Band on the 'run'

By LARRY GETLEN
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/
August 22, 2010

When Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run” album was released on Aug. 25, 1975 — 35 years ago this week — critics couldn’t have been more effusive in their praise. Newsweek said the album recalled “the glory days of Mick Jagger, The Beatles and Elvis Presley.” The LA Times called Springsteen “the purest glimpse of the passion and power of rock ’n’ roll in nearly a decade.”

The songs “Thunder Road,” “Jungleland” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” became staples of both rock radio and Springsteen concerts. The title track became The Boss’ first top-40 hit and its chorus, “Tramps like us, baby we were born to run,” turned into one of the most recognizable in pop history.

But one major music-industry figure seemed almost disgusted by the record. One month after its release, he told an interviewer, “I couldn’t stand to listen to it. I thought it was the worst piece of garbage I’d ever heard.”

That harsh critic was Bruce Springsteen.

The Boss’s third album is now widely regarded as one of rock’s greatest albums, the one that made him an icon. But if “Born To Run” was a work of passion, it was also a work of madness, as its creation nearly drove Springsteen off the deep end, making that time “the most horrible period” of his life.

Springsteen’s first two albums had received rave reviews, but sold poorly. As such, Columbia Records was considering dropping him.

“He knew it was his last shot,” says Richard Neer, a longtime deejay for WNEW-FM who was a major early supporter and friend. “He knew that if he didn’t come up with a record that sold, he was gonna lose his deal, and maybe not get another one anywhere else.”

As Springsteen began hearing songs for the album in his head, he hoped to create a lush, Phil Spector-style production. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to get this sound onto vinyl.

The first song he recorded, “Born To Run,” took him and his band an astonishing six months to complete, during which time he rewrote, retooled, overdubbed and tried virtually every conceivable arrangement, including doo-wop, heavenly vocal choirs and drag-racing noises. He openly sought to create the greatest rock ’n’ roll record of all time.

“There are outtakes of other versions of ‘Born To Run’ that are hysterical to listen to,” says Louis Masur, author of the new book, “Runaway Dream: ‘Born To Run’ and Bruce Springsteen’s American Vision.” “There are versions with strings, sound effects, double-echoed voices, all this crap. It’s crazy, because it makes you appreciate that these things are created, not just born.”

This same spirit of never-ending revision applied to the song’s lyrics, which Springsteen rewrote so many times that his notebook for the song filled 50 pages.

“I worked very, very long on the lyrics to ‘Born To Run,’ because I was very aware that I was messing with classic rock ’n’ roll images that easily turned into clichés,” Springsteen says in the documentary “Wings for Wheels: The Making of Born To Run.” “I worked really hard getting the soul of the song . . . and kept stripping away clichés until it started to feel emotionally real.”

Sometime after the song’s completion, Springsteen, who had been co-producing the album with his manager, Mike Appel, had a new, increasingly frequent visitor to the studio. Jon Landau was a journalist for Rolling Stone who, in a Boston publication called the Real Paper, had famously proclaimed, “I saw rock ’n’ roll’s future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

After Landau solved a vexing problem by suggesting that Springsteen move the sax solo in “Thunder Road” from the middle of the song to the end, he was brought on as a co-producer, becoming a perfect foil for Springsteen’s meandering creative impulses.

“Where there were roadblocks in Bruce’s head, Jon may have plowed through those,” Appel tells The Post. “He broke up a lot of creative logjams.”

(Eventually, Landau would displace Appel as Springsteen’s manager.)

With Landau onboard, the rest of the album moved faster, but was still mired in Springsteen’s obsessive quest for perfection. He could spend days adjusting the sound of his guitar. On “Jungleland,” Clarence Clemons’ saxophone solo was composed by Springsteen, literally note by note, in a marathon 16-hour session. Clemons, who called it “the most intricate collaboration” in his almost four decades with The Boss, later recalled: “I went to the bathroom a few times, but I don’t think we stopped to eat.”

Personally, Springsteen was cracking up. Staying at a Holiday Inn on Manhattan’s West Side with a girlfriend, she would ask every day if the record was finished, and he would suppress tears — or, occasionally, shed them — in saying that it wasn’t.

Finally forced to conclude the sessions thanks to a scheduled tour, Springsteen was singing “She’s the One” in one studio, putting finishing touches on “Jungleland” in another and rehearsing for the tour in a third on the day of the first show. Clemons was still playing the “Jungleland” solo as the band packed up the car to leave.

They hit the road as engineers stayed behind to mix and master the album. But when Springsteen received the test pressings, he not only rejected them, he threw them into a swimming pool. He was so unhappy that he considered scrapping the album entirely and starting over.

Cooler heads prevailed. Upon its release with only minor changes, “Born To Run” was hailed as a classic by critics and fans alike.

“That album captured his energy,” Neer says. “Bruce is one of the most energetic performers onstage, and that’s what came off, finally, on that record.”

Springsteen was eventually able to enjoy his remarkable achievement, coming to appreciate “Born To Run” both on its own merits and for what it meant as a reflection of a very important and meaningful time in his life.

“When I hear the record, I hear my friends, my hopes and dreams, and what I thought my life was gonna be,” Springsteen says. “It’s a lovely thing to have as part of my life.”