“(If) we miss this one, contract’s up and in all probability we’ll be sent back to the minors deep in the South Jersey pines,” Springsteen said in his “Born to Run” memoir.īut Springsteen’s third album was a hit, first with the single “Born to Run,” then with the LP, released on Aug. Springsteen was on the verge of being left behind by the record industry. His first two albums for Columbia Records, “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” and “The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle,” were not hits. The frayed fun of Asbury Park’s Palace Amusements was offset by a generation who felt left behind by the American dream of their parents. Only the diehards and dreamers stuck around. “Born to Run” is partly the story of Asbury Park in the mid-’70s, but it could also be the story of the United States, reeling from a recession, gas lines, racial strife and repercussions of the Vietnam War. The seaside resort town was in the midst of a downward spiral spurred by the emergence of the suburbs, a vanishing tax base and riots in 1970 that caused day-trippers and weekend visitors to stay away.
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