10 Facts About Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’

Going into his third album, 1975’s Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen was like a character in a Bruce Springsteen song. He was hungry and desperate, with one last chance to make something happen. This sounds unbelievable now, given that he’s one of the biggest rock stars of all time. But Bruce’s first two albums—Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, both released in 1973—had been commercial disappointments, and he was in danger of getting dropped by his label.

Released on August 25, 1975, Born to Run changed Springsteen’s fortunes in a big way. It sold well, earned rave reviews, and landed Bruce simultaneously on the covers of Time and Newsweek. Featuring classics like “Thunder Road,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” and the anthemic title track, Born to Run remains Springsteen’s best known and perhaps best loved LP. In honor of the album’s 50th anniversary, here are 10 facts about how Springsteen and his E Street band created this masterpiece. 

1. The album took more than 14 months to record.
2. Springsteen wrote the album primarily on piano.
3. Born to Run brought some familiar E Streeters into the fold.
4. Steven Van Zandt made a couple of key contributions to Born to Run.
5. Jon Landau also gave some helpful advice during the recording.
6. “Tenth-Avenue Freeze-Out” is about the formation of the E Street Band—though the title is possibly meaningless.
7. “Meeting Across the River” inspired an entire book of short stories.
8. It took Bruce and Clarence Clemons 16 hours to record the “Jungleland” sax solo.
9. Despite the months of hard work, Bruce nearly scrapped the entire project.
10. Born to Run wasn’t quite as successful on the charts as you might think.

The album took more than 14 months to record.

Sessions for Born to Run began in January 1974 and ended on July 20, 1975. In that span of time, President Nixon resigned, Gerald Ford took over the White House, and the Vietnam War officially ended. Bruce and his band spent six of those months working solely on the album’s title song, which wound up comprising 72 tracks of recorded music. The final mix contains stacked guitars and even a string arrangement that’s barely audible. “It just goes to show you how much is in that record you don’t even hear that much of, because after we did it we said, ‘We just want a hint of it. That’s it,’ ” Springsteen’s former manager Mike Appel (who also co-produced the album) told Asbury Park Press. Springsteen released “Born to Run” to radio stations about six months before the album came out, and that wound up being good marketing. “I think what made the album have a buzz on it was the fact that ‘Born to Run,’ the cut, had been played for quite a while on the FM radio stations,” Springsteen told Rolling Stone in 2005.

Springsteen wrote the album primarily on piano.

Springsteen is known as a guitar guy, but in crafting the songs that would become Born to Run, he hunkered down behind an upright piano in a rented house in Long Branch, New Jersey. That instrument should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but when the home’s owner sold the property in the early ’90s, she instructed her last tenants to simply toss the battered piano on the curb for the trashman. Little did she know the entire E Street Band had signed the inside. The piano’s whereabouts are unknown, but it’s probably in a landfill somewhere. 

Born to Run brought some familiar E Streeters into the fold.

“Born to Run,” the first song recorded for the project, features Ernest “Boom” Carter on drums and David Sancious on piano. After that song was finished, Carter and Sancious left to form the group Tone, and Springsteen replaced them with Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan, both of whom remain in the E Street Band today. 

Steven Van Zandt made a couple of key contributions to Born to Run.

In a way, Born to Run also marked the arrival of Bruce’s longtime friend Little Steven Van Zandt, though he wasn’t yet an official member, and he didn’t play any guitar on the record.

While recording the Born to Run highlight “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” Bruce came to a loggerheads with the horn section he’d hired for the session. These were some of the best players in New York City, but for some reason, the song wasn’t working. Luckily, Bruce’s old buddy Van Zandt was in the studio, and he quickly devised a horn riff that fit the song perfectly. Van Zandt also helped to tweak the iconic guitar riff on “Born to Run.” 

Jon Landau also gave some helpful advice during the recording.

During the Born to Run sessions, Springsteen enlisted the help of Jon Landau, a producer and music journalist who’d famously described Bruce as “rock ’n’ roll future” in a 1974 concert review. One of the first things Landau did was suggest a change of venue. Bruce and the band left 914 Sound Studios in Blauvelt, New York—which Landau later called “a beat-up old funky studio”—and relocated to the state-of-the-art Record Plant in New York City. Landau wound up getting a co-producer credit on Born to Run, and he later became Springsteen’s manager, a position he holds to this day. 

“Tenth-Avenue Freeze-Out” is about the formation of the E Street Band—though the title is possibly meaningless.

On “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” Springsteen sings about characters named Bad Scooter and the Big Man, and it’s fairly obvious he’s talking about himself and sax player Clarence Clemons. Bruce has always appreciated rock ’n’ roll lore, and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” is an exercise in self-mythologizing. It’s less obvious what he means by the title of the song. Fans have speculated about what freeze-out means, but Springsteen himself won’t be much help on the subject. “I still have no idea,” he said in 2005, according to Rolling Stone. “But it’s important.” 

“Meeting Across the River” inspired an entire book of short stories.

On an album filled with memorable characters—Bad Scooter, Mary, Wendy, Terry, Magic Rat—“Meeting Across the River” stands out. With its jazz-noir piano, saxophone, and upright bass, the song tells of two small-time New Jersey hoods looking to cross the Hudson River and participate in some type of illegal activity. Bruce’s unnamed narrator sings about how it’s “our last chance,” perhaps echoing Springsteen’s own do-or-die situation with his record label, but we never learn how things play out. Hence the 2005 book Meeting Across the River: Stories Inspired by the Haunting Bruce Springsteen Song, in which a number of authors use Springsteen’s premise as a jumping-off point for short stories. 

It took Bruce and Clarence Clemons 16 hours to record the “Jungleland” sax solo.

Born to Run ends with the cinematic 9-minute, 36-second epic “Jungleland,” which features an evocative saxophone solo that runs from roughly 3:53 to 6:05. It’s the emotional centerpiece of the song, and it was a bear to record. Over the course of 16 hours, on the very last day of the Born to Run sessions, Springsteen and saxman Clarence Clemons went note by note until Bruce finally felt satisfied. “That was a nightmare,” Landau told The New York Times. “He had a vision in his head. And the only way he could work it out was through a certain amount of trial and error with Clarence. And he was in a very obsessive endgame on the album.”

Despite the months of hard work, Bruce nearly scrapped the entire project.

Right after sessions wrapped in July 1975, Springsteen and the band left to start a tour. (Literally right after: As Landau tells it, “at 7 o’clock, 8 o’clock in the morning they just rolled out of the studio, got in a van and drove up to Providence and began the tour” after wrapping up work on “Jungleland.”) Later that month, they were in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, when Bruce’s manager stopped by with an acetate of the finished album. (It might have also been a cassette—accounts vary.) Springsteen played it and decided the whole thing had been a “waste of time,” according to biographer Peter Ames Carlin. Springsteen apparently threw the record in the hotel pool and decided he’d scrap the project. “I lost the ability to hear it clearly, certainly towards the end of the production,” he told Rolling Stone in 2005. “After the long period of time we spent on it, I could only hear what was wrong with it or what I thought was weak with it.” Fortunately, he calmed down and changed his mind. 

Born to Run wasn’t quite as successful on the charts as you might think.

Given that Born to Run is generally regarded as a masterpiece and one of the greatest albums of all time (it’s No. 21 on Rolling Stone’s all-time Top 500), fans might imagine it topped the charts. But it peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, and “Born to Run,” the explosive lead single Springsteen had spent a half a year on, only made it to No. 23. Bruce’s first Top 10 hit wouldn’t come until 1980, when he reached No. 5 with “Hungry Heart.”

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