Significant longplayers from the past
25 August 2025
75-year-old rock legend BRUCE SPRINGTEEN released his grand,
breakthrough longplayer BORN TO RUN today 50 years ago, on
25 August 2025.
It peaked at #3 in the US and #36 in the UK.
Over the following decades, the album has become widely regarded as
a masterpiece and one of his’s best records. It has appeared on various
lists of the greatest albums of all time.
The photo of the LP’s cover art was taken by the photographer Eric Meola. Springsteen’s busy recording schedule meant he kept missing shooting dates. When he finally showed up, he brought his saxophonist Clarence Clemons (1942-2011) whom he wanted on the cover.
Meola shot 900 frames in the three-hour session, some of which showed The Boss under
a fire escape, tuning a radio, and with a guitar. Unused shots were used for advertising.
Pitchfork: “Elvis had hit merely 18 years prior; Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix,
and the Beatles had died or called it quits only three or four years earlier. Bob Dylan
had been at it for a while and potentially seemed dated, though he was still only 33.
The weight of pop music history was something that could be shrugged off, and with
so much unexplored territory, bands felt an obligation to see where rock music might
yet go.
Born to Run is a distinctive record, even in the Springsteen canon. Its world is one of impossibly romantic hyperrealism, where the mundane easily becomes fantastic, and it all happens line by line.
Born to Run lies entirely on the dreamy and reckless side of maturity and is all the better
for it. Every young person should be so lucky, to have a time in his or her life when the
inflated romanticism of Born to Run makes perfect sense.”
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