Springsteen’s live shows were rapidly becoming an open secret that hipsters couldn’t afford to miss, and one who didn’t was the highly respected Jon Landau, a contributor to Rolling Stone magazine based in Boston, Massachusetts. Luckily he had the crack E Street Band to back him up, plus a love of soul, Motown, R&B and pop that allowed him to switch from one genre to another in an instant, giving 100% nightly in a welter of excitement. But within the media the ‘new Dylan’ tag was in danger of tainting Springsteen’s’ chances of success, so it was out on the road that Springsteen was making his mark. The thing is, the first two albums (Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, and The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle), were good records, and Springsteen’s songwriting was already so well regarded that The Hollies had covered one of his songs – and David Bowie had covered two, having seen him perform at Max’s Kansas City in 1972. But Born To Run, the songwriter’s third, was his make or break album his first two albums hadn’t sold enough to convince Columbia that he wasn’t a flop, so this could’ve been his last chance. The skinny, tousled 24-year-old Jersey Shore songwriter had been hailed as the new Bob Dylan by his A&R man at Columbia Records, John Hammond, who knew what he was talking about, since he had discovered the original. Everything is filled with that tension of somebody struggling, trying to find some other place.’ The whole record feels like it could all be taking place in the course of one evening, in all these different locations. Looking back on the making of Born To Run, its maker Bruce Springsteen had this to say about it: ‘Born To Run had the feeling of that one, endless summer night.

Born to run bruce