THIRTY YEARS AGO–before the arena rock of Born in the USA, before the look at a recession-torn America in The River–Bruce Springsteen released what would be his greatest work, Born to Run. The album’ release was splashed simultaneously across the covers of both Time and Newsweek and it remains one of the great rock-and-roll recordings. Now, just in time for the holidays, Columbia records has released a fully remastered version of the album, complete with a 90 minute making-of DVD and a two hour DVD concert from the Born to Run tour. The results are spectacular.
The heart of the box set is the documentary, Wings for Wheels. From how the songs were originally composed (Springsteen put them together with a piano instead of a guitar), to how they were written (“What I kept stripping away were the clichés, clichés, clichés,” Springsteen recalls), to how they were recorded and mixed, viewers are rewarded with great insights into the art of music making.
One comes away with the sense that an album destined to become classic is actually quite fragile. Dozens of tracks are recorded for the same song. If a different one had been used in the final cut, would the album have turned out the same? Would a different intro or outro to “Jungleland” have hurt the album? Or is the only indispensable part of the song Clarence Clemons’ sax solo (that took 16 hours to record)? Would “Born to Run” have been the same song if an orchestra and back-up choir were used? (Springsteen says no, that “the strings took away some of the darkness.”)
Even more intriguing is the amount of effort it took Springsteen and producers Jon Landau and Mike Appel to create the “whole ‘Phil Spector’ wall of sound,” as original E-Street Band pianist David Sancious puts it in Wings for Wheels. When listening to the title track, one can pick out various instruments that might not be in your average rock track. But listening to the track in its various stages is truly like watching a building being constructed brick by brick.
First, there is the basic track: drums, acoustic guitars, and a bass guitar. Then the first overdub comes in, adding electric guitars and piano. Then, another overdub is added, including glockenspiel, a saxophone, and a Fender Rhodes electric piano. After these the elements have been combined, there’s still the full album mix: including an organ, a synthesizer, tambourines, and a string ensemble. Once you hear the song come together in this piecemeal fashion, you’ll never listen to it in the same way again.
Of course the remastering is also partly responsible for the way the album now sounds more alive than ever. The bass is more distinguishable, the piano is clearer, and the vocals are crisper than the previous releases. Longtime Springsteen collaborator and Gateway Mastering president Bob Ludwig explains in an interview exactly how he tackled this project.
“This is the first remastering of Born to Run since 1984,” Ludwig said, remembering that he originally took a shot at the album 20 years ago to improve the awful original digital pressing out of Japan. “The first time Born to Run was released on CD there were only two pressing plants,” he explains. “The Japanese plant put it out because it was owned by Sony. They must have just taken a file copy off the shelf and transferred it,” Ludwig theorizes, because “it sounded brittle and thin.”
Why come back to the album now? “The question is always ‘Does it sound as good as it possibly can,'” Ludwig says. “Usually the answer is no, something can be done to make it sound better.” In the last 20 years, technology has improved. “A lot of the gear we use now just didn’t exist in 1984 when we did it. . . . And I’d like to think that I’ve gotten better in the last 20 years too.”
When Ludwig listened to the new version he says that he felt as though “a veil had been lifted.”
Sonny Bunch is an assistant editor at The Weekly Standard.
