Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. Stone", Lester Bangs hailed Springsteen as a daring new artist who sets himself apart from his contemporaries with songwriting that either has a serious meaning or showcases his uninhibited gift for verbose, overloaded lyrics and rhyme schemes. "Some of [his words] can mean something socially or otherwise", Bangs said, "but there's plenty of 'em that don't even pretend to, reveling in the joy of utter crass showoff talent run amuck and totally out of control". Peter Knobler wrote in "Crawdaddy" that "he sings with a freshness and urgency I haven't heard since I was rocked by 'Like a Rolling Stone'
Asbury Park station the construction of an extension of the New York and Long Branch Railroad (NY&LB), a subsidiary of the Central Railroad of New Jersey and the Pennsylvania Railroad. The NY&LB began as a railroad between Elizabethport (in Elizabeth, Union County) to Long Branch, finished in 1875. The railroad was extended through the city of Asbury Park on July 7 to Sea Girt. However, the station at Asbury Park was built on land donated by the Ocean Grove Campmeeting Association, a part of the Methodist Church. The new station was built for the purposes of serving both Asbury Park and Ocean Grove.