Why Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run Is One of the Year’s Most Crucial Reads

For a cultural icon who seems to have been around forever, Bruce Springsteen’s career has been filled with a surprising amount of, well, surprise. Always zigging when his fans expect a zag, he has been known to follow up crowd-pleasing anthemic albums with contemplative, haunting acoustic works. One minute he’s a scrawny, bearded hipster, the next he’s a buff music video star. Like all the truly great artists of the modern age, the one thing you can never manage to do to Springsteen is pin him down.
Which is why we’re really, really excited about the Boss’s new memoir. Born to Run hit shelves September 27, accompanied by audio companion album Chapter and Verse, which includes five previously unreleased tracks. Born to Run is the intimate, honest reflection Springsteen’s fans expected. “In a project like this,” he says, “the writer has made one promise, to show the reader his mind. In these pages, I’ve tried to do this.” And just like that, we’re ready to read. Here are three more reasons this is one musical must-read you can’t miss.
The writing
Sure, Springsteen’s a rock star—but let’s not forget he’s also one of the few who is known for his lyrics as much as anything else. Springsteen has been writing some of our best urban poetry for decades—this is the guy who wrote the line, “Outside the street’s on fire, in a real death waltz between what’s flesh and what’s fantasy. And the poets down here don’t write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be.” You’ll love seeing that incredible command of language put to full effect outside of songs.

The stories
Springsteen says he was inspired to start writing this after his performance at the Superbowl in 2009, which serves to remind us that Springsteen has seen some things. He’s been a small-town Jersey boy, a band leader on the bar circuit, a rock superstar, a music video pioneer, and a remarkably closed book. The lack of gossip about Springsteen has made him even more legendary, and we want to hear the stories behind the myths we already know about. Few people can tell us what it’s like to play a gig like the Superbowl halftime show, or to go into the studio to record Born to Run knowing it has to be a hit or your record label will drop you—and Springsteen has the goods on every up and down.
The icon
Springsteen’s music has always been about storytelling. His songs tread the ground pop music always has—love, tragedy, life in general—but Springsteen brings a purely American storytelling aspect to his music that has made him an icon. He isn’t a manufactured pop star, he’s a real guy who had a real life growing up in New Jersey, and his experiences have informed all of his songs. We have no doubt we only know the half of it; there’s so much darkness in Springsteen’s work, you have to imagine that if you peeled back the poetry and the artistry and got to view the inspiring events behind those songs, there’s probably some pretty shocking stuff. Plus, he offers up some insight into his songwriting process, and how he turns sometimes dark inspirations into something beautiful. Read the book while listening to Chapter and Verse for the full experience as the Boss intended it.
Because music brings people together. Whether you’ve been to some of Springsteen’s marathon shows, remember trying to copy his dance moves from the Dancing in the Dark video, or stayed glued to the TV set during that halftime show, one thing’s for sure: everyone has a favorite Springsteen song, and everyone has a story that’s best told with Springsteen as the soundtrack. Born to Run might be the memoir everyone in America can agree on.