Tramps like us, baby we were born to run… ForBruce Springsteenand the E Street band, it was a last chance power drive to make their mark.
He immediately wanted to know more.
I was without a vocabulary," Hanks says.
Time Magazine
“I wanted to be an artist but was unsure if I knew anything beyond self-defense mechanisms.
On its impact 45 years later:
“Eight songs.
The cinematic vision had me seeing the songs as well as hearing them,” Hanks says.
Sony Legacy
FavoriteBorn to Runsong:
“Jungleland” gave Hanks a window into his new home of New York City.
“I was on the other side of the nation from my comforts,” he says.
“I was an outsider, another interloper just off the bus or the turnpike.
Fin Costello/Redferns
The River tour was only the second-ever rock gig Hanks attended, and it ran for four hours.
“An artist has to ‘go there’ and take the audience with them.
Bruce did, and I’ve never seen anyone else do the same thing in the same way.”
Fin Costello/Redferns
“It’s that feeling of an artist who catches lightning in a bottle,” he says.
“It’s the idea of a young artist really hitting his stride and taking off into warp speed.
“He’s written these songs that are these gifts for people,” he says.
Newsweek
I feel let in on the secret just by singing these words.
I feel like I’m part of the secret.
Bruce [can] cram a lifetime into three minutes and three chords.”
“It could have been written a million years ago.
It could have been written yesterday.
It could be written tomorrow.
The work is so prolific and so immediate and so personal.
Music like the songs onBorn To Rundon’t go out of style.
They don’t go out of fashion because they just exist.”
“I cried 1000 times.
It’s a summer night.
I’m drinking a beer and there’s Bruce.
“What drew me to the album was the cover.
But it was really when I saw Bruce live that the power of it really hit me.
The first time I saw Bruce was in the early ’80s in Wembley Arena.
In many ways, it was a religious experience thousands of people all screaming the lyrics.
It stood the test of time,” she says.
I had to sort of let the fear go.
I just went with the sheer exuberance and joy and rebelliousness of the song.
“I think it put Bruce on the map and he hasn’t left,” Chadha says.
“It put him right up there as one of the greatest songwriters in the world.
it’s possible for you to always rely on Bruce.”
Then I would like to use the piano solo and the last verse,'” she recounts.
It means I have to cut the song together.'
He looked at me and he said, ‘You know what, I think Clarence would love that.
Do it for Clarence.’
That was quite thrilling, but also completely debilitating.”
“Not the lyrics, but just the music.”
Chase says the song and album have shifted in impact for him over the years.
“It means I’ve gotten really old,” he says.
“I don’t feel like I was born to run anymore.
Because I had done that.
I had left New Jersey, and in my case, gone to Hollywood.
I was really into that.”
“Thunder Road” is Chase’s pick.
She gets in the car and we head out.”
Chase recalls a time in the early 1980s when he was writing a TV movie calledOff the Minnesota Strip.
Chase did use one Springsteen song onThe Sopranos: “State Trooper” off ofNebraska.
to me," he says.
“He goes to this guy’s hotel room and there was Bruce Springsteen,” Lucas recounts.
“It was three in the afternoon, and he had a temperature of 104 or even 105.
A very, very high temperature, he was very sick.
Not only that, but he sent Lucas' family tickets.
“I was a 13-year-old boy.
“He played for almost four hours until 12:40 in the morning.
He wasn’t playing songs; they were these epic stories that were done musically.
From that moment on, I was the most massive Bruce Springsteen fan.
I bought Springsteen t-shirts that night and I wore them to school almost every day.”
That first brush with Bruce has dictated Lucas' work ethic his entire professional life.
“I had a temperature of 103.
I didn’t miss that performance.
I was like ‘Bruce would do it.'”
“He’s one of the most important literary forces in American history,” gushes Lucas.
It will be in the pantheon of Earth.”
“I didn’t know who he was.
That’s what stuck with me.
It would’ve been the first song on the B side.
“That’s when I realized how great ‘Backstreets’ was, and I loved ‘Night.’
“I have no relationship with him but the relationship with that music means everything to me.
It’s still happening 45 years later and it’s still the music that matters most to me.
It makes me feel good.
It makes me feel sad and joyful and thoughtful and connected.
And all of that sometimes happens in the same song.”
“Rock and roll never dies,” he says.
It’s a tie between “Thunder Road” and “Backstreets.”
“‘Backstreets’ is my favorite song ever by anyone ever,” Mankiewicz says.
“It’s the finest song ever constructed.
But I sing to my daughter most nights, and I sing easily 90 percent Bruce.
The song I sing the most by far is ‘Thunder Road.’
It’s the big winner.”
“It was the first show without Clarence,” he remembers.
The experience with her, how it delivered for her.
We saw that tour 10 times.”
“Interviewing him was great, but I was so nervous,” he adds.
“We could become friends, but it still wouldn’t beat his show.
The only thing that eclipses it is a Springsteen show.
It’s the day before and it’s the day after.
It’s the sense that we’re in this together.
50,000 of us packed into a Springsteen show.”
Actress Colleen Camp insisted he come with them to a Springsteen show.
“I told her ‘I’m not going to go a rock concert.’
I’d never been to one,” he says.
“She wouldn’t stop pestering me, so I went.
And I loved it.
It was just great.
It really picked me up.
It made me cry, it made me laugh, it was wonderful.
It was just what I needed.
I got to meet him.
One of the women in my picture, Joyce Hyzer, was going with Bruce at the time.
So we went back and saw him.
And we got along because it turns out Bruce was very influenced by [director] John Ford.”
This led Bogdanovich to sue the studio, which damaged his career for a period of time.
“Then I saw him again out here in L.A. We’ve been friends over the years.
We drift apart as everybody’s playing around and things get crazy, but we talk occasionally.”
“Where I lived it was basicallyLittle House on the Prairie.
There’s not much going on,” he says.
He had a guitar and he’s leaning on Clarence and I go, ‘Who is Bruce Springsteen?
What is that?’
She was like, ‘You must know who he is.
I’m his biggest fan.
Trust me, he is the tops.
You have to know every word to ‘Thunder Road.’
I remember she would play it and she would just close her eyes and get into it.”
“Some artists don’t need to have the hit song to have great songs.
“Like you get an emotional reaction when you hear the beginning of the song.
It’s just one of the greatest concert experiences ever.
You leave feeling like a million bucks and you go what was that?!
It’s still the best performance you’ll ever see.”
Fallon chooses “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out.”
Springsteen assented, but his one request was that the audience come down from their seats to dance.
“I look at my security guy and go, ‘Can we can we have everyone down?’
My security guy goes, ‘No, it’s a fire hazard.’
So I go, ‘Can you forget that I ever asked you the question?'”
It will never happen again because we got in trouble for it, but it was so fun.
It was exactly what I thought it would be.
I called this when I first heard [the song] at 10.”
For Fallon, his best memories are the two times Springsteen joined him on television to do comedic sketches.
Fallon devised this sketch riffing on a Neil Young impression he’d already been doing on the show.
Springsteen even volunteered to bring his original sunglasses from the 1975 tour.
The magic came when they were prepping in the dressing room.
He looks like he’s the same age,” recalls Fallon.
“We taped the beard on him and I can see the tape coming through the beard.
Everything was pretty janky.
He got the glasses on.
I put the floppy hat on him.
We’re sitting there laughing at the reflection in the mirror.”
“I’m not kidding, I’m dressed as Neil Young, putting a wig on Bruce Springsteen.
[Giggles]It’s the most surreal thing,” he says.
“We get the floppy hat over the wig and he’s got the glasses.
And I’m telling you, it isBorn to RunBruce.
It is the exact spitting image, like holy crap.”
“They just stared at each other like he was a space traveler from the past or something.
They didn’t say anything, and John kind of teared up a little bit.
He goes, ‘It’s just weird, Jimmy.
It’s just odd to see someone the way they were when you met them.
I never ever thought I would see that again.'”
But when Springsteen showed up, he had brought his notebook with the new lyrics written out.
“He basically wrote the parody,” Fallon says.
“We gave a couple lines, but he wrote that.
I’m not gonna give him notes, he’s Bruce Springsteen.”
Right before going on, Fallon tried to amp himself up to match Springsteen’s well-defined arms.
“He was walking by and he’s like, ‘Hey, no fair, you’re cheating.’
He had it; I needed it.”
“‘Cause a record company Rosie/just gave me a big advance!”
from “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” offThe Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.
“You’re like, ‘Oh my God, he’s gonna be Bruce Springsteen!
This is a great story.
He loved her and she believed in him no matter what.’
It’s something that everyone screams at the top of their lungs.
It’s too much fun.
I need a nap after this.”
