Since 1976, when Tom Wolfe branded the seventies as “the Me Decade,” Americans have tended to write off the era as a socially and politically barren time during which millions of people descended into mindless self-absorption. The rise of Bruce Springsteen is in many ways a typical rock success story, but it also reveals a great deal about one of America’s most contested eras. each Friday afternoon on WMMS, to “officially launch the weekend.” Set against the E Street Band’s energetic blend of horns, keyboards, guitars, and percussion, “Born to Run” was a rollicking ballad of escape, packed full of cultural references that working-class listeners recognized immediately. In working-class Cleveland, the DJ Kid Leo played the song religiously at 5:55 p.m. In Philadelphia, demand for the title track was so strong that WFIL, the city’s top-40 AM station, aired it multiple times each day. Young people flooded record stores seeking copies of the new single, which didn’t yet exist, and radio stations that hadn’t been on Appel’s small distribution list bombarded him with requests for the new album, which also didn’t exist. Within weeks, it became an underground hit. Sensing the need for a smash, in late 1974 Mike Appel, Bruce’s manager, distributed a rough cut of “Born to Run” to select disc jockeys. Though his band spent virtually every waking hour either in the recording studio or on tour, their road earnings were barely enough to live on.

and The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, had been commercial flops. Despite vigorous promotion by Columbia Records, his first two albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. Forty years ago, on the eve of its official release, “Born to Run”-the song that propelled Bruce Springsteen into the rock-and-roll stratosphere-had already attracted a small cult following in the American rust belt.Īt the time, Springsteen desperately needed a break.

Born to run album cover