Check Out These Duds

Springsteen, in anticipation of a re-release of his Born To Run album has a multi-media presentation via the NYTimes (which really borders on an infomercial, but Boss fans will love it). It really demonstrates for me, how timeless good song writing can be, but thank goodness, the fashion goes - and let's hope these threads don't come back. No doubt, the songs will remain as fresh as ever:

In the spring of 1974, Bruce Springsteen was a skinny, tousled 24-year-old Jersey Shore songwriter about to make his third album. He was under pressure. Although he was an East Coast club sensation and a rock critics' favorite, his first two albums hadn't sold enough to convince his label, Columbia, that he wasn't a flop. It could have been his last chance.

Yet he went into the studio not to make a commercial hit, but to make a masterpiece. "We had ambition to burn," said Jon Landau, who is now Mr. Springsteen's manager. He produced the album with Mr. Springsteen and his manager at the time, Mike Appel.

"We knew exactly what we wanted," Mr. Landau recalled in an interview last week. "We were not in it to do something average. We were not in it to get any particular song on the radio. We were in it to do something great."

By my measure, that is indeed exactly what they did.