Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run At 40 (According To Those Who Made It)

As Springsteen went into the studio to start the recording of Born To Run, the line-up of the E Street Band was not the classic we know and love today. Drummer Ernest “Boom” Carter played on the title track but left in August 1974, while David Sancious also contributed to that song but left before anything else on the album was laid down.

This left Springsteen two very important band members down. After exhaustive auditions in which they played with 60 different hopefuls, all for at least 30 minutes each, Springsteen finally settled on Max Weinberg as the band’s new drummer, and Roy Bittan for keyboards.

Another important member was added during the recording of Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, a song Springsteen describes as “about having a band, having my friends with me, about guys around you and doing what we said we were gonna do”.

Like much of the album, Springsteen was having trouble communicating how his vision for the song should translate. Describing the brass section, he said: “they were supposed to be Stax-ful, Mussel Shoals horns [but] I was doing a poor job of communicating it, if I was communicating it at all.” 

At a loss, he asked his old friend Steven Van Zandt to come in and help him out. Van Zandt told all the performers to throw away everything they had written down, and hummed what he thought they should play. “I didn’t have the sophistication to be diplomatic, or know if I was being rude,” he later admitted, but somehow it worked. 

“It was just a classic Steve moment. I don’t know if Steve had. ever been in a studio before,” said Springsteen. Jon Landau later remembered that as being a moment of light in an otherwise dark and difficult set of sessions: “We did the horns on 10th Avenue and there’s something about you’ll never forget. It was just so much fun.” 

As for the title’s significance, here’s Springsteen: “I have no idea what that means to this day! But it’s important…” 

While Van Zandt would only further contribute backing vocals on Thunder Road to the album, he would later join the E Street Band, becoming one of their most important and beloved members.