Born to Run

I was raised in a musical house in the 1970s. Because I grew up in the 70s, we had a stereo in the dining room with a turntable and eight-track tape player, and my youth has a soundtrack of Frampton Comes Alive, Earth, Wind and Fire, Commodores, Heart Like a Wheel, JT, and a stack of so many 45’s, I don’t think I ever listened to every one of them.

Of the music of my youth, the song I remember the most, was Springsteen’s Born to Run. And, even though I will always contend that Jungleland is the best song on that album, with She’s the One and Thunder Road coming in second and third, Born to Run is the song I think stands the test of time, and with each passing year, becomes more and more clearly the greatest song ever written.

And let me just say right now that I don’t want to hear from any Beatles purists that I’m wrong. Write your own damn blog. Give me the introductory chord of Born to Run, the chord that sounds like the start of a motorcycle engine, followed by, of all things, the melody being followed by the glockenspiel, any day. Give me Clarence Clemons on the sax. Give me the Spectoresque wall of sound that runs you over and drags you along for the ride. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first time or the five-hundredth time you hear the song, Born to Run takes your breath away.

Rolling Stone magazine listed Born to Run as #21 in its list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, with Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone as their number 1. Rolling Stone magazine was dead wrong. Well, to be fair, I have to admit to a deep and unabiding disinterest in the music of Bob Dylan. I am just going to throw down right now and say that Dylan is for pretentious gits who are misty-eyed about the man’s assholery and intellectualism. Music critics worship Dylan the same way that movie reviewers worship The Bicycle Thief. They worry they won’t have credibility unless they pray at the altar of Dylan, so they do it. Lennon’s Imagine is number 3. Puke and yawn. I want music that I can drink in, store in my bones and then sweat out through my pores. I want music to which you could choreograph a fight sequence, the kind where people are breaking chairs over each others’ heads and knocking teeth out, or run away, or blow your eardrums out. Born to Run fits all of those requirements beautifully.

And, of course, there are the lyrics. I was on a run with my friend Alison a couple weeks ago where we were discussing this very topic, and she stopped running and wistfully shouted, “I want to be Wendy!” Who doesn’t want to be the person who inspires the lyrics, “Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness/I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul?” And forget about Wendy for a second, how about this line: “Baby, this town rips the bones from your back/It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap.” Or this one, my favorite: “Beyond the Palace, hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard/Girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors/And the boys try to look so hard/The amusement park rises bold and stark/Kids are huddled on the beach in a mist.” You know the next line. That is some imagery, my friends. Who else writes that kind of shit? I’ll tell you: no one. How this song wraps up death, and escape, and youth, and rebellion, and frustration, and hopelessness, and, inexplicably, hope all together into four and a half minutes is a mystery to me, but every word in this song is a masterpiece. Every note. Every chord.

Ultimately, Born to Run is the song of all of us. Of that moment that each of us took a square look at the life we wanted to live, and whether or not we could escape the shackles of the life we were living. So just do me a favor. Take five minutes to take a listen, maybe with fresh ears, or maybe with the appreciation you’ve had for decades, to this song.