Born to Run

by Bruce Springsteen

I was never going to be Woody Guthrie—I liked the pink Cadillac too much—but there was work to be done.

I’d driven strictly vintage automobiles my whole life.

to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a cigar needs to be just a cigar.

All popular artists get caught between making records and making music. If you’re lucky, sometimes it’s the same thing.

I loved her. I was lucky she loved me. The rest was paperwork.

The precision of the storytelling in these types of songs is very important. The correct detail can speak volumes about who your character is, while the wrong one can shred the credibility of your story.

My father, who’d uttered fewer than one thousand words throughout most of my childhood, in the grips of his illness, opened the door a crack on the temple of dreams and devils he’d been dueling with in the dark of the kitchen for forty years.

We honor our parents by carrying their best forward and laying the rest down. By fighting and taming the demons that laid them low and now reside in us.

In my twenties, as my song and my story began to take shape, I searched for the voice I would blend with mine to do the telling. It is a moment when through creativity and will you can rework, repossess and rebirth the conflicting voices of your childhood, to turn them into something alive, powerful and seeking light.

We don’t always want what seems best suited for us; we want what we “need.” You make your choices and you pay the piper.

My mother stood behind my wildest dreams, accepted me at face value for who I truly was and nurtured the unlikely scenario I held deepest in my heart, that I was going to make music and that someone, somewhere, was going to want to hear it. She shone her light on me at a time when it was all the light there was.

We’d all gotten . . . OLD! The seats were filled with middle-aged, wrinkled, out-of-shape, balding, gray-bearded rock fans straight out of the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four.” We all looked kind of . . . ridiculous! But something else was happening. Young hipsters and teenagers were scattered through the crowd.

I looked over at my mother, seventy-two, her face a loving map of all our pain and resilience.

In 1964, millions of kids saw the Stones and the Beatles and decided, “That looks like fun.” Some of them went out and bought instruments. Some of them learned to play a little. Some got good enough to maybe join a local band. Some might have even made a demo tape. Some might have lucked out and gotten a record deal of some sort. A few of those might have sold some records and done some touring. A few of those might have had a small hit, a short career in music, and managed to eke out a modest living. A very few of those might have managed to make a life as a musician, and a very, very few might have had some continuing success that brought them fame, fortune and deep gratification, and tonight, one of those ended up standing between Mick Jagger and George Harrison, a Stone and a Beatle.

All great rock ’n’ roll records convince you of one essential thing: that SOMETHING is HAPPENING! Something you NEED to hear! There are many very listenable bad records that hold your attention because they are not dull. They have been written, constructed, arranged and produced in a way that holds the ear. It may not be art, but it’s admirable craft.

LESSON 1: Never get on a horse named “Lightning,” “Thunder,” “Widow Maker,” “Undertaker,” “Acid Trip,” “Hurricane” or “Sudden Death.” LESSON 2: Take a few lessons.

A lot of what the E Street Band does is hand-me-down shtick transformed by will, power and an intense communication with our audience into something transcendent. Sometimes that’s all you need. I once read a review of a very competent hit-making group where the reviewer stated, “They do all the unimportant things very well.” I knew exactly what he meant. Rock ’n’ roll music, in the end, is a source of religious and mystical power. Your playing can suck, your singing can be barely viable, but if when you get together with your pals in front of your audience and make the noise, the one that is drawn from the center of your being, from your godhead, from your gutter, from the universe’s infinitesimal genesis point . . . you’re rockin’ and you’re a rock ’n’ roll star in every sense of the word. The punks instinctively knew this and created a third revolution out of it, but it is an essential element in the equation of every great musical unit and rock ’n’ roll band, no matter how down-to-earth their presentation.

wearing my ninja cloak of invisibility, a baseball hat,

I’ve come across many spirit-filled folk in my travels but no one as spectrally beautiful as Keith Richards.

From my left, in the voice that’s wet millions of knickers comes “Women think I’m tasty, but they’re always trying to waste me” . . . I’m pretending to be a peer but it’s not easy.

then it’s over. Mick says, “That was great.” We played it exactly one time.

Writing about yourself is a funny business. At the end of the day it’s just another story, the story you’ve chosen from the events of your life. I haven’t told you “all” about myself. Discretion and the feelings of others don’t allow it. But in a project like this, the writer has made one promise: to show the reader his mind. In these pages I’ve tried to do that.

We honor our parents by not accepting as the final equation the most troubling characteristics of our relationship. I decided between my father and me that the sum of our troubles would not be the summation of our lives together.