Peter Ames Carlin

He's just not going anywhere.

But fortunately, there were enough advocates at the company to still the hand that was going to cut Bruce loose.

And they gave him that opportunity to make one last song and to see if that could potentially be a hit single.

So they sent him off to make one more song, which turned out to be Born to Run.

It's interesting because you can see Bruce getting at the feelings that underlie the finished song.

But at first, he was working on a kind of this sort of gothic, almost horror story written in this heavily symbolic language where the fast rebel driver gets run over by his own car.

Roads are collapsing beneath their wheels and the beautiful surfer girl dies.

On the beach, who is the fast rebel's girlfriend, dies of a heroin overdose.

And it's just like it's a very dark and traumatic place to be.

Yeah, exactly.

He knows the feelings that he's trying to evoke, but he hasn't hit the vocabulary yet.

Eventually, as he began to clarify his vision, that feeling of being threatened, of living in a place that's dying around you and needing to get out, he began to paint that in much more recognizable tones.

Like, yes, this is modern America, New Jersey, circa 1974.

Bruce was a late adopter of automotive technology.

He was much more involved in his guitars and amplifiers.

Also, he found it traumatic to be taught how to drive by his dad.

He had a difficult relationship with his father who suffered from bipolar disease and was undiagnosed at the time and untreated.

But he was a very remote person in a lot of ways.

And so,

He didn't really know how to connect to his son.