"Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen -- who really enjoys this overproduced crappy glop?

has some pretty noise big man moments
bruce is generally too OTT for me though

i'm curious how many people who don't like this album like Nebraska

I liked "Atlantic City," I'll say that.

Me.

The title track at least.

i'm curious how many people who don't like this album like Nebraska

my two favorite bruce records!

I've known live versions of most of these songs for years, got the 30th anniversary edition for the Hammersmith Odeon show, which is mostly great (just a couple of rambling directionless long tracks from his first two albums), and I thought I'd check out the remastered album today (never heard it before) and boy does it suck. Cardboard boxes for drums? Reverb on the Backstreets vocals? I expected something timeless and full of energy and dynamics and it's just this over the top but still very flat seventies sounding turd. Some bits are almost there, but they only make me want to listen to live versions :-(

listening to this boot War and Roses, outtakes from Born to Run and hoooooly shit @ the acoustic "Thunder Road":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTqCf0LIRqU

thinking about this song b/c the last line is kinda essential to who I am and I wonder what it would be like to get to a place in my life where I couldn't really mean it

I was thinking about this album because I just moved away from NJ.

OK - Yeah, the acoustic Thunder Road is one of the best outtakes by anybody, ever - and it remains unreleased after all this time & The release of Tracks. Once upon a time, Springsteen's song choices were even more perplexing than Dylan's but, as the 4th disc of Tracks reveals, he's getting better.

In answer to the original question: *raises hand* Oh! Me! Me!!

The sonic tapestry of Roy Orbison & Phil Spector rolling happily in the mud with Van Morrison remains a potent one.

this song bloooows

early bruce feels like west side story meets happy days for me

and by this song i mean "born to run" not "thunder road," which i can hear without wanting to shove a tony award up bruce's ass

all the crap u defend and u don't like born to run...weird

can't believe that no one has proposed a west end born to run musical to bruce yet;
which hopefully means he's smart enough to never ever allow it

Born to Run... on rollerskates!

all the crap u defend and u don't like born to run...weird

it'd be weird if i like something that's a poor "born to run" (like, i dunno, spring awakening? i don't pay attention to broadway scores), otherwise it's just taste. I like plenty of grandiose crap, just not the Fonz Meets Dylan On The Great White Way kind.

I'm a Springsteen hater for the most part, but I do love the audacity of this song.

I'd say closer to Rebel Without a Cause than Fonz, but yeah point taken. Springsteen's tunes tend to have a very cinematic, dramatic quality & if that's not your bag you'll tend to find much of his material [particularly E. St. Shuffle and Born to Run LPs] irritating.

yeah i love born in the usa and tunnel of love, consider synth-pop to be a positive influence on the guy

I also like how Wild, Innocent and BTR influenced Thin Lizzy.

"Thunder Road" is prob one of my top 5 songs of all time and I would quite happily listen to nothing else for the rest of my life. Esp the line where he goes "...and you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore". Cuts as deep as anything in rock.

I agree with the original poster every time I hear the record. then when you see him live (like at Glastonbury last year) you forget all that and get into that "gotta love the boss" stuff. you can't hate him.

Can't imagine my life without this stuff. Honest question: has anyone here seen him live and still come away unconvinced?

i didn't actually enjoy him live that much because it was in a stadium and the sound was awful. Also turning every song into a 10 minute jam isn't really my thing; unless you're playing music such as free jazz or free improv don't jam is my ethos really. Still think he's amazing and seeing songs like Thunder Road live was a treat.

Huh. Springsteen hasn't really "jammed" since the early '70s. Do you mean vamp while he does his preacher shit? Yeah, that can be tedious. But this man is not about aimless noodling.

One cool thing about "Thunder Road" that I don't usually appreciate but do tonight is how zingy the lyric is---the messianic vibe is there but he's simultaneously saying that it's bullshit.

I'm really embarrassed to admit this but I was never sure what the second line means. I'm guessing "suicide machines" are motorcycles (or maybe beat-up old cars) but why would they be riding through mansions of glory on them? Is he using a bit of licence with "through" here, just saying that at night, they like to drive around rich neighbourhoods (near many of these mansions) and dream of escaping their own less-rich existence? That was what I always assumed but it never seemed clear to me. Or is it something more abstract than this? I suppose "suicide machines" could also be a reference to rides at the amusement park that he mentions later - this seems silly though. Everything else in the song makes perfect sense and is almost embarrassingly moving to me.

I just figured suicide machines were dangerous cars built to look good but that ran like shit. Like, riding in these cars is akin to committing suicide.

I remember when this song was first a hit on FM radio. The discussion we are having now is eerily akin to the men (NOTE: I'm pretty sure the women left this thread a few years ago) were sitting around in 1975 discussing whether 'When The Swallows Come Back To Capistrano" by The Ink Spots (big hit, 1940) was overproduced glop. "...and you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore" xp Hi Anagram!

He laid down some serious improvised Neil Young-ish guitar thundah on the intros to 'Because the Night' and 'Prove It All Night' as late as '78, but it was definitely the early band with Lopez & Sancious that was into the jamming.

One of those situations where da croupier's complaints make perfect sense and I still love this stuff to death-- I can see why some wouldn't like it.

I really see nothing wrong with the overproduction. Wire and Bruce can coexist pretty peacefully, I think.

The hugeness of it, all that emotion and abandon, that's what I love. I get that it sound overdone or bombastic or, I dunno, cliched or whatever, but dammit, it's a fun song. This song to me is like flying down the freeway & sticking my face out of the car window like a kid. It feels good.

At what point does epic drama cross the line into bombast? Is opera bombastic? I would say that although successive live versions of "Born To Run" have crossed that line, the album version stays resolutely on the right side of it. As for "Thunder Road", to me that is as bombastic as Debussy.

amd of course Debussy is incredible. you're not against the music of Debussy are you?

i mean actually hearing 'Claire de Lune' for the first time was one of the most incredible experiences as a listener ever. up there with 'Born To Run', even

amd of course Debussy is incredible. you're not against the music of Debussy are you?

Not at all, I was just holding him up as someone who is like not at all bombastic and saying that to me "Thunder Road" has the same amount of bombast, i.e. none.

this recording makes Meat Loaf sound like fuckin' Wire. All those gloopy keyboards and honking saxes and overblown crescendos. It's like a motor-oil smeared wedding cake waiting to be toppled.

i think that's the point, and i think that's why this song is so wonderful

early bruce feels like west side story meets happy days for me

brilliant.

Meat Loaf is like Bruce without the restraint.

The West Side Story comparison doesn't even sound like a dis to me.

said it before, saying it now, and will say it again -- to a certain kind of person raised in the middle of New Jersey during the 80s, to never hear "born to run" ever ever ever again would not be a tragedy.

and all Springsteen up until tunnel of love has a "west side story" vibe to it.

anyway, "born to run" isn't the ONLY overproduced glob in Springsteen's catalog. i dunno if it's even the most egregious violator of this supposed sin anyway (maybe that honor goes to "born in the USA").

To be honest, I've never thought of "Born to Run" as overproduced so much as over-arranged, albeit thrillingly so.

I would tend to agree where BITUSA is concerned. It strikes me as Springsteen's slickest, most calculatedly commercial record, so to the extent one acheives that end through heavy-handed production - well, there ya go. Much of this wasn't really Springsteen's idea [though he is where the buck stops, if you will], given that he hit Jon Landau with the demo tape of 'Dancing In the Dark' saying 'Here's your fuckin' single.' With BTR they were going for the Orbison/Spector orchestral thing and they got there, so I don't know if it was OVER produced or not. I guess its a matter of whether you like your tunes densely packed. Ironically, the last two studio records sound most like logical follow-ups to BTR, in terms of their SOUND, of anything else he's done since - almost as if he's been trying to avoid that sound for years.

finally watched that documentary that came with the "Born to Run" reissue a few years back. it's a good watch! they play some really hilarious alternate intros and outros with big string sections that will make you thank god it turned out the way it did. also a cool part about van zandt coming up with the horns part for 10th avenue freeze out.

BITUSA >>>>> Born to Run

wait, Lord Sotosyn likes the album with the 80s gated drums better? Heavens! ;)

xxpost, yeah that is a good doc. That SVZ scene with the horns is great!