Fresh Air - The Making Of ‘Born To Run’

Episode Date: December 25, 2025

Bruce Springsteen's groundbreaking album, ‘Born to Run,’ came out 50 years ago this year, marking a turning point for rock and roll — and for "The Boss." Before he made that record, Springsteen's label, Columbia, was on the verge of dropping him because his first two albums, though critically acclaimed, had sold poorly. Biographer Peter Ames Carlin describes the creation of ‘Born to Run’ as an "existential moment" for Springsteen. His book is ‘Tonight in Jungleland.’ Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Today we continue our end-of-the-year retrospective, featuring some of our favorite interviews from 2025. The now classic Bruce Springsteen album Born to Run had its 50th anniversary in August. The album was a turning point for rock and roll and for Springsteen in his life and his songwriting. Before he recorded that album, his record label, Columbia, was on the verge of dropping him because his first two albums were critically acclaimed, but had pretty feeble record sales. The making of Born to Run is the subject of the recent book Tonight in Jungleland, which is also the title of Born to Run's final track.

We're going to hear the interview I recorded with the book's author, Peter Ames Carlin. He's also the author of a biography of Springsteen called Bruce, as well as books about R.E.M., Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, and Paul Simon. Our interview was recorded in August when the book was published right around the time of the actual anniversary. Let's start things off with this. Prong from cages on highway 9, chrome wheel, fuel and check it, and stepping out over the line. Oh, baby, this town rips the bones from your back. It's a death trap.

It's a suicide rap. We've got to get up while we're young. Because trance like us, baby, we were born to run. Peter Carlin, welcome to Fresh Air. enjoyed the book. Looking back on Born to Run and looking ahead at what happened after it, what do you think is the significance of that album? It's lovely to be here, Terry. Thank you. It's a hugely transformative album for Bruce in terms of his career, his record sales, but also, I think most importantly, his understanding of his own identity and the voice he would

carry forward in his music. You know, it's such an important album, too, because his record company, Columbia, was about to drop him. They were considering dropping him. And they told him he had a, this is in your book, they told him he had to make a single. And if they liked it, they'd release it. Tell the Billy Joel story about the record reps. Yeah. Well, when Bruce came on to Columbia in 1972, the president of the label at the time was Clive Davis.

And when he heard Bruce's demos and then had Bruce up to audition. for him in person, he was won over immediately and gave the marching orders to the company essentially that this is our new guy. Like Bruce Springsteen is really going to make it and we're going to put everything we have behind him. And what happened next was, you know, his first record Greetings for Masbury Park, New Jersey, came out in January of 1973, was hugely promoted, didn't sell very well. A few months went by. Clive Davis got pushed out of the presidency at Columbia for somewhat murky, corporate intrigue reasons. And then a new administration came in, and people came to power in the label who were not

connected at all to Bruce Springsteen. The fellow who became the head of the artist and repertoire department was named Charlie Copleman, and he had brought into the company at the same time Bruce was signed. And another sort of outer New York working class type of pop songwriter named Billy Joel. And he heard a lot more potential in Billy Joel's music than he did in Bruce Springsteen. So after Bruce's second album, The Wild, The Innocent and the East Street Shuffle came out in the fall of 1973 and failed commercially as well, despite having rave reviews. Koppelman essentially said, you know what? I think we're going to cut bait on this Bruce Springsteen guy. He's just not going anywhere.

But fortunately, there were enough advocates at the company to steal the hand that was going to cut Bruce loose. And they gave him that opportunity to make one last song and to see if that could potentially be a hit single. So they sent him off to make one more song, which turned out to be Born to Run. So initially, the song Born to Run was called Wild Angels. What were the early lyrics like? It's interesting because you can see Bruce getting at the feelings that underlie the finished song. But at first, he was working on a kind of this sort of gothic, almost horror story written in this heavily symbolic language where the fast rebel driver gets run over by his own car, You know, roads are collapsing beneath their wheels and the beautiful surfer girl on the beach, who is the fast rebels, girlfriend dies of a heroin overdose.

And it's just like, it's a very dark and traumatic place to be. I'm going to stop you for a second because I want to quote a line from an earlier draft that you quote in the book. And everyone will recognize a phrase in this line. This town will rip the bones from your back. It's a death trap. You're dead unless you get out when you're young. So, you know, death trap, suicide rap is in the final version, and we've got to get out while we're young is in the final version. So it's just really interesting to read this early draft.

Yeah, exactly. He knows the feelings that he's trying to evoke, but he hasn't hit the vocabulary yet. Eventually, as he began to clarify his vision, that feeling of being threatened, of living in a place that's dying around you and needing to get out, He began to paint that in much more recognizable tones. Like, yes, this is modern America, New Jersey, circa 1974. His songs I'm Born to Run have a real romance with cars and using the car to, like, escape to what will hopefully be a better place and a better life. Was he even driving when he wrote these songs?

Bruce was a late adopter of automotive technology. He was much more involved in his guitar. and amplifiers. Also, he found it traumatic to be taught how to drive by his dad. He had a difficult relationship with his father who suffered from bipolar disease. It was undiagnosed at the time and untreated, but he was a very remote person in a lot of ways. And so he didn't really know how to connect to his son and Bruce, being a very sensitive young person, experienced his dad's distance as kind of a dismissal, a sort of an existential rejection by his father. And so the prospect of learning how to drive with his short-tempered and angry father didn't appeal to him.

So he stuck with his guitars. And finally, when he was about 22 or 23, he was more or less forced to learn how to drive in order to help drive this band to the West Coast. I want to isolate a part of Born to Run that just shows the kind of tension and release in the song and it's the part where there's like almost an arpeggio of descending chords and then piano kind of swirls back up

and it ends in like a little explosion with Bruce counting off after that and starting the song again so let's hear that I love that moment. Highways down with broken heroes on a last chance power drive. I love that moment because there's so much drama in it and it's just like leading you to the edge. So Bruce Springsteen wasn't used.

to this kind of highly produced recording and I think he prized himself on having a band that was about spontaneity and hyperactivity and like playing it a little different every night. So how did this record end up being so

highly produced? You know, Bruce definitely preferred this recording live in the studio thing because they were such a successful and powerful live band. The problem with the early records was that they were working in a studio that was less sophisticated than the ones in New York City.

And when they realized how they needed to transform their, you know, Bruce's sound and get that power onto the vinyl, they decided to start working in a more traditional studio fashion where you record the basic rhythm track with, you know, guitar, bass, drums, piano, and then layer everything else, instrument by instrument by instrument. so you have more control over how the different tracks come together and you can build a fuller, richer, more powerful and ironically live-sounding record the further away you get from the traditional live setup in the studio. There's a documentary that was made at least 20 years ago about the making of Born to Run. And in one scene, you see Springsteen listening back to a take

in which there were strings added. And I want to play that because this is like Born to Run with a string section and it just sounds very different and you'll hear

Springsteen laughing as he listens back to this and so it's laughing like years later after it was recorded. Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness I love you with all the madness

in my soul. Oh, so many girl, I don't They're going to get to that place where we really want to go when we're walking the sun. They were wise to leave that off. Honey, chance like us. Maybe we were born to run. Come on with a chance like us. Maybe we were born to run. But they were also just trying every single thing they could think of, you know. And so they, and it took them six months to record that song because it was like, let's see, how about strings?

And then then do you have that whole arrangement? And then it's like, how about a whole huge choir of women, you know, singing along? And they'd give it a try and then they'd listen and they would sort of go, eh, nah, and then they'd toss it and start again. I think because it was such an existential moment for Bruce, it was like, if this didn't work, he was done. And if he was done, who was he? What was he? Music was the only thing that he had really projected himself into. And it was everything to him. And the prospect of losing his career was terrifying. And so, you know, they couldn't leave any rock unturned. You know, you listen to the string arrangement with that kind of disco sound, those little string churacos that would come up off the dance floor in those songs. da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, you know, I mean, that was a real common trope in the mid-70s, and, you know, so they gave it a spin. Maybe it'll work here, and then it didn't, and you can hear Bruce's reaction. Yeah, and he was desperate musically in the same way his characters were desperate to, like, get out of town.

Exactly. I mean, all of those characters are avatars for Bruce and various facets of his identity and his experience growing up in Freehold, which was a sort of a working-class, suburb in central New Jersey, about 20 miles west of the shore. And then, you know, as a young adult, he moved to Asbury Park where the local music scene was centered. But even that town was falling apart. So he, you know, he had a very vivid understanding of how the economic and social frontiers were collapsing or felt like they were collapsing in the mid-1970s. Let's hear the opening track of Born to Run, Thunder Road. A screen door salamis, Mary's dressways, Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays.

Boy, Overson singing for the lonely, Hey, that's me and I want you only. Don't turn me home again, I just can't face it. myself alone again don't run back inside darling you know just what I'm here for so you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young

anymore show a little faith there's magic in the night you ain't a beauty but hey you're all right and that's all right You can hide Get your cover and study your pain Because the lover The stoves is in the rain

Waste your summer praying In vain for a savior to rise from these dreams When I'm no hero that's understood Or addiction I'm an awful girl It's beneath this dirty wood With a chance I'll make it because somehow Hey, what else can we do now Except grow down

the window and let the window back here Well the night's busted open these two ways will take us anywhere We got one last chance to make it real To trading these wings on some wheels Climbing back air once we're down on the tracks Oh Come take my hand Right now tonight

To the case The promised land Oh Thunder Road Oh Thunder Road Light up there Like a killer in the sun There I know it's late

We can make it Where I do Oh Thunder Road Say tight Take a Thunder Road That's the opening track of Born to Run, Thunder Road. Peter, would you describe some of the early lyrics of Thunder Road,

ones that he did not use? There was an earlier iteration of the song that he called Wings for Wheels, which obviously is a phrase that pops up in the finished version of Thunder Road. But it was along the lines of the songs that had been on his second album, which are very long and shaggy and kind of. move from section to section and career around and, you know, in an exciting way, but not a very tightly structured way. And the narrator of the song at first just seems a little dopeier than the guy in the final version. And at one point, he sort of interrupts himself and all

these promises about how, you know, they're going to go live on the beach and never get old and the sun's going to shine all the time. And then, you know, he gets a few verses into that. And finally he says, oh, I know this is all just jive, but the night is coming and I'm alive. You know, these are ideas that he would perfect and, you know, and plug into not just the finished Thunder Road, but into all songs that would pop up over the next few decades. But when he played it for John Landau, who was then the record review editor of Rolling Stone and also a really well-known writer and critic, and who had produced some records earlier in the 1970s, John Hurstead. John heard. that and said, you know, you've really got to tighten this up. And they became very good friends earlier in 1974. And John was a very strong voice in urging Bruce to structure his work more carefully. And became Springsteen's manager as well later on. Exactly. Let's hear a demo that Springsteen recorded, just Springsteen in his guitar that he recorded in 1975, the same year that Weren't to Run was produced. And I'm going to start this a little past the beginning.

The beginning is very slow. He's singing pretty quietly. I just want to get to a little bit more drama. Don't run back inside, baby, you know just what I'm here for. So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore. When there's magic in the night You ain't a beauty, but hey, you're all right, and that's all red with me You can hide beneath your cupboards and study your paint Made crosses from your lovers throw roses in the rain Waste your summer praying in vain

for a Savior to rise from these streets Well, I ain't no hero that's understood All the redemption I can offer base beneath this old hood With one last chance to make it good somehow Hey, what else can you do now Except roll down the window Yeah, bless the wind blow back your hair You know, the night's bust and open in these two lanes will take us anywhere.

We got one last chance to make it real. To trade in these wings for some wheels. You know, if given the choice, I would definitely choose the version on Born to Run, the more produced and, you know, more instruments version. But this sounds still, like, pretty compelling. This is the version that's the near final lyrics. So he's already created the melody and the structure of the song that we know from the album. But this is a completely different take on the song with a completely different mood and a different message in a sense.

And by the time you get to the end and he gets to that line that plays so dramatically in the finished version, you know, it's a town for the losers. I'm pulling out of here to win. and then the drum, you know, that great drum riff by Max Weinberg and then that very symphonic kind of movie, you know, movie hero music that comes at the end of the song. Instead of that climactic end to the song, you get him almost murmuring, it's a town full of losers in a voice that makes you feel like he doesn't really believe this, you know? Like he doesn't sense that that road is taking him anywhere gorgeous. He's going, but he's pretty sure he ain't getting anything when he gets to the end of the road, whereas, you know, the existing Thunder Road is a completely different story. Well, let's take another break here. My guess is Peter Ames Carlin, author of the new book, Tonight and Jungleland, The Making of Born to Run.

He's also the author of a biography of Springsteen that was published a few years ago called Bruce. We'll be back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. This message comes from WISE, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with WISE, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. Support for this podcast comes from Dignity Memorial. For many families, remembering loved ones means honoring the details that made them unique.

Dignity Memorial is dedicated to professionalism and compassion in every detail of a life celebration. Find a provider near you at DignityMemorial.com. This is fresh air. Let's get back to my interview with Peter Ames Carlin, author of the book Tonight in Jungleland, The Making of Born to Run. I spoke to him in August, which was the month the album was released 50 years ago. One of the themes of the whole album is that you need a car and a girl you love or that you think you love and then the car is your escape vehicle and you escape the town together.

Searching for whatever's down the road, you don't really know what. I'm not totally confident. It'll be better when you get there, but you're kind of feeling. faking it maybe, do you know what I mean? Sure. So the first time I talked to Springsteen, and this was in 2005, I asked him about the kind of romantic drama and the, like, very vivid language in his songs. And I just want to play you that brief excerpt. Do you think of yourself as a romantic by nature?

I mean, because some of your songs are like so romantic. And, I mean, lines like, I want to die with you, Wendy, on the streets tonight. and an everlasting kiss. I mean, is that something that you could imagine saying to somebody in real life or is that a kind of romantic nature that's just reserved for your art

as opposed to your life? No, I wouldn't say, I would act like that in real life, perhaps. But I don't think I would say that. And it's a lot easier to say with the music raging underneath. That's the key to that line. I wouldn't advise.

They're not really, to be spoken. You need the music raging underneath for them to make sense. The lines can be so top heavy, which is how I wrote at the time. I wrote very flamboyantly. And let me tell you, and that was after leaning it all down. That was after really cutting it down to like its toughest little construction for me. The stuff previous to that, if you go back into my notebooks, some of it is so floridly so far out that it's all embarrassing. So a line like that was just the longing and the intensity and the desire for a certain sort of a kind of living that art tends to, or music or films or whatever,

sometimes, you know, tends to heighten and throw back on you as a way of sending you out to search for a certain kind of intensity in your own life, you know. You know, he sounds so self-aware and so understanding of what his songs are art in general does for people. Yeah, you know, his connection to what people are looking for in music and in particularly in his music and his performances is probably the strongest of any artist I can think of. And as he says repeatedly on that record, and he describes the road, you know, and getting on the road and driving off. But where they're going is somehow like barely relevant. As he says in Born to Run, we'll get to that place that we really want to go and we'll walk in the sun. does not narrow it down in terms of a destination. So what, you know, what occurs to us as you

listen is that it's not getting somewhere that matters as much as having the courage to go and and start that process of recreation and discovery and getting away from the limitations and the boundaries of these towns that begin to feel, as he says, like a death trap. there's a song called Meeting Across the River on the album that it's kind of like if you turn to film noir into a song this would be the song it's about meeting a guy across the river who is your connection to a heist or a robbery the song is initially called the heist so let's hear some of it and then we'll talk about what's happening in this song but listen for the trumpet because there's a story about that Hey, Eddie, can you let me be a few bucks. Tonight, can you get us a ride?

Gotta make it through the tunnel. Got a meeting with a man on the other side. And hey, this guy, he's the real thing. So if you want to come along, you gotta promise you won't say anything. Because this guy don't dance. I don't dance And the word's been past

This is our last chance So that's meeting across the river From Born to Run Peter, so let's talk first about the story You know He's asking Eddie Who's a friend or an acquaintance Who knows

He doesn't, like the main character He doesn't have a car He needs a ride He doesn't have any cash He needs the money. to pull this off. I'm skeptical anything's ever going to happen. He's just like a loser

who's kind of losing dreams. Yeah, you know, it's an interesting note to strike on this record and one that Bruce wasn't at first convinced was going to work because he, the pianist in the East Street band, Roy

Bitten, had come over to his house and Bruce took a call and Roy had just seen a jazz artist play in some club in the in Greenwich Village. And he just started playing these really spare kind of jazzy chords. And when Bruce came back from his phone conversation, he said, what was that? And Roy showed him, you know, sort of arpeggiating the chords to show him, you know, what these were. They weren't really part of his usual musical vocabulary since he was more, you know, a straight rock and roll guy with, you know,

a lot of different influences. A few days later, he showed up in the studio. And he had taken some of those chords that Roy had shown him and made his own melody and added some other sections. And it evoked that kind of cinema noir setting, this kind of grim black and white down and out world where you have these two kind of low level or at least aspiring, you know, crooks. You know, the one guy's got a connection. This is his last chance. They're going to pull this off and then they're going to come back with enough dough to float them into, you know, wherever they need to go next. But as you listen to it, you really get a sense of, like, I've seen this movie before, and there's no way this is ending happily for these guys. But what it sets up on the album itself is the climactic song, Jungleland, which tells another iteration of that same story.

At first, Bruce was really uncomfortable with this idea of having this kind of jazz trio song interrupt what he had set out to make as the greatest rock and roll album ever made, because this did not sound like rock and roll. And so he and John Landau, the co-producer, you know, who had joined the team, were convinced that there's no way the song could work. But Mike Appel stuck to his guns and said, no, no, no, no, like, this is really going to work. And when they brought it into the studio and recorded, you know, the basic track a few days later, they brought in the Brecker brother horn players. And Randy plays that really beautiful trumpet part. That kind of sounds like it's echoing from around the corner, you know, on a street somewhere. And when they finally heard all the pieces come together, Bruce was like, yeah, that absolutely is on the album. Yeah, and I think the trumpet was controversial initially.

Like, do we really want a trumpet on this? But I was thinking, you know, Born to Toronto is released in 1975, Chinatown. The movie Chinatown comes out in 74. and the main instrument on the fantastic score of Chinatown as a trumpet. And I thought, in a way, it's a kind of echo of Chinatown in that respect. Well, it's definitely taking place in the same kind of down and out milieu of desperate guys doing desperate things to try to get ahead. Well, we need to take another break here. So let me reintroduce you.

If you're just joining us, my guest is Peter Ames Carlin. His new book is called Tonight in Jungleland, The May. making of Born to Run. We'll be right back. This is fresh air. This is fresh air. Let's get back to my interview with Peter Ames Carlin, author of the book Tonight in Jungleland, The Making of Born to Run. I spoke to him in August. So you mentioned that meeting across the river is a companion to the final track on the album, Jungleland. So can you elaborate on the connection you hear between the two? It's connected very closely to the feeling in Jungleland, which is, again, about a fairly kind of mysteriously desperate character who is going across the river to New York City to meet some fate or other.

There are these kind of desperate sort of penned-in characters who are busting loose and are going to go meet their fate somewhere, either down the highway or in the course of meeting across the river and Jungleland in New York City. Jungleland was in a lot of ways, and Bruce has said this, the most autobiographical song on the album, which is interesting because it is such a gothic story of this guy, the magic rat, who drives into town and seems to meet up with a street gang of some sort, and he meets the girl of his dreams, and they take off together and have a moment of romance, and he heads off into the underground to do something and then ends up getting gunned down either, by the police, probably in a more literal way, or in the words of the song, by his own dreams, which takes us, again, to the heart of Bruce's experience in 1974, 75, when he was writing and creating that song, he was that kid. He was the magic rat coming across the river to the city to make his big play. And, you know, the maximum lawmen who are chasing the magic rat in Bruce's eyes sound a lot like, you know, unhappy music. executives who are telling him that like your time's running out kid you know this is your moment and and you either have to make this happen or you're going to go away forever but in

Bruce's eyes just the fact that he had this dream and that's what did him in you know as they say it's the hope that kills you and that is an unusual ending for an album the perfect ending for an album inspired by film noir because those films very rarely have a happy be ending. Yes, right. And it's also in some ways a retelling, and this is something that John Landau told me explicitly, this is an album that begins with a woman named Mary and ends in what is essentially a sonic envisioning of a crucifixion, which is that sound at the end of Jungleland, where Bruce makes these howls that no one, you know, that they had been trying to come up with a dramatic enough, you know, musical conclusion for Jungleland to somehow illustrate the death of the magic rat. And

finally, Bruce said, I think I got something. And he went into the studio and put on his headphones and they played those last bars. And he began to make, you know, that wailing sound that he makes over those last few moments of that song. So here's what I want to do. I want to play some of the narrative part of Jungleland. And then we'll come back and then we'll hear the howls. The Rangers had a homecoming in Harlem late last night. And a magic rat drove his sleek machine over a Jersey state line. Barefoot girls sitting on the hood of a dodge, drink a warm beer, and saw summer rain. The rap pulls in the town rolls up his pass.

Together they take a stab at romance and disappear down from Ingo Lane. Well, a maximum law man run down from Ingo, chasing her head in a bare-for-girl. The kids round and look just like shadows. All is quite holding hands. From the churches to the jails, to murder is silent in the world. So that's an excerpt of Jungleland. It's a long track from Born to Run. Now we're going to skip ahead to the very end, which ends in wails or howls.

So let's hear that. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh! So that's the end of Jungleland. It's also the very end of the album, Born to Run. Maybe because there was so much at stake with Born to Run,

like Springsteen, it sounds like he was in such anguish during much of the making of the album because they would keep changing like the instrumentation and sometimes changing the lyrics, and it never seemed perfect enough. enough. You know, like everything had to be perfect, but nothing's ever perfect. So nothing was ever perfect enough. And it took so long, you said it took six months just to do the single born to run. And I think the musicians started getting very frustrated with him at some point.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, you know, some of the musicians just had an easier go of it because they were, you know, laying down the basic tracks and taking off. But it was the people whose work was getting overdubbed, like Clarence Clemens' saxophone work, where he really got put through the ringer because Bruce had such a very specific sense of exactly what he wanted to hear. And fortunately, he had chosen musicians who were hearty enough and dedicated enough to help bring that about. Sometimes, though, Bruce was trying to get every aspect of it just exactly right. And sometimes that meant he would shut everything down and sit there trying to rewrite a line

and be sitting silently for two, three, four hours, or he would, in trying to get the right guitar tone, he would play two notes over and over again. And, you know, Stephen Appel, who was Mike's younger brother, who was working as a road manager and kind of equipment manager during the sessions, told me that Bruce was acting like, at times, would be like such a psychotic and just torment you, forcing everyone to go over this again and again, and it would go on and on. And he was changing his mind. And Appel, Stephen said finally, you know, by the end of the session, you were the psychotic because he had driven you insane. And Bruce, when I asked him about that, he just sort of shrugged and said, yeah, that was kind of the gig back then. You know, he was aware of what he was putting people through, but he needed to know that the people who were going to be with him and help him create this were also willing to push themselves over the line. If you're just joining us, my guest is Peter Ames Carlin. His new book is called Tonight in Jungleland, The Making of Born to Run.

We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. This is fresh air. Let's get back to my interview with Peter Ames Carlin, author of the book Tonight in Jungleland, The Making of Born to Run. I spoke to him in August. So Born to Run, I think, is an arguably a brilliant album. It's a masterpiece. Springsteen has, like, tinkered with every aspect over it over and over and over again until he thinks it's, you know, as good as he can get it. But then when he finally hears the aspect of it, and over and over again, until he thinks it's, you know, you know, he's good as he can get it. but then when he finally hears the acetate and the acetate is like what they cut the final recording out of this is in the days of vinyl albums before CDs let alone the internet tell us what happens after he hears it well there are two listening sessions actually i think someone came down with a reel to reel of the finished mix of the album which they listened to the whole band and bruce and micah pell and and the crew guys listening to it and and Bruce is suddenly hearing everything that's wrong with it. All he can sense is the distance between what he's hearing and what he imagined should be on the vinyl. And he just starts lashing out at everyone. Like, oh, geez, there's the saxophone. That's a cliche. And he's criticizing himself

and everyone's performance. And the next day, Jimmy Iveen comes down from New York with an acetate of the mastered version of the album, which is what actually is going to get cut into the vinyl. they play it and Bruce just freaks out and he grabs the acetate and he storms back to the hotel and hurls it into the deep end of the swimming pool and essentially says we're not putting this out. We're going to re-record all these songs when we play the bottom line in a couple of weeks, which was... Like record it live. Yeah, just re-record the whole album live in front of an audience because that's where we're at our best anyway. But of course, Columbia wanted to have it out at the end of the summer and all this promoting. emotional machinery was beginning to crank up. And so Bruce's impulse was, I can't stand this.

You know, as he told me, it made him feel itchy on the inside and the outside. And so he just was doing everything that he could to delay that moment of truth. But John Landau saved the day with that. You know, they kind of good cop, bad copped him. When Bruce said, I think we should throw this out, Mike Appel was like, yeah, hell yeah. They'll sue us probably. And we'll go broke. But that's okay. We're still going to do what you. want to do. It's got to be what you want. But meanwhile, he had called John and said, you got to talk him down. He's acting like a maniac. And so John called him and I think gave him some stern advice, which was, no, I know what you wanted to do. I was with you. You achieved it.

This is a great record. And there will be another record no matter what, which he understood is Bruce's greatest fear, that this was going to be his final word because there would be no more records. Do you think that Springsteen now recognizes the greatness of Born to Run? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think it's definitely one of the one or two most emotionally significant records for him. And he told me, every time the anniversary rolls around, he gets in his car and he puts Born to Run on his stereo and he just drives around the shore where he used to live and dream of, you know, becoming a popular rock star. And when he realizes it's getting close to the end of the second side,

he drives to the street where he used to live and the little bungalow he rented and wrote those songs on the little piano he had there. And he parks outside that house and listens to Jungleland. Born to Run was also a turning point for Springsteen as a songwriter because he describes it as like the dividing line between his songs about like youth and become. an adult as opposed to like being an adult and in 2005 the first time I interviewed him he talked about that how it was a turning point in his songwriting and kind of like the end of one era of his songwriting so I want to I want to play that excerpt immediately after born to run I felt I had sort of okay that was my the song of my youth those these three records they were the but maybe particularly born to run and you know that was just always felt like that's the

song of my youth. Well, I wrote that song. Now I've got to write something else. And I became attracted to country music and older blues and folk because they seem to bring the same intensity to adult issues and adult problems. And I immediately thought, this is a lifetime job for me. I want to write songs I can sing when I'm at that great advanced age of 40 years old. And I remember thinking about that when I was in my late 20s, that I wanted them to have some content and some weight that would sustain me as I grew older, you know. I look back now and it was in the songs of my youth,

you know, and I continue to sing them today. But I think I became a little more conscious about it after Born to Run and going into darkness on the edge of the town and the river that's when the initial country influences start to come up in the music. And thematically, there's people that are married, there's people that are struggling. There's people that are noticeably living young adult lives and adult lives. And I felt that was essential in extending what I wanted to do in my work

and where I wanted to bring my small little patch of rock and roll music. Another thing I love about Springsteen is that he is very reflective and comprehending about his own work and looking back on his past, understanding what he did and why. He's also funny. Yeah, he really can be. He's remarkably self-aware. And I think part of it is having spent the last 45 years in therapy, he has a really strong, he has a really strong sense of what his, you know, where his motivations lie and what exactly it is that he's doing on, you know, on multiple levels, you know, artistically, emotionally, creatively, creatively. People wonder, like, why is Bruce at 75 years old still on the road and playing all these shows? He clearly doesn't need the money. Of course he doesn't need the money.

What he wants is to be the highest iteration of himself, artistically and as a performer and just as a person. Well, Peter Carlin, I enjoyed this a lot. Thank you so much for coming to fresh air. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you. James Carlin is the author of the book Tonight in Jungleland, The Making of Born to Run. Our interview was recorded in August. Tomorrow is just a dream of your lives, turn out for your life, because you're going to go a long day to live.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, as we continue our series featuring some of our favorite interviews, from the year, we'll hear Tanya Mosley's interview with Oscar-winning actor Jane Fonda. They'll talk about her career, how she first began her fitness empire to fund her activist work, and why co-starring in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie sent her back into therapy. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Bledonado, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Anna Bauman, Thea Chaliner, Susan Yucundi, and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital meter producer is Molly Sidi Nesper. Roberta Shorov directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.

I'm Terry Gross. You're going to break on through to the inside. And it'll be right. It'll be right. And it'll be tonight. And you know because you'll be waiting there. And you'll find us somehow you'll swear somewhere tonight. You'll stay free until all.

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