Weekly Neil: Born To Run

I see the light of a thousand lamps burning in your eyes

This is not a newsletter about Bruce Springsteen.

In 1975, Neil and Crazy Horse gathered in producer David Briggs’ garage near Malibu — between Zuma Beach and Point Dume — to record some rock and roll. They ripped into “Cortez The Killer,” and when the power cut out and they lost the third verse, Neil simply forgot about it and never sang that part again. They were learning as they went, during what Neil later called some of the “finest, most alive days of my life.”

Much of what came out of these recording sessions became the album Zuma, a back-to-basics record after some time spent in the wilderness for Neil. He’d lost a friend and a partner but he was still alive in ‘75. As ever, what didn’t make it onto the record sheds a lot of light into Neil’s state of mind at the time. What separates album tracks from b-sides is often just a momentarily feeling. Case in point: “Born To Run.”

It doesn’t sound much different from songs also written and recorded during that time, most notably “Ride My Llama” (the full band electric version, which is weird but also kind of rules) and “World On A String” from Tonight’s The Night. This is to say it’s based around a distorted D chord, Neil‘s favorite, and is fairly straightforward. It’s not even particularly jammy or guitar-rich with solos. “Born To Run,” to be true, is a simple song. It was laid down on June 3, 1975. What we hear on the Dume sessions is what happened that day.

Contrast this, now, with Bruce Springsteen song of the same name, which took six months to record. January 8 to August 6, 1974, records say. It remains his version of replicating Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound technique. It sounds as big as a Broadway musical, and it’s really something that it’s not his best song ever. (To me, that’s “Racing In The Street” or maybe “Thunder Road” or maybe “Atlantic City,” but that’s another newsletter.)

There’s something amusing to me about Neil and Bruce in 1975 making songs called “Born To Run” that aren’t necessarily diametrically opposed but are certainly very different and don’t share a whole lot of DNA. Springsteen’s song is, to borrow a phrase, a movie. Neil isn’t even even a short story.

But this speaks to something that’s come up in many of my interviews with musicians about Neil, which is his ability to move quickly between ideas, and not lose his mind trying to achieve perfection. He tried that in 1968 with his debut solo record, which didn’t quite do what he’d hoped. So he started again from the top and from the gut with a bunch of musicians he hadn’t been playing with for very long. This became his de facto modus operandi for the most creatively rich parts of his career. Crazy Horse, crazy jams, first idea best idea. Let’s roll.

That’s why “Born To Run” is such an interesting song. It’s not remarkable in sound per se, though it is fun, and there’s a relentless energy to it especially on the rhythmic side. “Born To run” is important for what it represents — the fact that you can just kind of do whatever the hell you want. For example, instead of cashing in on endless deluxe additions of your beloved back catalog, you offer archival releases that re-contextualize your most beloved bodies of work. In this case, Dume, an alternate-universe Zuma where nothing is held back. Imagine “Powderfinger” years before Rust Never Sleeps. “Hawaii” as a minor-key dirge with jagged edges instead of a skeletal acoustic number. You get the idea.

Yes, the timing of this newsletter is conspicuously current the box office juggernaut that is Dune 2. I tried very hard to make a memeable Dune / Dume play on words, but after a while, I decided if it didn’t come naturally, it was probably best to not come at all. (It would’ve been something like, “Yeah, I love Dume 2… Dume 2 versions of Zuma,” but like I said, it simply didn’t work.)

I can say a couple things about “Born To Run.” It’s not a song you’d sing at karaoke, but you’d play it in a garage band. It makes me want to play guitar right now as I type this. It’s everything that makes Neil one of the all-time greats, even without being an all-time great song. I can’t speak for how aware he was of Springsteen at this point, but there’s a certain retroactive humor in the title that makes me think of the replacements with Let It Be and Let It Bleed. Notably, they named their breakthrough record Let It Be because why the hell not, and they were gonna call the next one Let It Bleed, again because why not.

The Beatles and The Stones are just some dudes.

I have a comedian friend who is from the same hometown as a woman who used to be on Saturday Night Live. Early in his career, he met with her to get some advice and she told him — probably because he’s handsome and charismatic and clean cut — that she saw him as more of a Weekend Update host type than a featured player. I told him, Wow, what great feedback to have! That’s probably helpful for you. And he said, in a response characteristic of his personality, “Who the hell cares what she said. She’s just some lady.”

I’ve always appreciated this because he’s right, of course. I have a hard time remembering that people are just people and that even the giants got that way because we decided that’s what they were.

Neil is a giant. He probably wouldn’t say so, though he does want to walk like one. It’s well established that he wants to walk like one. He was also born to run. Tramps like him, Bruce, those trouble boys, and my comedian friend, who spent a large part of the past few years living all over the world, including in a van and in Austria.

I guess this is where I should say I lied. This was a newsletter about Bruce Springsteen after all. Sort of. Giants, though. All of ‘em.

“Born To Run,” written by Neil Young, from Dume (2024/1975)

Neil Young: vocals, guitar
Frank “Poncho” Sampedro: guitar
Billy Talbot: bass
Ralph Molina: drums