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All Of It with Alison Stewart
Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run'
00:31:40
Peter Ames Carlin discusses the album and his new book, Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run.
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- [00:08]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. It's the last week of August. Now, technically, the summer season will continue until September 22, but Labor Day is just a week away. In a few days, we'll have some fall programming updates for you. September's get lit with all of it Book club is going to be amazing. You will definitely want to make sure you can catch that announcement. But until then, this week we have some great conversations happening to close out August. Tomorrow, we'll speak with author and artist Peter Mendelsohn. On Wednesday, Christian McBride will join us for a listening party for his new album. And on Thursday will mark the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with the showrunner of the new Netflix docu series, Katrina, Come Hell and High Water, that is in the future. Let's get this hour started by marking another anniversary.
- [01:18]
Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics)
In the day we sweated out on the streets of a runaway American dream At night we ride dimensions of glory and suicide machines sprung from cages on Highway 9 Chrome wheel fuming jacket and stepping out over the line oh, maybe this town rips the bones from your back It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap we gotta get out while we're young Cause translike us baby, we were born to run.
- [01:57]
Alison Stewart
Born to One was released 50 years ago on August 25, 1975. Now, before its release, Bruce Springsteen's career was on the brink. Sales of his first two albums were so low that Columbia Records considered dropping him. But the album that envisioned a single day to night journey through the dreams and struggles of a small town kid from New Jersey was a turning point for Bruce Springsteen's career. Born to Run has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. It is said that Springsteen marks its anniversary by by driving around the Jersey shore, listening to the records start to finish, ending with Jungleand outside the house where he wrote it. Author Peter Ames Carlin's new book tonight in the Making of Born to Run, tells the story behind the album. The last time he was on our show was to discuss the REM Biography, and now he's back here to talk about Bruce. Welcome back, Peter.
- [02:53]
Peter Ames Carlin
Hi, Alison. It's nice to be back.
- [02:55]
Alison Stewart
Listeners, do you have a Bruce Springsteen memory you'd like to share? Do you remember the first time you heard Bruce Born to Run? Were you a fan of his going back to early albums like Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey. What does the album Born to Run mean to you? What was it like to see him live? Give us a call, 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. Or you can reach out to us on social at all of it. Wnyc. Okay. Every Springsteen fan has their own story of discovering Born to Run. What's yours?
- [03:31]
Peter Ames Carlin
Is that question for me?
- [03:33]
Alison Stewart
Yes, Peter, it's for you.
- [03:34]
Peter Ames Carlin
Oh, okay. My, you know, I. I first heard this, the song, probably a couple months after it was released in the fall of 1975, when I was about 12 and I was coming back from a Boy Scout hike in the backseat of a car. And it came on the radio and I heard it and I just thought, it doesn't sound anything like what I'm used to hearing. And so, you know. You know, gradually over the next couple years, it sort of seeped into my consciousness. And by the time Darkness on the Edge of Town came out in 1978, I became a huge fan and have been ever since. And so from that point forward, that song and that entire album really blossomed in my imagination.
- [04:15]
Alison Stewart
Yeah. This is your second book on Springsteen. You wrote another one called Bruce. What's different about this story?
- [04:22]
Peter Ames Carlin
In this story, I get to really focus intensely on the period, you know, the months that led up to, and then was a part of his making of the album and getting back to the point in his career well before he was established with his audience. And so he had everything to prove, everything to lose, and got to the point certainly by 1974, where it was do or die. You know, he was either going to make a single that struck the. The A and R staff at Columbia Records as something that could theoretically end up on the radio, or else they were going to send him back to New Jersey without his record contract. And since being a recording musician and a successful, you know, a successful rock star was what he had been living to do since he was a teenager, this was very much an existential moment for Bruce.
- [05:23]
Alison Stewart
Now, in the prologue of your book, you tell a story about Charles Cross, a journalist giving you advice about what was essential. About what? Excuse me? What essential question your book needed to answer. Will you share that advice with us?
- [05:37]
Peter Ames Carlin
Yeah. You know, Charlie was a friend of mine I'd known for a long time and first became acquainted with him as a journalist at the University of Washington in the mid-70s. But then, not many years later, in the early 80s, he started a fanzine called Backstreet, which was dedicated to Bruce and his work and career. What made it different was the fact that it wasn't just a simple minded, you know, fan mag. It was, you know, Charlie was really smart. He had a, you know, a really sharp critical facility and high standards. And he and the writers that he, you know, worked with on that magazine were all about, like, really trying to understand what Bruce was doing and what his work was like. Charlie stepped away from Backstreets a couple decades ago, but still maintains a strong interest and contributed from time to time. And what he sold me last summer, he came over to my house for a dinner party and we ended up talking late. And he said, listen, what you need to answer is figure out how did everything get so great? Because those first two records were really good. They have a bunch of great songs on them, some good performances, but there are always moments here and there that don't quite work. And then you get to that third album and everything just clicks. And, you know, I knew that he was exactly right. I mean, we had the same sense of Bruce's career and that Born to Run was such a threshold album for him. It was really the moment he figured out how to distill everything he was thinking and feeling and wanting to say in. Into the sort of image and voice and presentation of the Bruce Springsteen that we know now and have known now for 50 years. But leading up to it, he was a very different kind of artist.
- [07:37]
Alison Stewart
Let's take a call from Neil in Brooklyn. Hey, Neil, thank you so much for making the Time to call all of it.
- [07:45]
Caller
Hi, Alison.
- [07:46]
Well, I. I had just graduated from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown when Born to Run came out. I had actually heard his earlier music, really liked it. I had missed earlier opportunities to see him live at Georgetown. That December, he played the Georgetown gym on a Friday evening. The next morning it was ringing in my ears as I took the Foreign Service examination. I passed it anyway, and I gotta say, it was like a four hour concert. He came on for two hours, took a break, came back, played two more hours. I'd never seen anything like it. And the last time I saw him was about a year or so ago at the Barclays Center. He is amazing. I've seen him about five or six times and it never grows old.
- [08:35]
Alison Stewart
Thank you so much for calling. Let's talk to Marcie from Lexington, Kentucky, who's calling in. Hey, Marcie, thanks for calling, all of it.
- [08:44]
Caller
Yeah, hi. Thanks for having me.
- [08:45]
Alison Stewart
You're on the air.
- [08:48]
Caller
Wonderful. So I was calling to talk about just my love of the album Born to Run, which I discovered when I was 18. The album is older than me, but also when I finally got to see Bruce and the E Street Band in concert and got to experience the song Born to Run in person live. And it was a second encore and it was life changing. It was an absolute. I hovered above the floor, above the crowd. And one of your producers, Pilar Deshay, was with me and we saw him in Cincinnati in 2008.
- [09:30]
Alison Stewart
Marcy, thanks so much for calling in. We're discussing the new book tonight in the making of Born to Run. It's by Peter Ames Carlin. It traces how Springsteen's third album transformed him from a struggling musician who was nearly dropped by Columbia Records into one of the most enduring figures in rock and roll. Listeners, do you have a Bruce Springsteen memory, especially about Born to Run? We would love to hear about it. Our Phone number is 2124-3396-9221-2433 wnyc. Peter I want to back up a little bit before Born to Run came out and talk about the two albums that initially didn't sell that well. Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey and the Wild, the Innocent and the East Street. Now they're part of Springsteen's oeuvre for people who love him. But why didn't they sell as well?
- [10:19]
Peter Ames Carlin
They're interesting records, but they're a little bit tricky. The first record, Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey, he was still very much in the thrall of Bob Dylan and the singer songwriters of the late 60s and early 70s. And that was kind of the model they were looking for. Certainly his manager and John Hammond who signed him at Columbia, and to an extent Clive Davis, who was then the president of the label, sort of saw Bruce as, you know, what the journalists began to call when the record came out, the next Bob Dylan, which was, you know, a great compliment but also, you know, a high hurdle to clear for a 22 year old kid who was just coming out of, you know, off the Jersey Shore. And so the songs were long, they were, they meandered a little from verses to choruses to instrumental sections and different kind of verses. And so there's a lot of cool stuff going on and a lot of these are great songs, you know, Spirit in the Night, Blinded by the Light, Rosalita, but they were just difficult to fit in on mainstream radio. And so program directors didn't put them on their, on their playlists and very, very few people managed to hear them. Bruce built an audience just traveling around and playing these incredible shows because he was so such a, you know, an accomplished and powerful live performer even at that age. And so basically the challenge that, that his record company gave him at the start of 1974, when he wanted to start making a new record was we're not giving you the money to make a full album. Like, we don't know if that will ever, you know, make money for us. So what we need you to do first is make a single. And if it sounds like that could get on the radio, we'll give you the rest of the budget that you need to make a full album. But first we need to hear that sounds like it could work on radio. And at the time, he was in the midst of writing the song Born to Run, and they just focused on that and recorded nothing but that single for the next six months.
- [12:27]
Alison Stewart
I wanted to ask you about growing up from Greetings from Asbury Park. This is a track you wanted us to listen to. Let's listen to it and we can talk about it on the other side.
- [12:43]
Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics)
Well, I stood stone like at midnight Suspended in my masquerade and I combed my hair that was just right and command of the night brigade I was opened up vein and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch I strode all along to a fallout zone Came out with my soul untouched I hid in the clouded wrath of the crowd when they said sit down I stood up going up so.
- [13:26]
Alison Stewart
Peter, why did you want us to listen to that song?
- [13:29]
Peter Ames Carlin
Well, it's such an autobiographical song for Bruce. I mean, it's so much about his feeling of. Of being a small town kid and trying to figure out that, you know, the meaning of life to some degree, or at least the meaning of his own life and what was going to, you know, how he was going to establish himself as a person. And, you know, and he sings in a song about, I found the keys to the universe, you know, in the engine of this old parked car. And it's like, you know, and that very much sort of introduces his, you know, his vocabulary of what was going to matter to him and the imagery he was going to use in his subsequent records. But it's, you know, it's. On one level, it's a great song. On the other level, you know, it's. It's catchy. He still plays it in his concerts. It's always been a favorite for fans. But on the. On the other level, you know, there are things about it that. That clearly, you know, reveal that. That this is not going to end up on. On. On top 40 radio. The instrumentation on those, on, especially on, on Greetings is so, you know, there's. I think there's an electric guitar on one song on Blinded by the Light. But they very much were trying to steer him in the direction of being more like, you know, say, Cat Stevens than an actual, you know, the electric rock star we know today.
- [14:50]
Alison Stewart
And on album two, the Wild the Innocent and the Eastry Shuffle, he had a 10 minute sprawling jazz ballad called New York Serenade. Let's listen to a little bit of it.
- [15:21]
Peter Ames Carlin
Billy.
- [15:24]
Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics)
He's down by the railroad track.
- [15:32]
Peter Ames Carlin
Sitting.
- [15:32]
Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics)
Low in the backseat of his candle.
- [15:39]
Alison Stewart
All right, Peter, I can see that's not getting played on the radio, but.
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Peter Ames Carlin
You didn't even play the avant garde piano intro that sort of takes in Mozart and Felonious Monk.
- [15:53]
Alison Stewart
But it shows how much he loves music, though.
- [15:56]
Peter Ames Carlin
Yeah, very much. I mean, the second record, Wild the Innocent and the East Street Shuffle, is so much a band album. And he was very engaged with how good his musicians were and wanted to give everyone time to solo and write these sprawling songs that were, for some of them, mostly like delivery systems for these long solo sections that people would take on stage and. And New York City's Serenade is, you know, it's this kind of abstract portrait of his grandfather, who is this eccentric guy who would pluck broken electronics out of. Out of junk piles and. And make them work and then sell them to migrant laborers. That was how he made his living in, you know, when Bruce was growing up. And so Bruce's experience of this very loving, very sweet, but somewhat of strange outcast of a man was, you know, obviously made a huge impact on him. And that's his portrait of his dad, of his grandfather up in which he sort of sets in the dark streets of New York City.
- [17:04]
Alison Stewart
As you said, he was almost dropped from Columbia Records. And there's a story about the son of then president of Columbia seeing Springsteen live in the spring of 74. And that really was a turning point for him. Was it actually a turning point or was it just a lucky boost?
- [17:23]
Peter Ames Carlin
It was a little bit of both. I mean, a couple things were changing for Bruce in the spring of 1974. You know, his shows began to get more attention and he attracted the attention of John Landau, who then was the Record Review editor of Rolling Stone magazine and also very prominent critic and music writer. And John saw his concert in Boston in the spring of 74 and wrote this column for the alternative newspaper the Real Paper in Boston, and said straight up, he said, I have seen rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And that very much got the attention of the Columbia Records people. And at the Same time. And Bruce, like right after that show, Bruce played at Brown University. And one of their students was a fellow named James Siegelstein, whose dad, Irwin, was kind of the transitional president at Columbia Records. And he came from CBS Television and didn't know much at all about music, but he did know how to run an organization. So they had him there to kind of get things ship shaped before they turned it over to the next president. And in that, that spring, Bruce came and played the show at Brown that James Siegelstein saw and was hugely impressed, if only because he wasn't even that big a fan of Bruce. Didn't really care for those first two records. But what he saw him do in the performance sort of blew his mind so much that he called his dad and said, you know, I read this interview with Bruce where he says, you guys are about to drop him. But I just saw him play the most phenomenal show I've ever seen in my life. So are you seriously going to drop this guy? Because this is like the best concert I've ever seen. And that got his dad's attention. And so Irwin called Bruce's manager and said, we should have lunch and bring Bruce. And they sort of talked it through. And that was the point at which Irwin said, listen, I'll give you the money to make your new record.
- [19:29]
Alison Stewart
We're talking about the new book tonight in the making of Born to Run. My guest is Peter Ames Carlin. We'll have more of this conversation and your calls after a break. This is all of it. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is author and journalist Peter Ames Carlin. We're discussing his new book tonight in the making of Born to run, celebrating its 50th anniversary today. Let's get to some calls. Let's talk to Laura who is calling in from Brooklyn. Hey, Laura, thanks for calling all of it.
- [20:15]
Caller
Oh, my God. I'm first time caller, but a long time listener. My story is a little bit different from everybody remembering the album. In 1973, I started working in an entertainment law firm and it was Peter Parcher, it was Alan Arrow, my cousin, and he got me the job. And he's written books on entertainment and I've been in the entertainment business my whole life, whether it was a legal secretary or I represented, you know, bands or worked with bands. But in 1973, he was a client, Bruce Springsteen, he would come up to the office and the whole thing was about the Columbia Records lawsuit. And one of my cousins was Irwin Robinson, a distant cousin. And it was amazing just to, I mean, he came up, you know, what do you think about me getting a pierced ear? I mean, things like that. Or bringing vegetables and fruit from New Jersey and leaving it on the secretary's desks. And we represented everybody from the Stones to Dickey Betts to Bette Midler. I mean, it was a packed entertainment law firm. But he was the greatest guy. And I was a record collector as well. And like I said, I've been in the dentist forever. Now I'm retired and I dj.
- [21:37]
Alison Stewart
You know what? I love you sharing our stories. Thank you so much for sharing those personal stories. We really appreciate it. I love that he's a good. He was a mensch, good guy. Let's talk to Elizabeth from Fanwood. Hey, Elizabeth.
- [21:49]
Caller
Hi.
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Alison Stewart
How are you doing? Okay. What's your Bruce story?
- [21:53]
Caller
So I was introduced to Born to Run a little later. I was in seventh grade. My sister was heading off to college and she said, you know, you have.
- [22:01]
To listen to this.
- [22:02]
It's your education. You have the same birthday as Bruce. You have to be a fan. And I spent all summer listening to that album. And every time I hear it to this day, probably 30 plus years later, I think of her and that summer. And then she brought me to my first Bruce concert the next summer. And I was and have been to many since. And I'm just the biggest, biggest fan.
- [22:24]
Alison Stewart
Thanks for calling in, Lynn from Stockholm, New Jersey. Lynn, you're on the air.
- [22:30]
Caller
Hi.
- [22:31]
I went to Rutgers from 1975 to 1979. My senior year, Bruce played in the barn. It was his first concert at the, at the school. Well, he played at the commuter lounge my freshman year. I didn't see that, but I have a photograph of that. I waited online five hours to get those tickets. Personally, I think Candy's Room is the best song Bruce wrote.
- [22:56]
Alison Stewart
Thanks so much for calling this text. Peter says I have a personal ritual when the first album I play whenever I move into a new home after I've set up my stereo and turntable. Must be Born to Run. Thanks for sending that text, by the way. So the album Born To Run was first imagined as a concept album. Peter, sort of like a one night in small town kid's life. How much of the original vision still lingers in that record?
- [23:25]
Peter Ames Carlin
Oh, well, it's all over the record. I mean, you can kind of piece together the songs into something like a narrative if you, you know, if you're of a mind to do that. I mean, because the milieu the setting is so similar. I mean, you sort of see this guy traveling from these small, crumbling towns in central New Jersey and sort of taking in the scene and noticing how, you know, how devolved society seems to be. And there's this constant itch to get out of town, to go someplace else, to figure out, you know, get away from the limitations and boundaries that have been set in front of you and strike out and recreate yourself in your own image. And that's such an essential American notion. I mean, that's powered our country since before there was a country. I mean, that's why people come to the new world in the first place. That restlessness, that sense of. Of something beyond the horizon. And, you know, and that is, you know, every song on that record is really shot through with that feeling.
- [24:26]
Alison Stewart
It took more than a year to finish this album. Was that because Springsteen was a perfectionist or what was he chasing in the studio?
- [24:35]
Peter Ames Carlin
Very much a perfectionist, but really, I mean, the central recording for the album really only takes place over about three and a half months, which is like, you know, like overnight in standards of today.
- [24:51]
Caller
But.
- [24:52]
Peter Ames Carlin
But the work on the single, which began In January of 1974, the first song, Born to Run, took six whole months. I mean, largely because, you know, both because they were perfectionists in the studio and trying every single thing they possibly could to make it work, but also because they were touring and playing so much, they could only drop into the studio for a couple days here and there before they had to zoom off and play somewhere else. That was how they made their. At the time. And so. But again, there's also. Even when they got into the studio, the sessions were so arduous and lengthy. You know, Bruce would just spend hours and hours and hours trying to perfect every note and, you know, every word and syllable and even the spaces between the notes, you know, all had to line up in a particular way. You know, if only because he knew this was it for him. If this record didn't work, they were going to cut him loose, and he was going to go back to New Jersey without a record deal and basically be back in the bars.
- [26:00]
Alison Stewart
Let's take some more calls. Gary is calling from Bergen County. Hey, Gary, thanks for calling, all of it.
- [26:07]
Caller
Hi, Allison. How are you today? Just to go back. I was fortunate enough to see him at the Bottom Line on the Five on the last night of the Late show show, and it was beyond comprehension how that show was staged. It was perfected. It was. I've never seen a show better than that. Show. And thank goodness I was able to secure a seat for that show because I was in one of the first tables in front of it, and it was beyond belief. It's still, I think, the best album ever made in the last 50 years.
- [26:41]
Alison Stewart
Thanks for calling in. And let's talk to Ross from Montclair. Hey, Ross, thanks for calling all of it.
- [26:47]
Caller
Hey, Alison, this is actually your old friend Ross.
- [26:51]
Alison Stewart
That's what I said.
- [26:52]
Caller
Never called him before.
- [26:53]
Alison Stewart
I said, I'm like, hey, I think I know Ross. And someone said, let's check out that theory. Hi, Ross.
- [26:59]
Caller
Hey, good to talk to you. So when we were in middle school together, you know, I knew Bruce. I liked Bruce. I was proud that he was from New Jersey. My dad liked him, but I didn't. Didn't really know him that well. I didn't listen to albums beginning to end, just, you know, what I heard on the radio. But I had my first girlfriend, and we were at a little gathering, and she and I were in the basement where I was going to make out for the first time. And we. We put Born to Run on a turntable with the arm up on Infinite Repeat. And we were there for a few hours. And from then on, I came to. Well, among other things, I came to understand why everyone loved Bruce so much. The album will always have a special place in my heart.
- [27:49]
Alison Stewart
I remember you wore a lot of Rush T shirts, though. You were really in the Rush.
- [27:54]
Caller
Well, it was. I liked the hard stuff, but I liked a lot of variety, too. But I did go to. I did go to a Rush concert as well, in middle school.
- [28:04]
Peter Ames Carlin
School.
- [28:05]
Alison Stewart
Thanks for calling Bruce. It's nice talking to you, Peter.
- [28:12]
Peter Ames Carlin
Yes.
- [28:14]
Alison Stewart
Just before the release of Born to Run, Bruce almost trashed the record. What was going on in his head?
- [28:22]
Peter Ames Carlin
I think a lot of insecurity to a great degree. I mean, he has always sort of been split between these two conceptions of himself as being the golden boy, as he put it. You know, someone with a lot of special talent and ability. And also this. This terrible fear that. That he's way less than that. That he doesn't really. That he's a very inconsequential person. And I think, you know, after investing so much of himself into making this record and understanding that it was going to be, you know, do or die for him, the record was either going to break through or he was going to be finished. I think when he heard the final mix of the album, he had this moment of panic where he suddenly thought, what if I put the best of myself into this, but it's still not good enough. And he had this, this moment of terror and he announced that, you know, what we really need to do is trash this whole thing and start over again. And this is after that process, which had begun, know, more than a year and a half earlier. And so he declared that, that, you know, we're tossing all this away and we're going to start over again and just record it live at the bottom line, you know, at the stand of shows. But the problem for him at that was, I mean, it would have been a ridiculously self destructive thing to do because finally he had captured the ear of Columbia Records and they were very much planning to get behind the record to some degree and give him that big shot that he needed. So, you know, he grumbled and had a little tantrum and meltdown over it, but then eventually was talked back onto solid ground and said, okay, let's just let it ride. And here we are 50 years later.
- [30:16]
Alison Stewart
Jungle Land is the epic closing track of Born to Run. What makes it a powerful finale, you.
- [30:23]
Peter Ames Carlin
Know, that is in its own sort of strangely abstract way, like the most autobiographical song on the album. It's about, you know, its central character, who Bruce calls the magic rat. Goes into New York City to take his stand, you know, which is never really clear what he's trying to achieve. But he's being chased by these cops. Cops, you know, the, the maximum lawmen he calls them. And, and that very much was Bruce's feeling at the time that he was this kid from, you know, the hinterlands who had managed to sneak into New York City and was going to try to do something big, but was also being chased by these authority figures who I think in his mind were probably the executives at Columbia who were saying, like, you know what, we're going to finish you off once and for all. And, and, and Jungle Land is this sprawling portrait of, I think, what it felt like to be Bruce Springsteen when he was 24 years old, shooting so high and in no way convinced he was gonna hit his target.
- [31:28]
Alison Stewart
The name of the book is tonight in the making of Born to Run. Peter Ames Carlin has been my guest. Peter, thanks for being with us.
- [31:38]
Peter Ames Carlin
Thank you for having me.
- [31:39]
Alison Stewart
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- [31:56]
Peter Ames Carlin
Pacifico is a Mexican lager brood to be discovered. It's like fresh tracks on a powder day like that uncharted trail A stone's throw away like the perfect wave on a sunny day Pacifico. Find your own way. 21 plus drink responsibly. Imported by Crown Import, Chicago, Illinois.