Alt for mange støvede jubilæer for nu så fjerne udgivelser, koncerter, begivenheder, heltes fødselsdage. Og i dag er ingen undtagelse. Mandag 25. august 1975 udsendte Bruce Springsteen sin gennembrudsplade Born to Run, der efter to kommercielle forbiere endelig lyste hans navn op på rockhimlen i strålende neon, så ingen længere kunne overse det. Born to Run er et på alle måder ekstremt forplanlagt og gennemarbejdet album, men dets perfektionistiske tilgang i arrangement, produktion og ord står lykkeligvis aldrig i vejen for Springsteen’s store amerikanske fortælling om individets nådesløse jagt på tilhørsforhold og forløsning. Men stop mig her, og lad os istedet gå tilbage til nogle af de mange inspirerede ord Rolling Stone’s Greil Marcus skrev om milepælen i 1975:

One soft infested summer/Me and Terry became friends/Trying in vain to breathe/The fire we was born in…/Remember all the movies, Terry/We’d go see/Trying to learn to walk like the heroes/We thought we had to be/Well after all this time/To find we’re just like all the rest/Stranded in the park/And forced to confess/To/Hiding on the backstreets/Hiding on the backstreets/Where we swore forever friends….

Those are a few lines from “Backstreets,” a song that begins with music so stately, so heartbreaking, that it might be the prelude to a rock & roll version of The Iliad. Once the piano and organ have established the theme the entire band comes and plays the theme again. There is an overwhelming sense of recognition: No, you’ve never heard anything like this before, but you understand it instantly, because this music — or Springsteen crying, singing wordlessly, moaning over the last guitar lines of “Born to Run,” or the astonishing chords that follow each verse of “Jungleland,” or the opening of “Thunder Road” — is what rock & roll is supposed to sound like.

The songs, the best of them, are adventures in the dark, incidents of wasted fury. Tales of kids born to run who lose anyway, the songs can, as with “Backstreets,” hit so hard and fast that it is almost impossible to sit through them without weeping. And yet the music is exhilarating. You may find yourself shaking your head in wonder, smiling through tears at the beauty of it all. I’m not talking about lyrics; they’re buried, as they should be, hard to hear for the first dozen playings or so, coming out in bits and pieces. To hear Springsteen sing the line “Hiding on the backstreets” is to be captured by an image; the details can come later. Who needed to figure out all the words to “Like a Rolling Stone” to understand it?

It is a measure of Springsteen’s ability to make his music bleed that “Backstreets,” which is about friendship and betrayal between a boy and a girl, is far more deathly than “Jungleland,” which is about a gang war. The music isn’t “better,” nor is the singing — but it is more passionate, more deathly and, necessarily, more alive. That, if anything, might be the key to this music: As a ride through terror, it resolves itself finally as a ride into delight.

“Oh-o, come on, take my hand,” Springsteen sings, “Riding out to case the promised land.” And there, in a line, is Born to Run. You take what you find, but you never give up your demand for something better because you know, in your heart, that you deserve it. That contradiction is what keeps Springsteen’s story, and the promised land’s, alive. Springsteen took what he found and made something better himself. This album is it.

© Greil Marcus / Rolling Stone