in popular culture.

He saved his career by writing about people trying to save their lives.

E-mail: fallon@northjersey.com

* * *

Anniversary edition

There has been no official word from Columbia Records, but Steve Van Zandt recently confirmed that a 30th anniversary edition of "Born to Run" is in the works.

"There is a very cool thing that's going to come out," he told Billboard.com. "It's a CD/DVD. ... I don't think it's a big surprise. I hope it's not a surprise!"
Van Zandt was not a member of the E Street Band when "Born to Run" was cut, even though he had been playing with Springsteen since the two were teens. But Van Zandt made a critical contribution.

When Springsteen was having difficulty composing the opening horn arrangement of "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" he turned to Van Zandt, who quickly showed the players just what to do. It cleared a major stumbling block in the two-year recording marathon. Van Zandt joined the band soon after the recording sessions.

- Scott Fallon