Comments for Bruce Springsteen: The Story of Born to Run

Piece image

Produced by Producer: Mark Hagen / 2nd Sense Broadcast (UK)

Other pieces by Joyride Media

Summary: This one hour radio documentary tells the inside story of Bruce Springsteen's classic album, Born To Run on it's 30th anniversary.
 

User image

Review of Bruce Springsteen: The Story of Born to Run

OK OK OK. Two disclaimers.

1. WTMD aired this piece as part of our Friday Night Special Series.

2. I AM FROM NEW JERSEY..I GREW UP ON BRUCE. I weep openly during Thunder Road.

Ok ok ok. Over the top. But this is one hell of a documentary interweaving the story of the Born To Run (The most important album ever written) with its music. Interviews, narration, music all mixed together in the proper proportions to entertain and enthrall listeners for the full hour.

You see, music is about remembering certain times of your life. Millions of people, myself among them, can tell you the moment Born To Run changed their lives. This show gives us the opportunity to understand how this record was created and changed Bruce and the E Street Band's lives. These people are in your audience and they deserve to hear this piece. Every aspect is covered, the technical, the emotional, the personal, the public.

The production and mixing of this hour is superb. Music levels under the interviews are exquisitely placed, leveled. They move the story and add to the energy of the story. Without this level of production the piece would be much flatter. Music punctuates the story with exclamation points, question marks and you can even feel the semi-colons with the use of music in this piece.

YOU MUST AIR THIS PIECE no matter if you are music station, a news station...hell classical music stations should be airing this show! Through Bruce and like Bruce, it tells us the stories of our lives as captured on this record. This documentary moves me just as much as climax of Jungleland..."cause tonight we got style..."

This is no VH-1 documentary masquerading as public radio. It revolutionizes the way popular music documentaries are told on public radio. It's respectful, uplifting, intelligent, self deprecating, exacting.

The 30 Anniversary release of Born to Run has just happened. So you got a couple, three weeks, to get this on the air.

User image

Review of Bruce Springsteen: The Story of Born to Run

I have two iconic Bruce Springsteen moments in my life. They are part of how I define myself in the world today. The first was in the beginning of the year-or-so-long “Born In The USA” tour (I saw that tour twice – the beginning and the end). It was at the Oakland Coliseum, and the place was filled with teenagers who were thrilled to see the guy with the number one song (the irony of which they just didn’t get) and a lot of folks in their early forties who were there for the cathartic anthems that had shaped them. We (the old folks) were dancing our butts off, the kids were screaming and jumping up and down. There’s nobody like Bruce. And it all began, really, with “Born To Run.”

The other moment was several years before that, also at the Oakland Coliseum, when Clarence Clemons stepped into the spotlight, center stage, and played the most amazingly emotional sax solo ever to goose a rock and roll song – “Jungleland.” My body shakes and my eyes tear up just thinking of it.

“Born To Run” is everything everybody says about it: poetry, drama, politics, optimism, defeat and hope – an opera. This program captures the uncertain majesty of this amazing work of art. I loved hearing about all the details of the process, most of which I hadn’t heard. Listening to it lead me, inevitably to my stereo to listen to the album itself for days afterward. Great work.

But there’s one big question. Where’s The Big Man? That album was also Clarence Clemons’ finest hour. I must confess I haven’t kept up with the gossip. Maybe they’re not speaking these days, but can you talk about “Born To Run” without Clarence Clemmons? Maybe they couldn’t get the interview with Bruce without promising to exclude Clarence, but……… geeeez!

So an excellent program has a major flaw. I’d still program it if I was a program director, with my own disclaimer. But if I was producing the program and I found myself in the awkward situation of having to leave The Big Man out of the story, I don’t know if I’d be able to go along with the program.

Caption: PRX default User image

Review of Bruce Springsteen: The Story of Born to Run

I like this program a lot. That's due, in part, to the fact that I love this album. I love the power and the layers of the title track. I love some of the lesser known songs. It wasn't the narrative parts or the interviews that kept my attention, it was the music, plain and simple. I hummed songs from "Born to Run" for days afterward. Talk about the ultimate "driveway moment."

Caption: PRX default User image

Review of Bruce Springsteen: The Story of Born to Run

I grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania-- Bruce Country -- during the '70's and '80's. At that time he was the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of Philadelphia rock radio during that period and was a household word shortly after "Born to Run" came out. That's why I chose Mark Hagen's "The Story of..." as my very first review for PRX.
It contains alot of what a rock fan would expect: interviews about the creative process, intriguing outtakes, personal stories, and what happened behind the scenes to make this incredible breakthrough record, which is one of the few that is even worthy of a documentary.
Record producing, for a true artist, is more about the process than the product. That part is left up to the industry execs. Included is the how's, but what's missing are the why's like: what inspired the lyrics? Hagen's simplicity of production is noteworthy, it being no small task to edit alot of information about the process down to one hour and includes almost all the major players (the inclusion of Clarence Clemons both to the band and on the cover at that time being conspicuously absent).
It's always exciting to a music fan like myself to hear about what was experienced by the artist as he/she is producing, yet "The Story of..." is hardly groundbreaking. It does hold the listeners attention just up to the end where the E Street Band debuts in Europe, ending with a recent live version of the title song, contrasting Bruce's (everyone is on a first name basis with him) original youthful hyper-enthusiastic dreams with the more mellow aging rocker.
Though CBS released its full retrospective of Bruce's work years ago, I doubt "The Story of..." will be Bruce's version of "Anthology", but it was a good listen and I sang along with every song. I would recommend it,escpecially to music- oriented stations.

Caption: PRX default User image

Review of Bruce Springsteen: The Story of Born to Run

For those who have followed Bruce Springsteen's career this piece is lots of fun. Its fascinating to hear the songs from the album de-constructed into separate tracks, and to hear how the process of making this landmark work unfolded. The program lacks the kind of cultural context that "No Direction Home" included and probably wouldn't serve as an "introduction" to Springsteen for the uninitiated.