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Review

There is such a strange feeling to be writing this, listening intently to the remastered version of Bruce Springsteen's breakthrough 1975 recording Born to Run, as if it hadn't happened at all but was happening in this moment. To look back at pop history as something of an oracle through the glass on its reverse side is always tricky. There was a lot at stake in rock & roll in those days. David Bowie was about to move into his next incarnation after the death of Ziggy Stardust and into his Berlin period; Queen was moving away from hard rock and into its own identity as well; Roxy Music was about to crack it; the J. Geils Band was shattering houses everywhere with its brand of roots blues and barroom rock; T. Rex was almost absent on American shores, and Kiss had stepped in mightily and faultily to cash in on it all. Meanwhile, the Faces were history, and the New York Dolls were disintegrating; Aerosmith were fighting each other, Led Zep were the power and glory of hard rock; Iggy was lost to addiction; Marvin Gaye and Motown were turning into something else, as was the Philly soul sound, mutating into the next phase of funk, and eventually disco. P-Funk were tearing it up musically and on the road, but not to many white audiences; Marvin Gaye was working on I Want You; Leroy Hutson was releasing the best albums of his career but to little notice of rock audiences; Miles was in retirement, and only Grover Washington was carrying the soul-jazz banner into the future with Mister Magic and Feels So Good. The Rolling Stones were doing their thing, but they were the Rolling Stones. And then the dread Yes and Jethro Tull and Emerson, Lake & Palmer were ruining rock for another five years. The time was right for something to happen, and happen it did. Springsteen and his E Street Band, armed with a slew of session players, came ambling out of the New Jersey shadows, having no idea what they were doing with a brand of guttersnipe, gritty rock infused with soul, R&B, garage band aesthetics, and a stage show that challenged even Mott the Hoople's, to conquer the world whether they wanted to or not.In its present incarnation, finally remastered to full satisfaction of fans in the post-LP era, Born to Run sounds as startling, dynamic, and desperate as it did in 1975. The songs roar once more with all the drama of the young, where everything is at stake. Back porches, ramshackle motorcycles, the hidden intimacy of back streets, the violent danger of street gangs vying for turf, and the story of their life and death struggles told and retold with apocryphal detail from a group of observers to those who would retell and embellish them. There's the boredom of summer days and working nine to five just to break out into who knows what, and that desire -- the one that covers everything -- the one that knows that just beyond the confines of front yards and downtowns lies America, and some dream that would materialize if only one had the courage to run toward it. Springsteen's voice is full, raging, howling, crooning, and above all simply full of the magic of his own words as given life by a band who knows nothing except for putting it all on the line. In its present incarnation Born to Run once again proves its place among the greatest rock & roll albums ever recorded. This is it -- life, death, love, betrayal, and the dynamics of big-screen portrayals of the mysteries of everyday -- ordinary life boiled down to an explosive essence that carries within it everything rock & roll ever promised.The bonus DVDs are something to behold as well. The Hammersmith Odeon concert from the tour that's included here has a set list to die for. It's adrenaline-filled and fear-drenched. These guys were scared and it fueled the gig. There's everything to prove, and the E Street Band had the quavering guts and naïveté to pull it off. These guys play their asses off; it's as if tomorrow they'll die so what the hell -- and given that the bile Brit music tabloids had the proven potential for, it was entirely possible, as Springsteen explains in his liner notes. The track list is simply incredible, from the cuts to the album at hand to those coming from Greetings from Asbury Park -- "Lost in the Flood," "Hard to Be a Saint in the City," "For You," -- to those from The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle -- "Fourth of July Asbury Park (Sandy)," "Kitty's Back," "Rosalita." And as if this weren't enough, there is the classic "Detroit Medley" and "Quarter to Three." This is a mind-blowing gig, filmed for preservation and forgotten about, until it was recently resurrected from Springsteen's own archives and mixed for this presentation by Bob Clearmountain.As if all this weren't enough, there is another disc , Wings for Wheels, a kind of hodgepodge documentary on the making of the album with rare film footage from between 1973 and '75, concert footage, and the intimacy of the studio as this band struggled to keep their deal with the label -- they were on the verge of being booted into eternal obscurity as has-beens who couldn't deliver the big one. The fascination as Springsteen edits and works with Jon Landau to build the crazy, roaring Wall of Sound that became the single "Born to Run" is almost harrowing to watch -- not just as history, but as a gamble that paid off. This is as close to a fan's dream come true as it's going to get. But more than that, the package is the one that proves the reason for Springsteen's longevity. His faith and doubt, his willingness to go the distance, and his belief in the music itself as the conveyor of something bigger than himself to get the poetry across is awe-inspiring. Presented in this way, Born to Run is enough to make one accept that rock & roll is a force to be reckoned with rather than something to market cars, beer, and lingerie; it contains the mythic power of the ages, and dare it be said the proof that God himself can speak through a sleazy looking, beat, flesh and blood batch of street urchins using the ordinary as a means of speaking of the power, vulnerability, romance, and redemption of everyday life as something to be celebrated, struggled through, and cherished.&mdash; Thom Jurek<hr/>Try to picture the rock scene in 1974, when Bruce Springsteen started writing and recording the album that would thrust him into the national consciousness. Elvis had hit merely 18 years prior; Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles had died or called it quits only three or four years earlier. Bob Dylan had been at it for a while and potentially seemed dated, though he was still only 33. The weight of pop music history was something that could be shrugged off, and with so much unexplored territory, bands felt an obligation to see where rock music might yet go.In this environment Springsteen was just 24, still a kid; he'd been hailed as the New Dylan and had recorded two quirky albums but he wasn't a star. He had talent and ambition in equal measure but the thing that would put him over was his vision. Springsteen believed like no one else in the power and possibility of rock, which led him to places that seem strange and maybe even awkward to those who grew up with MTV and everything punk came to symbolize. His naïve but inspiring outlook found its purist expression in Born to Run, which Columbia has now reissued in a deluxe 30th Anniversary Edition packaged with two feature films&mdash;one documentary and one concert&mdash;on DVD.Born to Run is a distinctive record, even in the Springsteen canon. Its world is one of impossibly romantic hyperrealism, where the mundane easily becomes fantastic, and it all happens line by line. Picture the depressed state of the Jersey Shore in the early 70s, the dull sense of an era gone, and then check Springsteen's description in the title track: "The amusement park rises bold and stark and kids are huddled on the beach in the mist." This could have been a couple of bored teenagers sitting on a bench bullshitting, but with Springsteen's imagery, some glockenspiel, and a deep sax drone, it's transformed into filmic splendor. The next phrase ups the ante: "I want to die with you, Wendy, on the streets tonight in an everlasting kiss." From one angle it's the kind of line that can make you wince, at best a silly emo cliché. The way Springsteen sang it in 1974, it wasn't a dorky diary confessional; it was unhinged expressionism, Kerouac with a bottle of red wine in his stomach. While everyone was zoning out in front of the TV this scruffy dude saw an opera out on the turnpike and a ballet being fought in the alley.He wants to know if love is wild and real, he says, but reality isn't a particularly useful concept in the context of this record. A masterpiece Born to Run may be, but only on its own terms. Springsteen at this point didn't know much about women or relationships ("She's the One" is powerful and catchy but fails as a portrait of an actual person) but he had an instinct for drama, and his stories focus on plot and circumstance rather than character. Nearly every song touches on the central mythical image of the rock'n'roll era, the ideas of escape and abandon. The protagonist in "Thunder Road" thinks everything will change if he can make it out of town. The workers in "Night" suppress their daily rage by disappearing into a dark theater of sex after the whistle blows. Conflicts are all man vs. environment and man vs. society; Springsteen would get around to man vs. himself later, after he'd settled down and lived a little more.The size extends to the sound, greatly improved on this reissue with the first wholesale remastering since it was first released on CD. Phil Spector was a well-known obsession of Springsteen's at the time, a logical complement to the room-sized thematic canvas he'd stretched. "Jungleland" and "Backstreets" are famously epic, but shorter songs like "Thunder Road" and "She's the One" seem constructed as mini-suites, with tinkly intros building to immense climaxes. The title track was Springsteen's "Good Vibrations", toiled over endlessly in the studio and smothered with endless layers of god knows what before finally being abandoned, flawed and perfect, to the loving arms of radio. His voice would never sound quite this strong again&mdash;perhaps he never pushed it as hard&mdash;and the slap-echo trailing a split second behind adds to the effect.The first DVD, a complete 1975 show from the Hammersmith Odeon, is a major find. For someone like me who never got over the disappointment of only one song from 1975 on the Live 1975-85 box, this film is a revelation. The opening piano and harmonica version of "Thunder Road" is the scene setter, with a dim spotlight on Springsteen alone on a darkened stage and Roy Bittan playing somewhere behind. When the rest of the band joins him they have a ball, with a performance in turns earnest, theatrical, melodramatic, and clowning. It's an absolutely essential item in the Springsteen discography.Wings for Wheels, the VH-1-ish documentary on the making of the record, is a third too long and will be of only marginal interest for anyone other than committed fans, but there's still something important here. If you can get past the repetitive and fawning testimonials from the band, producers, manager, etc., there's a wealth of information about the technical process of the album, with demonstrations of how songs evolved over time. Hearing the various parts of the dense "Born to Run" picked apart, for example, just the acoustic guitar or saxophone isolated, is like a mini course on how songs are mixed.There's also Springsteen's own commentary on the songs&mdash;what they mean and how he wrote them&mdash;which is interesting if not always consistent with how I hear the record. When he says toward the end of the film that Born to Run was "the album where I left behind my adolescent definitions of love and freedom&mdash;it was the dividing line," it seems to me he's exactly wrong. A dividing line may be visible, but Born to Run lies entirely on the dreamy and reckless side of maturity and is all the better for it. Every young person should be so lucky, to have a time in his or her life when the inflated romanticism of Born to Run makes perfect sense.&mdash; Mark Richardson, Pitchfork

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