The Making Of ‘Born To Run’

Summary

Fresh Air (NPR)

Episode: The Making Of ‘Born To Run’
Date: December 25, 2025
Host: Terry Gross
Guest: Peter Ames Carlin, author of Tonight in Jungle Land: The Making of Born to Run (and previous Springsteen biographer)

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Overview

This episode, part of Fresh Air's year-end retrospective, explores the story behind Bruce Springsteen’s pivotal 1975 album Born to Run, marking its 50th anniversary. Terry Gross interviews Peter Ames Carlin about his new book chronicling the album's turbulent creation, its impact on Springsteen’s life and career, and the lasting cultural resonance of its songs. With music excerpts, archival Springsteen audio, and deep dives into lyrics, production stories, and themes, the episode is a rich look at a transformative moment in rock history.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Significance of Born to Run

• The album saved Springsteen’s career at a time when Columbia Records considered dropping him due to poor sales despite critical acclaim.
• Peter Carlin:
  “It’s a hugely transformative album for Bruce... not just in his record sales, but most importantly, his understanding of his own identity and the voice he would carry forward in his music.” (02:25)

2. Columbia Records’ Ultimatum and the “Billy Joel Story”

• Springsteen was nearly cut from the label after two commercially underwhelming albums, while Columbia placed higher hopes on Billy Joel.
• He was given one last shot to produce a hit single. That song became “Born to Run”.
• Peter Carlin:
  “They gave him that opportunity to make one last song and... 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.” (04:45)

3. Early Drafts and Darker Lyrics

• “Born to Run” started as “Wild Angels,” with much darker, more symbolic lyrics involving car crashes and heroin overdoses.
• Elements like “death trap, suicide rap” survived into the final song.
• Terry Gross:
  “So, you know, ‘death trap, suicide rap’ is in the final version and ‘we gotta get out while we're young’ is in the final version. So it's just really interesting to read this early draft.” (05:49)
• Peter Carlin:
  “He knows the feelings... but he hasn’t hit the vocabulary yet.” (06:17)

4. The Romance of Cars (and Springsteen’s Actual Experience)

• Cars symbolize escape in Springsteen’s lyrics, but he didn’t learn to drive until his early 20s due to a fraught relationship with his father.
• Peter Carlin:
  “[Bruce] was more involved in his guitars... he found it traumatic to be taught how to drive by his dad.” (06:56)

5. Innovative Production and Studio Challenges

• Born To Run marked a shift from live takes to laborious, layered studio production—six months on the title track alone.
• Varied approaches were tried: strings, women’s choirs, and more, only to be discarded.
• Terry Gross:
  “How did this record end up being so highly produced?” (08:41)
• Peter Carlin:
  “They decided to start working in a more traditional studio fashion... so you have more control... and you can build a fuller, richer, more powerful and ironically live sounding record the further away you get from the traditional live setup...” (09:08)

6. Notable Outtakes and Versions

• Springsteen once experimented with strings in “Born to Run”—he laughed listening to the result later and wisely scrapped it.
• Demos of “Thunder Road” reveal significant changes from rambling structures to tight, emotionally-resonant narratives.
• Peter Carlin:
  “It took them six months to record that song... if this didn't work, he was done... And it was everything to him... So they couldn't leave any rock unturned.” (11:17)

7. John Landau’s Influence

• Landau, a critic turned producer/manager, pushed Springsteen to tighten his lyrics and song structures, particularly on "Thunder Road."
• Peter Carlin:
  “John was a very strong voice in urging Bruce to structure his work more carefully and became Springsteen's manager as well later on.” (17:17)

8. Cinematic, Lyrical, and Thematic Depth

• Born To Run is infused with the desperation and romanticism of noir films—highlighted in tracks like "Meeting Across the River" (originally called "The Heist") and the album-closer "Jungleland."
• Trumpet on “Meeting Across the River” echoes Chinatown’s iconic score; initially controversial, it ultimately deepened the cinematic feel.
• Terry Gross:
  “Meeting across the river is a companion to the final track on the album jungle Land. So can you elaborate on the connection you hear between the two?” (32:43)
• Peter Carlin:
  “...Jungleland was, in a lot of ways... the most autobiographical song on the album... Bruce was that kid. He was the magic rat coming across the river to the city to make, you know, to make his big play.” (33:04; 34:13)

9. Album’s Dramatic Conclusion

• The howl at the end of “Jungleland” was Springsteen’s improvisational solution for a suitably dramatic climax; it’s interpreted by Carlin and Landau as a “sonic envisioning of a crucifixion.”
• Peter Carlin:
  “They had been trying to come up with a dramatic enough... musical conclusion for Jungle Land... And finally Bruce said, I think I got something. And he went into the studio... and began to make, you know, that wailing sound that he makes over those last few moments of that song.” (35:04)

10. The Perfectionism—and the Friction

• Springsteen’s obsession with perfection would lead to hours of retakes and reworking, sometimes frustrating his bandmates and crew.
• Peter Carlin:
  “...Stephen Appel... 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... finally, by the end of the session, you were the psychotic because he had driven you insane.” (39:08)

11. Release Doubts and John Landau’s Calming Role

• Springsteen was so dissatisfied with the initial mastering, he threw the finished acetate into a swimming pool and proposed re-recording the whole album live.
• Landau talked him down, telling him “this is a great record. And there will be another record no matter what. Which he understood as Bruce's greatest fear, that this was going to be his final word because there would be no more records.” (43:47)

12. Legacy and Personal Significance for Springsteen

• On every anniversary, Springsteen listens to Born to Run while driving around his old NJ neighborhoods, revisiting the physical spaces where he wrote the album.
• Peter Carlin:
  “He gets in his car and he puts Bourne to Run on his stereo, and he just drives around the shore where he used to live and dream... 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 he parks outside that house and listens to Jungle Land.” (44:33)

13. Artistic Maturation and Aftermath

• Springsteen considers Born to Run the dividing line between the music of his youth and the adult concerns in subsequent records (e.g., Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River).
• Springsteen, archival interview:
  “I became attracted to country music and older blues and folk because they, they seem to take bring the same intensity to adult issues and adult problems... That's when the initial country influences start to come up in the music...” (45:41)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Lyrical Grandiosity:
  Bruce Springsteen (24:04):
  “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.”

• On Perfectionism:
  Peter Carlin (38:47):
  “Bruce was acting like at times would be like such a psychotic and just torment you... finally, by the end of the session, you were the psychotic because he had driven you insane.”

• On Driving and Escape:
  Peter Carlin (06:56):
  “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.”

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Important Segment Timestamps

| Time | Segment | |-------------|-------------------------------------------------------| | 02:25 | Carlin on why Born to Run was transformative | | 03:05 | “Billy Joel story” – Columbia nearly drops Springsteen| | 05:49 | Early, darker lyrics of “Born to Run” | | 06:56 | Springsteen’s own car ambivalence | | 09:08 | Highly produced sound—studio techniques | | 11:17 | Wild arrangements—strings, choir, perfectionism | | 15:50 | Early, unused “Thunder Road” lyrics | | 17:17 | Landau helps structure Springsteen’s songwriting | | 24:04 | Springsteen on his romanticism and lyric style | | 27:12 | The film noir vibe of “Meeting Across the River” | | 32:43 | Jungeland and album’s thematic links | | 35:04 | How the “Jungleland howl” came to be | | 39:08 | Studio friction & perfection-driven frustration | | 42:17 | Throwing the acetate in the pool; doubts about release| | 44:33 | Springsteen’s anniversary ritual—drives, listens to BTTR | | 45:41 | Songwriting evolution—youth to adult themes |

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Tone & Language

The conversation is reflective, insightful, and occasionally humorous, mirroring Springsteen’s own humor and self-awareness as well as Carlin’s blend of admiration, scholarship, and storytelling.

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For New Listeners

This episode is an ideal primer on both the drama and artistry behind Born to Run. You’ll learn about Springsteen’s creative process, his battles with perfectionism, his deeply personal connections to his music, and the reasons why this album became—and remains—a classic of American rock.

Transcript

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[Terry Gross]

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 Jungle Land, 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.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

In the day we sweated out on the streets of a runaway American dream. At night we ride to mansions of glory and suicide machines sprung from cages on Highway 9. Chrome wheel fuming, Checking and stepping out over the line. Oh, maybe this town rips the phones from your back. It's a dead trap, it's a suicide rap. We gotta get out while we're young Cause trance like us, baby, we were born to rain.

[Terry Gross]

Peter Carlin, welcome to FRESH air. I really 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?

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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.

[Terry Gross]

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.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

Well, when Bruce came onto 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 from Asbury 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 artists and repertoire department was named Charlie Koppelman. And he had brought into the company at the same time Bruce was signed 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's. So after Bruce's second album, the Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle came out in the fall of 1973, and failed commercial 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 still 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.

[Terry Gross]

So initially the song Born to Run was called Wild Angels. What were the early lyrics like?

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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, roads are collapsing beneath their wheels, and the beautiful surfer girl on the beach, who is the Fast Rebel's girlfriend, dies of a heroin overdose. And it's just like it's a very dark and traumatic place to be.

[Terry Gross]

I'm gonna 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 gotta get out while we're young is in the final version. So it's just really interesting to read this early draft.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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.

[Terry Gross]

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?

[Peter Ames Carlin]

Bruce was a late adopter of automotive technology. He was much more involved in his guitars 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 and 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.

[Terry Gross]

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.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

Highways jam with Broken Heroes on a last chance power drive.

[Terry Gross]

I love that moment because there's so much drama in it and it's just like leading you to the edge, you know? 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?

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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, you know, 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.

[Terry Gross]

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.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

Wendy, we can live with the sadness I love you with all the madness in my soul oh, someday, girl I don't know when we're gonna get to that place where we really wanna go when we'll walk in the sun but till it champs like us, baby we were born to ruin honey Champs like us, baby we were bor.

[Terry Gross]

They were wise to leave that off.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

Yeah, sure. 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 there 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 sciroccos that would come up off the dance floor in those songs, 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.

[Terry Gross]

Yeah, and he was desperate musically in the same way his characters were desperate to, like, get out of town.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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.

[Terry Gross]

Let's hear the opening track of Born to Run Thunder Road.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

Screened doors of lamps Mary's dress waves like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays Roy over some singing for the lonely. Hey, that's me and I want you only don't turn me home again I just can't face 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 you're all right. Oh, that's all right with me. Tonight you cover and study your pain. Because your lover star waste your summer praying and wait for a savior to rise from these dreams. But I'm no hero that's under understood or girls beneath this dirty hood With a chance I'll make it good somehow. Hey, what else can we do now? Except roll down the window and let the window that you're here? Well, the night's busted open These two lanes will take us anywhere we got one last chance to make it real to trade in these winds on some wheel climbing back heaven's wing down on tracks you will come take my hand right now tonight to chase the promised land. Whoa, Thunder road. Oh, thunder road. Oh, thunder road. Flying out there like a killer in the sun. I know it's late we can make it where I go. Thunder, oh, echo. Thunder road.

[Terry Gross]

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?

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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 courier 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 dopier than the guy in the final version. And at one point he sort of interrupts himself in 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 it. 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. These are ideas that he would perfect 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 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.

[Terry Gross]

More carefully and became Springsteen's manager as well later on.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

Exactly.

[Terry Gross]

Let's hear a demo that Springsteen recorded, just Springsteen and his guitar, that he recorded in 1975, the same year that Born to Run was produced. And I'm gonna start this a little past the beginning. The beginning is very slow. He's singing pretty quietly. I just wanna get to a little bit more drama.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

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' young anymore. There's magic in the night. You ain't a beauty but hey, you're all right. And that's all right with me. You can hide neath your covers and study your pain. Make crosses from your lovers. Throw roses, 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 babes 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 and let the wind blow back here? Will the night's bus sit open? And these two lanes will take us anywhere? We got one last chance to make it real. To trade in these wings for some wheels.

[Terry Gross]

You know if given the choice, I would definitely choose the version on Born to Run, the more produced and more instruments version. But this sounds still pretty compelling.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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 full of 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 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 say 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.

[Terry Gross]

Well, let's take another break here. My guest is Peter Ames Carlin, author of the new book Tonight in 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.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

Break.

[Terry Gross]

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH air.

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[Terry Gross]

This is FRESH air. Let's get back to my interview with Peter Ames Carlin, author of the book Tonight in 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. You're not totally confident it'll be better when you get there, but you're kind of faking it maybe. Do you know what I mean?

[Peter Ames Carlin]

Sure.

[Terry Gross]

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 in 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 life?

[Bruce Springsteen (interview excerpts)]

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 it's a lot easier to say with the music raging underneath. That's the key to that line. I wouldn't advise, you know, they're not really to be spoken. They're really, you know, 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 flamboyant. 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. That art tends to. Or music or films or whatever sometimes 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.

[Terry Gross]

He sounds so self aware and so understanding of what his songs or art in general does for people.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

Yeah.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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 when 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 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.

[Terry Gross]

There's a song called Meeting across the river on the album that. It's kind of like if you turned a 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 was 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.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

Can you lend me a few bucks tonight? Can you get us arrive? Got to make it through the tunnel. Got a meeting with a man on the other side. The sky's the real thing. So if you want to come along, you got to promise you won't say anything. Cause this guy don't dance. The word's been passed since our last chance.

[Terry Gross]

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 us off. I'm skeptical anything is ever going to happen. He's just like a loser who's kind of losing dreams.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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 the pianist in the E Street Band, Roy Bitton, had come over to his house and. And Bruce took a call and Roy had just seen a jazz artist play in some club 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 sort of arpeggiating the chords to show him what these were. They weren't really part of his usual musical vocabulary since he was more a straight rock and roll guy with 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 crooks. 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 wherever the 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. There's no way this is ending happily for Bruce. But what it sets up on the album itself is the climactic song, Jungle Land, 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, 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 Brothers 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, that's. Yeah, that absolutely is on the album.

[Terry Gross]

Yeah, I think the trumpet was controversial initially, like, do we really want a trumpet on this? But I was thinking, you know, Born to Run is really in 1975 Chinatown. The movie Chinatown comes out in 74. And the main instrument on the fantastic score of Chinatown is a trumpet. And I thought in a way it's a kind of echo of Chinatown in that respect.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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.

[Terry Gross]

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 the Making of Born to Run. We'll be right back. This is FRESH air.

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[Terry Gross]

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Peter Ames Carlin, author of the book Tonight in Jungling 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 jungle Land. So can you elaborate on the connection you hear between the two?

[Peter Ames Carlin]

It's connected very closely to the feeling in Jungle Land, 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. They're 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 Jungle Land 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, you know, 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 you either have to make this happen or you're going to go away for a. 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.

[Terry Gross]

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 ending.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

Yes, right. And it's also, in some ways, a retelling. And this is something that John Landat 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 Jungle Land 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 Jungle Land 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.

[Terry Gross]

So here's what I want to do. I want to play some of the narrative part of Jungle Land, and then we'll come back, and then we'll hear the howls.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

Rangers, I got a homecoming in Harlem late last night When a magic rat Drove his sleek machine over the Jersey state line Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain the rat pulls in the town Rolls up his pants Together they take a stab at no man and disappear down Flamingo Lane. Will a maximum law man run down Flamingo Chasing her head in a beautiful girl the kids around here look just like shadows Always quiet, holding hands from the churches to the.

[Terry Gross]

So that's an excerpt of Jungle Land. It's a long track from. From Born To Run. Now we're going to skip ahead to the very end, which ends in. In wails or howls. So let's hear that.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

Jun. Who.

[Terry Gross]

So that's the end of Jungleand. 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. 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.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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, you know, 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, 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 are going to be with him and help him create this were also willing to push themselves over the line.

[Terry Gross]

If you're just joining us, my guest is Peter Ames Carlin. His new book is called Tonight in the Making of Born to Run. We'll be right back. This is FRESH air.

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[Terry Gross]

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Peter Ames Carlin, author of the book tonight in the Making of Born to Run. I spoke to him in August. So Born to Run, I think is inarguably a brilliant album. It's a masterpiece. Springsteen has like tinkered with every aspect of it over and over and over again till he thinks it's as 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.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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 Mike Appel and the crew guys listening to it. 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 Iovine 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 gonna re record all these songs when we play the Bottom Line in a couple weeks. Which was like, record it live. Yeah, just re record the whole album live in front of an audience. Cause 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 promotional 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.

[Terry Gross]

Well, John Landau saved the day with that.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

You know, they kind of good cop, bad copped him. When Bruce said, I think we should throw this out, Mike Capel was like, yeah, hell yeah, they'll sue us probably, and we'll go, brilliant. 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 as Bruce's greatest fear, that this was going to be his final word because there would be no more records.

[Terry Gross]

Do you think that Springsteen now recognizes the greatness of Born to Run?

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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 Bourne 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 Jungle Land.

[Terry Gross]

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 becoming 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 play that excerpt.

[Bruce Springsteen (interview excerpts)]

Immediately after Born To Run, I felt I had sort of, okay, that was the song of my year. 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, they seem to take bring the same intensity to adult issues and adult problems. And I immediately thought, this is a lifetime job for me. You know, 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, 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, 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 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 extended what I wanted to do in my work and where I wanted to bring my small little patch of rock and roll music.

[Terry Gross]

You know, another thing I love about Springsteen is that he's very reflective and comprehending about his own work and looking back on his past, understanding what he did and why. He's also funny.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

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 sense of where his motivations lie and what exactly it is that he's doing on multiple levels, artistically, emotionally, creatively. People wonder, 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.

[Terry Gross]

Well, Peter Carlin, I enjoyed this a lot. Thank you so much for coming to FRESH air.

[Peter Ames Carlin]

Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you.

[Terry Gross]

Peter Ames Carlin is the author of the book Tonight in the Making of Born to Run. Our interview was recorded in August.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

As you lock up the house, turn out the lights and step out into the night and no one was busted and you're just a prisoner of your dream. Moving on for your life this.

[Terry Gross]

Tomorrow on FRESH AIR as we continue our series featuring some of our favorite interviews from the year. We'll hear Tanya Moseley'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 prfreshair. 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 Bodonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Anna Bauman, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital digital media producer is Molly Sieving Nesper. Roberta Shoroff directs the show. Our co host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

[Bruce Springsteen (song lyrics and singing)]

And you notice you'll be waiting there and you'll find us somehow you swear Somewhere tonight you're unsettling Free until all you can see is all. Foreign.

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