Ignored Obscured Restored
In January 1975, I landed my very first FM radio spot on WZBC — as a freshman. This was a big deal, because Boston College’s station had only just received its FM license less than a year earlier. Back then, there were strict requirements: you had to spend at least one semester on the AM station, which only reached the dorms via carrier current. And in ’75, you also needed a Radio Telephone Third Class Operator Permit. That meant hunting down an FCC office and passing an actual test.
That first semester on air, I received a caller request to play “Rosalita” by Bruce Springsteen. Bruce who? I hadn’t yet caught up to Springsteen but was game to satisfy a listener request. I found the album — The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle – in our record library and tried to cue up “Rosalita”. But as you may know, there’s no clean break between “Rosalita” and the track before it, “Incident on 57th Street”. I had to take my best shot a figuring out where “Incident…” ended and “Rosalita” began. By some miracle, I nailed it!
Five minutes later, I was hopping up and down in the studio –
And my tires were slashed and I almost crashed, but the Lord had mercy
And my machine, she’s a dud, out stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey
Well, hold on tight, stay up all night, ’cause Rosie, I’m comin’ on strong
By the time we meet the morning light, I will hold you in my arms
… and just like that, I was a Springsteen fan for life.
By the end of that summer, I was counting the days until his next album would be released. Born to Run dropped exactly 50 years ago this Monday — August 25, 1975. My hometown of Newburgh, NY, didn’t have a record store that stocked new releases on day one, so I drove down to the Nanuet Mall to grab my copy.
Born to Run still stands as one of the greatest rock albums of all time. You know all the songs by heart. So how do I provide an entertaining twist to celebrate the album’s golden anniversary?
Let’s start with an early, bootleg version of “Jungleland”?
This version (V4) has a different intro, and some different lyrics. Instead of “the midnight gang’s assembled and picked a rendezvous for the night”, we hear “there’s a crazy kind of light tonight, brighter than the one that sparked the prophets”. And where the final lyrics read “the street’s alive as secret debts are paid, contacts made, they vanished unseen, kids flash guitars just like switchblades hustling for the record machine”, we get “the street’s alive with tough-kid Jets in Nova-light machines, boys flash guitars like bayonets and rip holes in their jeans”. The final lyrics are tighter, but it’s fascinating to hear the evolution.
Another outtake from the Born to Run sessions is a song called “Lonely Night in the Park.”
“Lonely…” was considered for inclusion in early track listings of the album but was ultimately dropped. Coincidentally, it received its first official release yesterday, though bootleg copies have been circulating among collectors for years. I often thought this track was probably an early rehearsal, not the final track. It feels less polished, a little sloppy, and there’s a lyrical clash: the imagery puts you at the beach, yet the title plants you in a park. Bruce probably preferred the way “park” sounded when sung, but apparently, he never reconciled that conflict.
Thank you, Bruce, for working so hard to give us Born to Run. You’ve earned a huge fan base with the release of this outstanding album, whose lyrics and music touch so many people – even 50 years after its release.
Enjoy… until next week.