TONIGHT IN JUNGLELAND: The Making of “Born to Run,” by Peter Ames Carlin
Every star’s career is the sum of wild improbabilities. So many things have to line up: ambition, talent, discipline, cultural timing, connections, support, perseverance and more than a little luck. Peter Ames Carlin focuses on a crucial make-or-break moment for Bruce Springsteen with “Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of ‘Born to Run.’”
Springsteen has been a top-tier rock star ever since the August 1975 release of “Born to Run” made him known nationwide. The album, his third, was widely acclaimed as a masterpiece when it came out. It’s the grandly Promethean statement of a 25-year-old rocker pouring all his experience, all his rock-oldie erudition, all his stage-honed reflexes and all his literary and commercial aspirations into songs that unabashedly reach for sweaty glory.
On the album, Springsteen sang about love, escape, dread, transcendence and desperate, determined motion: “It’s a town full of losers and I’m pulling out of here to win,” he announced in its opening song, “Thunder Road.” Half a century later, he clearly won. Yet without some fateful choices and unlikely coincidences in 1974 and 1975, things could have gone very differently.
Carlin revisits those pivotal years with a fan’s fervor and a journalist’s attention to detail. He has written biographies of Paul Simon, R.E.M., Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson, and his full Springsteen biography, “Bruce,” was published in 2012. Like a director’s cut, “Tonight in Jungleland” expands on, updates and sometimes revises his researches into Springsteen’s self-invention in the 1970s.
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