A visitor to the ND site dropped a line a day or two ago to say they'd caught my act on Sirius XM Radio, for whom I taped a Guest-DJ hour on their all-Springsteen channel E Street Radio when I was in New York a couple weeks ago. (I gather they just started airing my bit this week.) That I had an opportunity to participate in such a thing was due solely to the kindness of Dave Marsh, who hosts the call-in talk-show "Live From E Street Nation" on the channel every Friday morning. On August 7, I ended up co-hosting the program with Marsh and the musician John Cafferty, both of whom were a pleasure to spend a couple hours with in the studio, even if I felt a bit out-of-place on the air alongside them. (I've often said that if some camera-shy radio personalities believe they have a face made for radio, the corollary in my case is that I have a voice made for newsprint.)

Anyhow, while we were there, Marsh asked both Cafferty and me to put together an hourlong "Guest DJ" set. This is something they do on a fairly regular basis, I gather, with the guest choosing around a dozen of their favorite Springsteen songs and introducing each one with some sort of short personal anecdote. Cafferty rightly seemed to stick primarily with the stuff that resonated the most with him from Bruce's early '70s Jersey glory days, when the two of them were apparently running-buddies. (Cafferty told quite a few terrific stories about that era during the course of the call-in show.)

For my set, I tried to cast a fairly wide net, and to hit a few obscurities. I chose "Atlantic City" partly as a way to mention the version that my old favorite Austin band Zeitgeist did for a Rhino Records album of Bruce covers back in 1986. Another of my choices featured Springsteen covering someone else: I remembered my wife being totally enraptured with Bruce's version of Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" when we saw him do a solo show in Seattle a few years ago, and fortunately (not surprisingly I guess!) E Street Radio had a live version of it in their database. And I dug out an almost-forgotten song on Greetings From Asbury Park called "The Angel", which I recall having played over and over again back when I first got into that record.

When it came down to my last track, though, I almost apologetically explained that, for me, it really HAD to be "Born To Run", regardless of the fact that anyone listening has obviously heard that song about a million times by now. But I had a story to tell, one that I thought had some relevance, and perhaps could place the song in a different context from how it's typically heard. I tried to tell it as best I could in a couple minutes of intro, in the studio there with Marsh and Cafferty, but I'm not sure how well I got the feeling across. I've found in the couple weeks since then, though, that the notion of what I was seeking to communicate was still pulling at me, like I needed to further coalesce or finish the thought. So I'll try to do that here today, in my own comfort-zone that is the written word.


The year is 1975. A ten-year-old kid in suburban anywhere America isn't much distinguishable from the other kids on his block or his elementary-school classmates: We all watch Happy Days and Welcome Back Kotter religiously, we look forward to getting Dynamite magazine through our school's book-ordering service each month, most of the boys play little-league baseball. If there's one way in which this particular ten-year-old seems a little bit set apart, though, it's that when he comes home from school, he's more likely to turn on the local AM Top-40 radio station and wait for his favorite songs to come on than he is to turn on the TV to watch mid-afternoon reruns or cartoons.

And what, pray tell, are his favorite songs back then? As a matter of fact, I can tell you exactly what they were. See, as it happens, this particular apparently anal-retentive ten-year-old actually went so far as to write down all the songs on Casey Kasem's weekly "American Top 40" countdown when it aired every Saturday morning from 9 to noon. At the end of each Top-40 list, he made a brief list of his five favorite songs in the countdown each week. And then, this kid proceeded to somehow manage to hang onto those old spiral notebooks where he wrote all that stuff down for, oh, I guess 34 years and counting at this point.

So, for example, I know that on the weekend just after he turned ten years old in the summer of '75, his favorite songs from the countdown were:
1. One Of These Nights -- Eagles (it was also #1 on the charts that week)
2. Someone Saved My Life Tonight -- Elton John (#6 on the charts)
3. I'm Not In Love -- 10CC (#2 on the charts)
4. Fallin' In Love -- Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds (#24 on the charts)
5. Could It Be Magic -- Barry Manilow (#30 on the charts)

This is a pretty accurate representation of that ten-year-old's musical tastes at the time. Looking around at a few of the other favorite-five lists on adjacent spiral-pages, you'll find the likes of America's "Sister Goldenhair", John Denver's "I'm Sorry", Pilot's "Magic", Olivia Newton-John's "Please Mr. Please", and Michael Murphey's "Wildfire".

All of which is the backdrop for a curious development on the charts in the autumn of 1975. Ah, there it is, right there, on the page that documents the American Top 40 countdown on October 25, 1975. The charts reflect pretty much what you might expect for that era: Neil Sedaka & Elton John are at the top with "Bad Blood", John Denver and the Eagles are banging on the door, Jefferson Starship's "Miracles" and Morris Albert's "Feelings" are pretty high up there too. And the kid's personal faves jive pretty much with what was on his earlier summertime list: the Eagles' "Lyin' Eyes", the Bee Gees' "Nights On Broadway", the Four Seasons' "Who Loves You".

But wait a minute. What's that song at #2 on the ten-year-old's list of his personal favorites?

It's "Born To Run" by Bruce Springsteen. What the heck is THAT doing in there?

The song had turned up on American Top 40 a couple weeks earlier, and thank god for Casey Kasem's countdown, because our local AM Top-40 station wasn't playing it. Can't say as I blame them, really; it was hard, at least on the surface, to figure how "Born To Run" could settle in alongside the likes of the smooth-and-sweet pop that dominated the AM airwaves of the day. This song was....well, it was hard to peg just exactly what it was, for a kid who'd never heard such emotionally charged rock and roll before. Compared to the fare that surrounded it -- and on this week of October 25, with "Born To Run" at #26 on the Top 40, the songs that immediately preceded and followed in in the countdown were Art Garfunkel's "I Only Have Eyes For You" and Jigsaw's "Sky High" -- this tune by the newcomer Bruce Springsteen just leapt out of that little desktop radio.

And yet it did kind of mesh with the setting, in its own way. Powerful as it was, "Born To Run" was also intriguingly, engagingly melodic. To get a song on AM radio in the early-mid-1970s, first and foremost you really needed to have a good melody. Springsteen lit the house on fire, sure; but "Born To Run" was not an anthem built solely on the intensity of the performance, nor did it depend upon a dance-fever-styled rhythmic groove. The foundation here was a really good song -- a melody that was creative and inspired and unpredictable and ultimately irresistible.

As for the spirit with which the song was possessed: Looking back, it seems clear to me that it planted seeds which took root over the long haul. Although in the spring of '76 it doesn't appear that my listening habits had changed much -- those personal top-five lists reveal the likes of "Shannon" by Henry Gross and "There's A Kind Of Hush" by the Carpenters and "Let Your Love Flow" by the Bellamy Brothers -- there is no doubt that hearing "Born To Run" on the Top 40 in the fall of 1975 left an indelible impression. At ten years old, I wasn't quite ready for the coming-of-age yet; there was still fifth grade to complete, and summer camp, and junior high, and family vacations, and soccer games, and river trips, and neighborhood friendships and youthful crushes long since faded if never quite forgotten.

But something bigger awaited, just past the edge of the horizon. There was a world beyond this ten-year-old's idyllic suburban existence, and it was filled with adventure and excitement and euphoria and emotion which reached well beyond the comfort-zone of the Top 40. It was coming, and it would change everything. I knew it from the moment I heard "Born To Run" on Casey Kasem's countdown.


02 Autumn 1975 AM Radio #2.mp3