Even before its release on Aug. 25, 1974, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” held the stuff of rock myth.
Springsteen, just 24 at the time, had already released two albums that were critically lauded but fizzled commercially. His marathon live shows performed at full throttle from start to finish had quickly become legend. That summer, it seemed, everyone was eagerly awaiting the album that would either catapult Springsteen to fame or dash his dreams.
“Born to Run,” of course, did more than catapult Springsteen to stardom. It became an integral part of rock history. The record, from the exhilarating rush of the title song to Springsteen’s grinning pose on the album cover, is now solidly ensconced in this country’s cultural iconography.
In “Runaway Dream,” Louis P. Masur, a professor at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., dissects the making of the album and the legacy it has left behind with the meticulous eye of a scholar and the unabashed affection of a true fan.
The book recounts the story of Springsteen’s summer in a recording studio, agonizing over each word, each note, each musical arrangement that would go into the album. Then Masur deconstructs each song the way an English lit major might parse a Shakespearean sonnet.
Here, for example, is his analysis of “Thunder Road,” the album’s opening number and arguably one of the best songs in the rock ‘n’ roll canon: “The narrator is there for love, for sex, for excitement. ‘So you’re scared and you’re thinking that maybe we ain’t that young anymore.’ Springsteen has written many profound and poetic lines in his career, but none more so than this couplet.”
“Runaway Dream” does an effective job of evoking the album’s power, and the role that the Jersey landscape (emotional and physical) and the aura of the times played in its creation and its staying power.
“The album spoke to the moment. And it still does,” Masur writes. “New generations coming of age hear it for the first time and are transfixed.”
NONFICTION
Runaway Dream: “Born to Run” and Bruce Springsteen’s American Vision
by Louis P. Masur
$23
