Single : Born To Run b/w Meeting Across The River Twenty years ago, Bruce Springsteen released his famous Born To Run album in the USA, exactly on the 25 August 1975. The mentioned single, Born To Run b/w Meeting Across The River, was released on the 29 August 1975. The UK-Release was 19. 9. 75 for the single and 10.10.75 for the album. Reprint from DAN #16: Last December, an English jury including Journalists from London Times Magazine, BBC Radio One and others voted the Born To Run single as best single of all time. Second best was Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone followed by the Beatles' Yesterday. Are you surprised about this? Yes and no! Why Bruce Springsteen? Why Born To Run? Sure, there are thousands of great songs out there. Why did they choose Born To Run? I guess there is no answer to this question. Fact is, that Born To Run never earned the success it had deserved. Well, maybe the success is getting in now, twenty years later! Sure, for the fans it always was a favourite. But the single never got as famous as Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone or the Beatles' Yesterday for the public. Take a look at the song now, at the original version: Bruce sings the words with such an enthusiasm in his voice that you really can feel how scared the person in the song is. Well, you know, the main theme on the song is not the phrase "tramps like us, baby we're born to run". No, the main point in the song is the question "baby I wanna know if love is real". The guy in the song is looking for some freedom, for some personal freedom. And to reach this freedom, he needs to know if her love is real. He wants to know how it feels. The guy in the song doesn't have an answer to this question. But he needs an answer to it. Otherwise, he never feels free. He loves the girl. Well, Born To Run is a love song. Have you ever been in love with a girl? Have you ever been waiting for an answer or a sign that she loves you, too? How did you spend the long time of waiting? You get up in the morning, sweat it out during your working day, get home in the evening and go out. You see all the girls and boys out in the streets. The girls are looking pretty good, the boys so cool. But all this is bullshit for you. You're not interested in other girls. You're in love with that girl and you don't know how she feels about you. There are these ties that binds you. You wish you could explode in thousands of pieces. But you can't, you're a fucking prisoner of your own feelings and emotions. You wanna run away, from everything, most of all, from your emotions. You just wanna be free, fucking free. But your emotions hold you back in your open cage. Yes, the cage is open, but you can't walk out of it. It's a bloody sad feeling, isn't it? Then, you're starting to imagine how it could be. How you're searching together that freedom. How you ride your motorbikes all those fucking highways, how it feels when she touches you, when she kisses you, how it feels when you make love with her. You imagine that you and the girl are prisoners of this company and you just wanna be free. Wrong! You don't realize that you're a prisoner of yourself! The only possibility for you to feel free is getting to know the answer from the girl. And then, when you got the answer, then you got everything you always wanted to know and you feel goddamn fucking free. I guess that's what Born To Run is about. Max' drumming drives the song, Clarence's sax solo and Bruce's guitar solo make the song more hectic. It's representing the feelings and emotions from the guy in the song. He can't find any peace unless this fire is burning out of control. That makes his whole life very hectic, like the song is. The song always goes on, it never stands still. Well, Bruce wrote the song when he was 25. As he got older, he played the same song in an acoustic version and gives it through that another face. But the song didn't change neither did the person in the song. The person just got older, as Bruce got, too. I'm guessing when he wrote the song and the music to it back in 1974, it was very personal. And how he played the song was personal, too. And when he played it in '87 for the first time acoustic at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, that was personal, too. Also how he played it acoustically during the Tunnel of Love Express - Tour in 1988 was personal. So, if he plays Born To Run acoustic, then the song doesn't sound too hectic. It sounds more like the guy in the song got older and learned how to handle his life, his emotions. The guy in the acoustic version still loves the girl, definitely. Maybe he loves her even more than in the full band version, but he knows how to take that situation. I'm guessing that is the reason why it took Bruce 12 years to play Born To Run for the first time acoustically. He learned a lot during this period of time. It seems like he realized that if you don't take your life in your own hand, that if you don't take control over the fire which is still burning in your soul, then you're gonna die, piece by piece. Yes, the fire burns you down, it takes everything from you, with no mercy. Well, Born To Run is like a mirror to Bruce's own life, you know. So, in 1992/93, he played the song with the full band, like all those so called "crazy tramps" wanted to hear it. He did it for the "fans". He wasn't true to himself. Or better, the 1992/93 version of Born To Run wasn't personal anymore. I hope, Next time, he will performing Born To Run acoustically again. It just sounds better, more real, you know. He already proved that he now knows how to handle his life. So why the fuck did he play a full-band version in 1992/93? Born To Run is anyway a great song. It doesn't matter if he's performing it acoustically or in a full band version. It's just, you know, acoustically would be more credible, I guess. by Philipp Nyffenegger