{"id":1972166,"date":"2025-08-21T11:22:30","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T11:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1972166"},"modified":"2025-08-21T11:22:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T11:22:30","slug":"born-to-run-turns-50-what-the-bruce-springsteen-song-has-meant-to-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/born-to-run-turns-50-what-the-bruce-springsteen-song-has-meant-to-fans\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Born to Run’ turns 50. What the Bruce Springsteen song has meant to fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It was a full Circuit moment.<\/p>\n

Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band played a majestic version of \u201cBorn to Run\u201d Sept. 15, 2024 to 35,000 on Asbury Park\u2019s beach at the Sea Hear Now festival. The performance of the song took place a few short blocks from the site of the former Circuit on Ocean Avenue and Kingsley Street where \u201cbeyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1975, the song \u201cBorn to Run\u201d was a declaration of independence. In 2024 it had become, in the context of the E Street Band\u2019s \u201cLetter to You\u201d tour, a statement of survival and fortitude.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many ways it\u2019s about reinvention and how to find the strength and courage to become the person that you need to be,\u201d said Peter Carlin, author of the new \u201cTonight in Jungleland: The Making of \u2018Born to Run.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBorn to Run,\u201d the single, was first released to radio stations in the fall of 1974 as a desperate attempt to save Springsteen’s major-label career.<\/p>\n

Springsteen, a Freehold native, was on the verge of being left behind by the record industry. His first two albums for Columbia Records, \u201cGreetings from Asbury Park, N.J.\u201d and \u201cThe Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle,\u201d were not chart-toppers and pressure was mounting from label executives for a hit.<\/p>\n

\u201cBorn to Run\u201d delivered.<\/p>\n

The song generated enough excitement to enable a third album from Springsteen on Columbia \u2014 \u201cBorn to Run,” which was released on Aug. 25, 1975. The song continues to hold a special place in the hearts of Springsteen fans and has been adaptable enough over the last five decades to match the mood and the moment for generations.<\/p>\n

A sneak peek at ‘Born to Run, which bucked the trend and won<\/h2>\n

\u201cBorn to Run\u201d was written in 1974 in a bungalow at 7\u00bd West End Court in the West End section of Long Branch. In an era of progressive rock and singer-songwriters, \u201cBorn to Run\u201d bucked the trend with a turbo-charged spark of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll roots, thanks in part to a Wall of Sound effect that’s a nod to Phil Spector and a Duane Eddy-style guitar twang. Springsteen, guitar and vocals; Garry Tallent, bass; Ernest \u201cBoom\u201d Carter, drums; David Sancious, keyboards; Danny Federici, organ; and Clarence Clemons, sax, played on the track and Springsteen and Appel produced it.<\/p>\n

It would be the only E Street Band song Carter would record. He and Sancious left to form the progressive jazz trio Tone.<\/p>\n

The song references Springsteen\u2019s two Jersey Shore worlds with Highway 9, which abuts Freehold, and Asbury Park\u2019s Circuit, shown here in a season of disillusionment. It\u2019s the post-Vietnam, Watergate world with high unemployment and long gas lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cDread \u2014 the sense that things might not work out, that the moral high ground had been swept out from underneath us, that the dream we had of ourselves had somehow been tainted and the future would forever be uninsured \u2014 was in the air,\u201d said Springsteen of the song in his \u201cBorn to Run\u201d memoir. \u201cThis was the new lay of the land, and if I was going to put my character on the highway, I was going to have to put all these things in the car with them. That\u2019s what was due, what the times demanded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Detail<\/span><\/div>\n

Detail of a page from the scrapbook of Adele Springsteen, mother of Bruce Springsteen, which includes a copy of the Oct. 27, 1975, Newsweek magazine, at the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth University in West Long Branch.<\/p>\n

Yet, the dread is contrasted by love and hope via Wendy, and the flash of courage to break free.<\/p>\n

Springsteen manager Mike Appel sent out a few copies of the song to deejays and other industry types to generate interest.<\/p>\n

It worked.<\/p>\n

The deejays loved it and Allan Clarke, formerly of the Hollies, recorded it and almost released it before Springsteen\u2019s version came out.<\/p>\n

Clarke\u2019s version didn’t pre-date the Springsteen version, which peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song was in steady rotation on multiple radio formats and it affirmed the dedication Springsteen fans felt for their Boss. Five years later, the track received consideration for New Jersey state song in 1980 after DJ Carol Miller started a petition drive on New York City\u2019s WPLJ-FM. The assembly passed a resolution but it died in the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe irony is people were like, \u2018it\u2019s a death trap, it\u2019s a suicide rap, we got to get out while we\u2019re young,’ they said wait a second, this song is about escaping New Jersey,\u201d said DJ Rich Russo, host of the freeform \u201cAnything, Anything\u201d show. \u201cI\u2019ve always taken it a different way. Most people from New Jersey move somewhere else in New Jersey. For example, the town I grew up in wasn\u2019t that great of a town \u2014 I moved to the next town. Bruce escaped from Freehold to Holmdel to Rumson. It\u2019s about getting out of lesser place to a better place in the same state.\u201d<\/p>\n

After ‘Born in the U.S.A.,’ fans were introduced to ‘Born to Run’<\/h2>\n

After the breakout success of \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.\u201d in 1984, a live video of \u201cBorn to Run\u201d was released in 1986 to promote the \u201cLive 1975\u201385\u201d album. The new fans were introduced to the older songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was muscle Bruce doing his best song with people in the crowd going nuts and him running like he does,\u201d Russo said. \u201cIt was a great, great video.\u201d<\/p>\n

A video where Springsteen imparts an egalitarian message \u2014 \u201cRemember, in the end, nobody wins unless everybody wins\u201d \u2014 at the beginning of the performance. The message was contrary to much of the pop culture in the big \u201980s where everything counted in large amounts.<\/p>\n

A year later Springsteen featured a stripped-down acoustic version of \u201cBorn to Run\u201d on the Tunnel of Love tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s reflecting back on what was then only 14 years earlier at the time,\u201d Carlin said. \u201cIt seemed like an incredible expanse of time and he sang with wistful sense of a battle waged and won a long time ago. He was in his 30s at the time and evolved again when he started playing in again in 1992 in was back in the whole electric setting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alas, without the E Street Band. Springsteen toured with what fans call the Other Band in \u201992 and \u201993. Crystal Taliefero sax on \u201cBorn to Run\u201d had a more jazzier interpretation of the run than what Clarence Clemons had played.<\/p>\n

The Big Man, and the rest of the E Street Band, reunited in 1999. \u201cBorn to Run\u201d became a vow of unity from the stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the reunion tour you got it back and you got it back with Steven (Van Zandt), who was back with the band and you had Clarence and it brought it back to the \u201975, \u201978 and \u201981 versions,\u201d Russo said. \u201cThere\u2019s never going to be a Bruce Springsteen setlist where that song doesn\u2019t work. That\u2019s always going to work, no matter what\u2019s the theme of the setlist, that song is always going to work because no matter what frame of mind he\u2019s in, no matter what frame of mind the audience is in, that song is transcendent on so many different levels that it doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The interpretations of \u201cBorn to Run\u201d are growing. During the 2025 Super Bowl, viewers heard R&B musician H.E.R. sing \u201cBorn to Run\u201d in a Dove commercial. The spot was called \u201cThese Legs\u201d and a toddler-aged girl was shown running down a sidewalk to celebrate female athleticism.<\/p>\n

Fifty years later, \u201cBorn to Run\u201d certainly has legs.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me it gives you a feeling that anything is possible, the song has such a thrilling feeling,\u201d said Neptune recording star Nicole Atkins. \u201cMy song \u2018Maybe Tonight,\u2019 that was my first song that gave me that thrilling feeling. That is something you don\u2019t want to lose when you get older. If you can keep that magic feeling, you can be young for the rest of your life. You just got to pay attention and look out for it, stay curious and anything can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Born to Run\u2019 50th anniversary<\/h2>\n

Here are some events, exhibits and performances around the 50th anniversary of “Born to Run.”<\/p>\n