Bruce Springsteen
Born to Run

THE REVIEW

"...The hungry and the hunted
explode into rock'n'roll bands"

A door opens, the hem of a dress moves, a vision of a woman dancing: this is how Bruce Springsteen's journey begins from Freehold to the whole world, one of those rock emblematic albums. From an old Chevrolet on through the night, flooring the accelerator through the American dream, youthful dreams, away from the asphalt prisons
of the city to disappear at the end of Flamingo Lane, where lonely lovers suffer in dark corners and where poets write nothing, they just stand aside and let everything be as it is

Behind Bruce are two (excellent) albums released 2 years earlier that recall golden names like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, hundreds of concerts around the East Coast, and 26 years of rock 'n' roll dreams: the child who at 7 years old imitated Elvis Presley has become the young man who has marked the history of rock. Songs full of passion, shouted with all the breath one has in the body, with that cry when the heart is too swollen with desires, too oppressed by a reality you don't want; songs of flesh and blood, everyday poetry. The full E Street Band, with a sound at its peak. Almost two years of writing and recording for a spectorian wall of sound with about twenty musicians and a production squad.

Thunder Road is framed by Roy Bittan's piano, the story of love, escape, and hope for a better tomorrow in a compelling crescendo, Born to Run is the anthem of the album between keyboard chimes and Federici's organ bursts, the anthem for America's vagabonds. The beautiful Backstreets rises above an epic breath of piano chords and a wind of organ, telling a touching story of friendship in suburban streets, between abandoned beach houses and jukebox bars: rest in peace, my broken dreams, on Bruce's guitar screams. Night and She's the One are instead two intense rock pieces, the first a carousel of piano, Clarence Clemons' unmistakable saxophone and guitar, the second an incendiary boogie written for a sort of fallen angel from fatal beauty, secret places.../ with an angel in her eyes / telling desperate lies

The long, epic Jungleland remains for this Bruce at the height of his street romanticism, a small rock symphony. It's a night when the whole world is silent and guitars shine like knives: it opens with a honey violin that plays the heartstrings and plunges into Bittan's piano theme and a sea of organ; the voice almost breaking with emotion painting visions of Magic Rat's rebel youth, midnight gangs, dreamers, dancing girls, desperados vanishing at a glance, all transfigured and brought among the stars by Clemons' sax solo. Springsteen has written his dreams into rock legends, if one evening you feel like disappearing down Flamingo Lane too, press play

After all, behind romantic dreams, a truly bitter awareness comes to mind, the last words of Backstreets, sung in the storm:

...do you remember all the movies, Terry, we went to see
trying to learn to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be?
And after all this time we found out we are like everyone else,
prisoners in a parking lot and forced to confess
we have to hide in the backstreets