But it really began before we laid down one track,” says Appel, the smart, quick-talking man, who was the first “suit” to really see something in this wild, innocent, logorrheic kid. “We knew we’d done something amazing when we made this album. But it really began before we laid down one track.’-Mike Appel ‘We knew we’d done something amazing when we made this album. Springsteen’s manager and producer, Mike Appel, picks up the story at this point. For Bruce to move ahead, for him to be able to make an album people would buy, it all started with music that was first created over 10 years before. Who, it bears remembering, before his legendarily bestial behavior crystallized into the criminal, made the most orchestral, explosive teen paeans in Rock and Roll. There was a new, if old, influence that shaped this song-and album-too. (Photo: Barbara Pyle/Reel Art Press, from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band 1975: Photographs by Barbara Pyle) He reduced his use of multiple bridges, reigned in his desperately romantic street poetry and elegantly eccentric baritone, then added an indelible guitar hook and a compact, catchy refrain. Somehow, Springsteen, whose first two albums were cinematic, experimental, often unwieldy delights, had managed to take his extravagant gift for language, his love of Roy Orbison, girl groups, Bob Dylan, Duane Eddy and boiled all these elements down into one powerfully rocking, hooky song. Which, when you first heard it, was simply stunning. Our story begins, logically enough, with that title song. Even if it didn’t seem like the work of that same crazed, wordy wild man we’d fallen for in 1973.
And over time, despite the occasional carping, we realized this was one epic piece of art. It took us a while to get used to the cleaner sound, more conventional song structures, lines that made linear sense. For the converted, however, things were a bit more complicated. Which, corporately-speaking, was this brilliant, but low-selling artist’s last chance to break through to a national audience. Regardless, 40 years ago, Bruce Springsteen released Born To Run.
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