Released: 1975
There’s a phrase in the world of poker where you commit every last one of your available chips to the middle, a move known universally as going ‘all in’. Usually the act of the desperate or the supremely confident, chancing fate like that is where the adrenaline junkies who play the game get their kicks from. Lose and you’re left with nothing though, as in poker there are rarely prizes for coming second.
For both Bruce Springsteen and the executives of his label Columbia by 1975 there was an unofficially declared belief that comparable levels of risk were required. By that point the singer’s first two albums Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle had attracted good press but few sales and it was apparent that unless something magic happened next time round the ride was as good as over. After taking more than a year and spending a shit ton of the suit’s money, finally Springsteen gave them Born to Run.
Trying – and succeeding – to emulate the effect of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, it’s title track would forge a link that travelled far beyond the crusty rock fans he’d courted previously, reaching outwards to America as a motherland. Not subtle, not holding back, not waiting round for your permission, it played out to a dazed and confused nation like a new anthem, one where hope lay in pleasing the self and making your own luck, even if it was all bad. Fuelled by this intoxicating arrow, the album of the same name would bring stardom to it’s creator, one who had gambled everything with it’s making. Fame inevitably would bite back, however those chips would be much harder to cash in.
The Voice Of Unreason 