How do you know an album is worth a listen? A good album can usually pique your interest a few tracks in, but a truly great album can hook you in from its opening few bars. Great albums can start with a riff, enticing silence, or a bang. Or in some cases, a harmonica and piano playing in tandem with captivating ease.
Forty years ago this week, Bruce Springsteen did just that by releasing his seminal album Born To Run to an unsuspecting audience and garnering huge critical and commercial acclaim along the way. Forty years on and it’s still regarded as not only one of Springsteen’s finest, but one of the greatest albums ever recorded. It catapulted Springsteen from a struggling, workmanlike musician to the megastar he’s known as today. Born To Run was a product of its time yet still resonates deeply in 2015 with its themes of working class struggle, feelings of loss and the desire to escape, yet still feeling hopeful. It is timeless, like any great album should be.
Born To Run is an essential album for anybody to have in their collection because from the off it grabs you for near forty minutes, and doesn’t put a foot wrong. At eight songs long it appears slim, but each of those eight songs are very big in their tales of New Jersey life that paint a vast canvas of youthful exuberance that can be applicable to anyone regardless of age. It was a standout because it never felt like most of its excessive 1970’s contemporaries. It’s sprightly and enjoyable yet never dilutes the subject matter at heart, which couldn’t be said for most of the prog-rock acts of the time. Born To Run felt different. Hell, it was different.
Springsteen’s writing process for this album was different too compared to his contemporaries. Instead of following the usual path for rock artists to compose songs by guitar, Springsteen composed Born To Run via piano leading to a tone that was instantly recognisable. This was followed by every other member of the E Street Band adding their parts on top to create the eight classic tracks of the album. This is none more prevalent than on fan favourite “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”, a song about Springsteen and the rest of the E Street Band meeting and forming in New Jersey for the first time. The whole album follows this format and is used to formidable effect throughout its run.
Lyrically the album also stands the test of time with the aforementioned themes of loss, hope, joy and desire to escape. With America in the midst of a Ford presidency and still reeling from the debacle of the Vietnam war and Watergate, the working classes were sans aspiration and in need of hope. “Thunder Road” typifies this brilliantly with it’s yearning story of two lovers risking it all to follow their dreams. “Well now, I ain’t no hero, that’s understood/All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood/With a chance to make it good somehow/Hey, what else can we do now?/Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair/Well, the night’s busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere”. This opening track sets the tone for the record superbly and really encapsulates the desire to break free of the misery that had befallen the working class nation of the 1970’s.
However, hope was well and truly on its way in the form of the song that kick-started it all and gave the album its name. The title track “Born To Run” combines the joy, the themes and the hopeful lyrics of the album as a whole and encapsulates it in four and a half minutes of youthful, giddy abandon. The utter punch-the-air-with-joy that Born To Run brings to proceedings is not often felt on most albums, but is what sets this record apart from most. From the killer opening combo of the piano and drums, to its decrescendo breakdown, it’s this song which exemplifies why Born To Run is such an essential album and why on its 40th birthday it deserves to be celebrated. All great albums have to have that killer single which can ignite the fuse and send it into greatness, but Born To Run has one which has outlived and outclassed so many others many times over.
Born To Run may be middle-aged but its class will stay young forever. It will always have that feel of youthful rebellion and that there is a chance you can make it elsewhere, even if you are stuck in dire circumstances. Happy birthday Born To Run. Keep striving on for another chance. Lest we forget, the highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive…
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