Springsteen Reflects on 'Born to Run'
NEW YORK - In the summer of 1975, Bruce Springsteen was nobody's Boss.
His nascent career was crumbling, just another over-hyped "new Dylan" about to get dumped by his label. Two of his band members had recently quit. The bearded bard of the boardwalk was wrestling with his third (and last?) album, obsessively rewriting the lyrics and rearranging the music, spending an outrageous six months on a single song.
Yet Springsteen remained sustained by a lonely but ambitious vision, convinced he could recreate the little symphonies echoing through his head for an audience of millions around the world.
He was right.
"Born to Run" was released in August 1975, a rock 'n' roll masterpiece that assumed near mythic proportion. Thirty years later, as a special anniversary edition of the album was readied for release come Tuesday, Springsteen recalled how making the record consumed his young life.
"Everything I knew and dreamed about was packed into those songs," Springsteen told The Associated Press. "I had the desire to be great, to do something passionate, to capture something about living that I was yearning for myself.
"I wanted the whole thing."
He got it, from the opening notes of "Thunder Road" to the album-closing epic "Jungleland." But little came easy as he chased an elusive sound that was part Roy Orbison, part Phil Spector, and all Bruce Springsteen.
For Clarence Clemons, sax player for Springsteen's E Street Band, that meant 16 straight hours creating the magnificent solo that anchors "Jungleland." For "Born To Run," the single that announced the album's arrival, sessions stretched out over half a year.
"I was 25 years old, with no place to go and nothing to do — that helped," Springsteen said of his slavish musical devotion. "We worked, and worked, and worked. It was very frustrating. But in the end, luckily, all of everything we did ended up in there."
In a documentary DVD accompanying the remastered "Born to Run," band members offer their recollections of the often fruitless recording sessions.
"Everyone remembers the experience quite truly," Springsteen said with a laugh. "And everyone was centered around this thing, that we suffered. No one forgot that. Everyone had that in common."
They all shared another thought: Springsteen, child of the Jersey shore arcade, was going for the brass ring this time.
"I knew, because I knew the songs, that this album was going to be phenomenal," said "Born to Run" co-producer Jon Landau, who eventually became Springsteen's manager. "I knew Bruce Springsteen's determination. I knew there was no way it was going to miss in achieving its musical goals."
Even if, in Springsteen's mind, those goals often remained unreachable despite hundreds of hours in the studio.
"My obsessive/compulsive nature, which crippled me through much of the rest of my life, does come in handy once in a while," said a chuckling Springsteen. "And it came in handy at that moment. I wanted something unique that you couldn't hear in the live show."
The process produced some laughs, too. The "Wings for Wheels" DVD offers a full recitation of how Springsteen pal Little Steven Van Zandt, dressed like a New Jersey gangster in a zoot suit and fedora, walked into the studio and sang all the horn parts on "Tenth Avenue Freezeout" to acclaimed session musicians Randy and Michael Brecker.
Album engineer Jimmy Iovine recalled not even knowing who Van Zandt was, but thinking that Steven "was dressed like a guy" who knew about horn players.
The anniversary package also includes extraordinary rare footage of live shows by Springsteen and the band: a full gig from London's Hammersmith Odeon show in 1975, and three songs done live in 1973 by an early incarnation of the band in Los Angeles.
After "Born To Run," Springsteen wound up in a protracted legal battle with his first manager; his follow-up album, "Darkness On the Edge of Town," didn't appear until three years later. By then, the sprawl and bombast of "Born to Run" was in Springsteen's rearview mirror, never to return on record.
Springsteen, in fact, confessed that he hadn't listened to the album in two decades until earlier this year. When he finally did hear it again, the setting was perfect: driving in his car, at night, through the New Jersey landscape immortalized on the record.
"I thought I knew exactly how it would sound, but it surprised me," Springsteen said. "It was a nice moment driving back from the city, and it caught me by surprise again. There's no other record (of mine) quite like it ... I never made another one."
Sony BMG pulls CD software 35 minutes ago
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Music publisher Sony BMG said on Friday it would stop making CDs that use a controversial technology to protect its music against illegal copying.
"As a precautionary measure, Sony BMG is temporarily suspending the manufacture of CDs containing XCP technology," it said in a statement.
The decision follows the discovery on Thursday of the first virus that uses Sony BMG's CD copy-protection software to hide on PCs and wreak havoc.
A hacker had mass-mailed e-mail with an attachment, which when clicked on installs malware. The malware hides by using Sony BMG software that is also hidden -- the software would have already been installed on a computer when consumers played Sony's copy-protected music CDs.
The malware, a trojan program which appears desirable but actually contains something harmful, tears down a computer's firewall and gives hackers access to a PC.
Sony BMG provided a patch to protect computers against the virus, which is available on its Web site.
"We also intend to re-examine all aspects of our content protection initiative to be sure that it continues to meet our goals of security and ease of consumer use," Sony BMG added.
The firm provided software to remove the "cloaking element," which enables the virus to hide inside the computer, but the patch does not disable the copy protection itself.
The music publishing venture of Japanese electronics conglomerate Sony and Germany's Bertelsmann AG is distributing the copy-protection software on a range of recent music compact disks (CDs) from artists such as Celine Dion and Sarah McLachlan, according to user groups on the Web.
Sony BMG did not say which CDs or how many CDs were equipped with its software. "The XCP software is included on a limited number of Sony BMG content-protected titles," it said.
The Sony copy-protection software does not install itself on Macintosh computers or ordinary CD and DVD players.
When the CD is played on a Windows personal computer, the software first installs itself and then limits the usage rights of a consumer. It only allows playback with Sony software.
The software last week sparked a class action lawsuit in California against Sony, which claimed that Sony had not informed consumers that it installs software directly into the "root" of their computer systems with rootkit software, which cloaks all associated files and is dangerous to remove.
British anti-virus company Sophos on Thursday offered a tool to disable the copy protection software. ZoneAlarm, a product of Check Point, also protects against the software.
Sony BMG said it stands by content protection technology "as an important tool to protect our intellectual property rights and those of our artists."