In "Born to Run", his 2016 autobiography, Springsteen describes "the album's climactic piece, the 9:23 epic "Jungleland." Here a violin prelude gives way to piano and the elegiac tale of the renegade Magic Rat and the barefoot girl. He writes, "From there it's all night, the city and the spiritual battleground of "Jungleland" as the band works its way through musical movement after musical movement. Then, Clarence's greatest recorded moment. That solo. One last musical ebb, and . . . "The poets down here don’t write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be . . . ," the knife-in-the-back wail of my vocal outro, the last sound you hear, finishes it all in bloody operatic glory. At record's end, our lovers from "Thunder Road" have had their early hard-won optimism severely tested by the streets of my noir city". Devoted Springsteen fan Melissa Etheridge praised the song to RollingStone.com, saying, "When Bruce Springsteen does those wordless wails, like at the end of 'Jungleland,' that's the definition of rock and roll to me. He uses his whole body when he sings, and he puts out this enormous amount of force and emotion and passion."