Tramps Like Us! Born to Run at 50

There are several ways to know that you are getting older aside from the obvious. For me, there are two ways, and they are tied together.

The first is when you are old enough to remember things that occurred 50 years or more ago clearly. That, combined with the feeling of nostalgia, which the fictional character Don Draper said in a seminal episode of Mad Men, "literally means the pain from an old wound," says you're getting on in years.

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With this in mind, 50 years ago today, on August 25, Bruce Springsteen released his landmark album Born to Run. For people of a certain age and demographic, including myself, that album evokes nostalgia, mostly without the pain of an old wound.

In August 1975, I was entering my senior year at Grosse Ile High School in suburban Detroit. Being the youngest of five siblings, and having my dear Grandfather (who, as an Italian immigrant, loved listening to waltz and opera) living with us, I was fortunate to be surrounded by a wide range of music, including rock, folk, soul, jazz, pop, classical, and especially Motown, throughout my entire life.

By 1975, I was listening to Detroit's four rock and alternative FM stations. WABX, WRIF, WWWW, and Windsor, Ontario's CJOM. On those stations, especially ABX as it was called, they played Springsteen songs from his first two critically acclaimed albums.

Rosalita, from Springsteen's second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, and "Growin' Up" from his first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., received enough airplay in Detroit that I became familiar with Springsteen's music. It wasn't until Born to Run burst on the scene that I purchased my first Springsteen album in September of 1975.

While I purchased other music during this time, I played that album so much that it literally wore out. 

By the summer of 1977, in between my freshman and sophomore years at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, I was back at my parents' house for a summer job. That job at an aluminum processing plant had me working 55 hours a week - 10 hours a day, Monday through Friday, and five hours on Saturday.

After dragging my butt out of bed at 6 am, I would go to work, vowing to get more sleep the next night. But once 5:30 pm rolled around, I was revived, and it was off to the bars for another night of youthful exploits with friends and siblings, followed by hitting the sack around 2 in the morning.

I did that almost every night from early May until late August when it was time to return to school. Nearly every night, I would roll into my parents after last call and queue up Born to Run on the stereo turntable.

All eight songs on the album, including the title track and Thunder Road, are the most acclaimed. Although every song on the album spoke to me, and many others, by 1977 Backstreets and She's The One were the most relevant to me. Even in my youth, perhaps it was due to the pain of an old wound.

As a 19-year-old in 1977 (drinking age in Michigan at that time was 18!), Born to Run was the soundtrack to my life. While Born to Run has many memorable lyrics and themes that personify young love, restlessness, adventure, and rebellion, for me, the most relevant was the closing lyric in the album's first cut, Thunder Road.

It's a town full of losers, I'm pulling out of here to win!