Bruce Springsteen
's make-or-break third album represented a sonic leap from his first two, which had been made for modest sums at a suburban studio;
Born to Run
was cut on a superstar budget, mostly at
the Record Plant
in New York.
Springsteen
's backup band had changed, with his two virtuoso players, keyboardist
David Sancious
and drummer
Vini Lopez
, replaced by the professional but less flashy
Roy Bittan
and
Max Weinberg
. The result was a full, highly produced sound that contained elements of
Phil Spector
's melodramatic work of the 1960s. Layers of guitar, layers of echo on the vocals, lots of keyboards, thunderous drums --
had a big sound, and
wrote big songs to match it. The overall theme of the album was similar to that of
The E Street Shuffle
;
was describing, and saying farewell to, a romanticized teenage street life. But where he had been affectionate, even humorous before, he was becoming increasingly bitter. If
had celebrated his dead-end kids on his first album and viewed them nostalgically on his second, on his third he seemed to despise their failure, perhaps because he was beginning to fear he was trapped himself. Nevertheless, he now felt removed, composing an updated
West Side Story
with spectacular music that owed more to
Bernstein
than to
Berry
. To call
overblown is to miss the point;
's precise intention is to blow things up, both in the sense of expanding them to gargantuan size and of exploding them. If
The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
was an accidental miracle,
was an intentional masterpiece. It declared its own greatness with songs and a sound that lived up to
's promise, and though some thought it took itself too seriously, many found that exalting. ~ William Ruhlmann