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

While Steven Van Zandt helped Springsteen get over some of the hurdles he was facing, there was one man who didn’t even perform, but shaped Born To Run almost as much as Bruce himself. This was Jon Landau, who as a music critic had written a rave review of Springsteen’s 1974 concert at Boston’s Harvard Square Theater, and would go on to become not only his manager but also co-producer.

In that review he wrote “I saw my rock’n'roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time. When his two-hour set ended I could only think, can anyone really be this good; can anyone say this much to me, can rock’n'roll still speak with this kind of power and glory? And then I felt the sores on my thighs where I had been pounding my hands in time for the entire concert and knew that the answer was yes.” 

Halfway through the recording of Born To Run, with things seemingly at an impasse, Springsteen hired Landau as co-producer. He took the unbridled enthusiasm for Springsteen’s music he had shown as a critic and turned it into a force that would shape not just the album, but the rest of his career.

Bruce Springsteen: “When Jonny [Landau] came in he really upgraded our surroundings. He brought us into a studio in the city, expressed a lot of interest in what I was doing, had an insight into what I was doing and what I was trying to do. [He] felt it deeply in his soul himself, like I was making music that touched him really deeply in some fashion” 

Landau seemed to intuitively understand what Springsteen was trying to achieve. He helped Springsteen use the studio as a tool, which was his goal from the start, having previously said he wanted to use it “in an unnatural fashion, [like] what Phil Spector did.”

Both knew early on however that this was going to be a difficult task. Landau’s great trick was to give Springsteen the space he needed to express himself, but always be there as a listening board if he needed guidance or help. Springsteen is very frank about how important Landau’s contribution to Born To Run was: “This sound I heard in my head was not one that was physically re-produceable. I wasn’t aware of this at the time. I had no record-making knowledge. The record probably wouldn’t have even got made without Jon Landau stepping in.”