Falling in love with Springsteen’s music

One of my favorite memories from when I was a teenager comes from 1975, when I was just turning 14. Bruce Springsteen at that time was very popular with rock critics but he was hardly known at all to most people even though he had already released two records. But his manager slipped a tape of a new Bruce song called Born to Run to a few important radio stations, including the one to which I listened in New York, WNEW-FM.

The song was huge! The radio stations started playing it all the time, even though you couldn’t buy the record yet. In particular, my station started to play the song every Friday at 6 p.m. to kick off the weekend. I remember running to turn on the radio every week to hear it, I was so in love with the song. Finally on August 25, 1975 the album with the song was released and I ran to the store that very day to buy it.

I was so excited, I would be able to hear the song and all the others on the record all the time, whenever I wanted, and not just when I was lucky enough to catch Springsteen on the radio. I wonder if my parents remember that I didn’t play any other album but this one for months. That was when I fell in love with Bruce’s music!