The Making Of ‘Born To Run’

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I'm Terry Gross. Today we continue our end of the year retrospective featuring some of our favorite interviews from 2025. The now classic Bruce Springsteen album, Born to Run, had its 50th anniversary in August. The album was a turning point for rock and roll and for Springsteen. In his life and his songwriting.

Before he recorded that album, his record label, Columbia, was on the verge of dropping him because his first two albums were critically acclaimed but had pretty feeble record sales. The making of Born to Run is the subject of the recent book Tonight in Jungle Land, which is also the title of Born to Run's final track. We're going to hear the interview I recorded with the book's author, Peter Ames Carlin. He's also the author of a biography of Springsteen called Bruce, as well as books about R.E.M., Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, and Paul Simon.

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