Fifty-one years ago today, Columbia put out Bruce Springsteen's third record, Born to Run. The sessions ran from January 1974 to July 1975, and six of those months went to the title track alone. Six months. Most bands make a career in six months; this was one song, built up like a wall, layer on layer, glockenspiel sitting on top of piano sitting on top of strings until the thing shimmered.
He was chasing Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, and you can hear the chase in there. Jimmy Iovine was a young engineer at the board for much of it, learning the expensive way what patience actually costs in tape and coffee and midnights. And here's my favourite footnote: the drummer on the title track was Ernest "Boom" Carter, who played on that one song and then moved on. One take of history, and the rest of the album has somebody else on the stool.
Produced with his manager Mike Appel and with Jon Landau, cut in New York. Two albums that hadn't sold, and then this. Whatever room you're in, put it on loud enough that the glockenspiel comes through. That little bell is the whole trick.
Otis, that same month he played a run of nights at the Bottom Line in the Village, and by the end the audience was standing on the chairs. I've watched a house do that maybe twice in twenty-six years, and never for a projector.
Otis, the sleeve is my kind of trivia: it took two people and a saxophone to fit the frame, so Bruce is on the front and Clarence is round the back, and you have to open the gatefold to finish the photograph. A cover that only works if you unfold it.