Born to Run: Biography

Springsteen, Tinker, and Tinker’s belly dancing friend head west in Tinker’s old station wagon. In California, Tinker drops Springsteen off at his parents’ home in San Mateo. His plan is to join an established band, and he auditions for a funk and soul group but doesn’t get the job. Later, he meets a bass player in a mall who invites him to jam with his band—but the “band” is a group of young teen just starting out. He plays with them for an afternoon but realizes, again, that his fortunes lie back east.

Mexico (Montezuma’s Revenge)

Before heading back to New Jersey, Springsteen takes a road trip to Mexico with his father. Their first stop is the Queen Mary (docked in Long Beach, California), the ship that carried his father to his World War II deployment. Springsteen can’t appreciate its significance in his father’s life and complains the whole time. They visit touristy Tijuana, meet his mother and sister at Disneyland, and head back to San Mateo. Shortly afterward, he and Tinker make the 3,000-mile, nonstop trek back to New Jersey.

When he returns, he and Van Zandt jam with a blues band in Neptune, New Jersey. The crowd loves them, but they’re so preoccupied with the music that nobody drinks. The owner, Terry Magovern, doesn’t invite them back.

Plan B (Return to the Emerald City)

Feeling his bar band days are numbered, Springsteen instead concentrates on songwriting. With Bob Dylan as his inspiration, he seeks to tap into the generational zeitgeist sweeping the country. Armed with strong material, he reaches out to Mike Appel. Appel and his partner, Jimmy Cretecos, love the songs, but before they act on Springsteen’s behalf, they insist he sign a contract. He’s suspicious, never having dealt with lawyers, contracts, or binding legal documents (even a lease). Appel explains the particulars, and in hindsight Springsteen sees the flaws but as a young, unsigned artist he thinks, “[W]ho was I to say?” Appel, he concludes, understands his aims with his music—“to collide with the times and create a voice that had musical, social, and cultural impact” (169). With nothing to lose, he signs the paperwork.

Appel books Springsteen several auditions. Atlantic Records expresses no interest, but the “legendary” John Hammond of Columbia—who signed Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Billie Holliday—wants to sign Springsteen after hearing one song. After years of struggle, he’s ecstatic. Hammond wants to see him perform live, so he books a slot at a club in the Village, and afterward he’s “beaming,” reassured his potential new artist has the chops to perform for an audience. Ironically, although his future looks bright, no advance money comes through, and he faces eviction. Despite a loan from Appel, his roommates are short too, and Springsteen spends the night on the beach with his few possessions. The next day, he runs into an old friend, who invites him to crash at his apartment. While sleeping on the floor, he commutes into Manhattan to play at Max’s Kansas City, where he meets folk legend Jackson Browne.

Greetings from Asbury Park

The recording session for Springsteen’s first album, Greetings from Asbury Park (1973), is beset with tension. Appel brings in his own sound engineer to replace Columbia’s union engineer, and the entire first day is wasted over a turf battle. Then, Springsteen insists on recording with a band, a surprise to Columbia representatives, who think they’ve signed a solo artist. In the end, he records with his old bandmates “Mad Dog” Lopez, Danny Federici, Gary Tallent, and Clarence Clemons. When Columbia executive Clive Davis dismisses the initial recording for having “no hits,” Springsteen writes “Spirit in the Night” and “Blinded by the Light”—“two of the best things on the record” (178).

Nervous about how his first album will fare, Springsteen—who’s never had a drink in his life—goes to a bar with his roommate, Danny Gallagher and gets drunk on tequila. Euphoria takes over, and he flirts with an old high school classmate. They head back to her place—in Freehold—but he says the wrong thing, and she leaves him by the side of the road. He hitchhikes back to Asbury Park, and despite a hangover, his fear of drinking and ending up like his father is temporarily alleviated. Fans of the hard-rock, fast-playing Springsteen are confused by the sound of his new album, but he’s triumphant.

I Heard It on the Radio

Greetings from Asbury Park sells about 23,000 copies, not great numbers by Columbia standards but astronomical to the 22-year-old Springsteen. The first time he hears one of his songs on the radio (“Spirit in the Night”), he’s transported back to his youth, to the shared “fever dream” of a song’s magic shaking loose an entire country’s collective faith in false idols and “anemic” culture.

Touring to support the new album begins. Their first gig—opening for counterculture icons Cheech and Chong—is cut short when organizers decide the band has played long enough. The tour grinds on, opening some dates and headlining others. The rigors of touring are exhausting, but there’s nowhere Springsteen would rather be.

Show Me the Money

Touring artists are paid on the honor system—they declare their expenses and are compensated accordingly. With no other keyboardists available, Springsteen hires Danny Federici but soon discovers he’s defrauding the record company, overstating his expenses, and stealing from the band. Springsteen confronts him, but Federici’s behavior continues to plague their relationship for years.

After the tour, they return to Freehold, triumphant, and play a holiday concert at a Russian social club. However, it ends in a massive bar brawl resulting in several injuries and a police raid.

Springsteen’s second album, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (1973), is recorded in three months while the band continues to tour. The album is an homage to Asbury Park at a time when the city reckoned with fraught racial relations and an economic downturn. It recalls the diverse and memorable characters he encountered while living there and represents an evolution of his earlier work, a step up: “This record gave me much greater satisfaction than Greetings. I felt it was a true example of what I could I do with the recording, playing, and arranging of my band” (194).

There’s Gonna Be a Showdown

John Hammond and Clive Davis have left Columbia, and their replacements don’t see the same promise in Springsteen. Executive Charles Koppelman informs him that the band isn’t good enough, and when he suggests replacing the band with “‘real’ musicians,” Springsteen insists the album be released as-is. As a rebuke, Columbia refuses to promote it, claiming the songs are “too long.” A power struggle breaks out between Columbia and Appel, and the record executives assume Springsteen will wither on the vine without their support—but with nothing to lose, no practical job skills, he’s in it for the long haul.

A Deejay Saved My Life

Springsteen reflects on the power of deejays to unite listeners under the shared umbrella of music. He has mixed experience with deejays, some rejecting his early efforts outright, others becoming supporters and fast friends. He laments the “pre-pay-for-play promo men who bogged the industry down” in the 1980s, robbing the iconic deejay of much power and mystique.

Adios, Perro Loco

As the tour for The Wild, The Innocent continues, Springsteen decides the band needs a new drummer. Vinni Lopez’s “hyperactive” style, while fine for the early days, isn’t appropriate for the new sound Springsteen is cultivating, and Vinni’s fiery temper alienates the other band members. Although he’s a close friend, Springsteen sadly lets him go.

Booked at the Satellite Lounge, the band scrambles for a new drummer. David Sancious recommends his friend, Earl “Boom” Carter, who rehearses through the night to learn the material and becomes a welcome addition. The band members bring diverse influences to the music—jazz, gospel, folk, rock, and soul—which gives Springsteen’s songs a beautiful “magic,” but their collective career is still in the grip of Columbia Records.

The Future is Written

During a college gig, Springsteen publicly chastises Columbia Records for its lack of support. This becomes advantageous when Columbia’s new president hears the comment and invites Springsteen to dinner to resolve the issue. In addition, the band receives a glowing review from Real Paper music critic Jon Landau, who describes Springsteen as “the future of rock ‘n’ roll” (202).

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Columbia’s new support and Landau’s review generate interest in Springsteen’s first two albums, but his third—and contractually final—album is the deal breaker. He knows it must be epic, everything he’s been working toward, or he’ll be “sent back to the minors deep in the South Jersey pines” (203). Thus far, he’s written only one song for the new album: “Born to Run.”