This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Today we continue our end of the year retrospective,

featuring some of our favorite interviews from 2025. The now classic Bruce Springsteen album

Born to Run had its 50th anniversary in August. The album was a turning point for rock and roll

and for Springsteen in his life and his songwriting. Before he recorded that album,

his record label, Columbia, was on the verge of dropping him because his first two albums were

critically acclaimed but had pretty feeble record sales. The making of Born to Run is the subject

of the recent book Tonight in Jungleland, which is also the title of Born to Run's

final track. We're going to hear the interview I recorded with the book's author Peter Ames Carlin.

He's also the author of a biography of Springsteen called Bruce, as well as books about R.E.M., Brian

Wilson, Paul McCartney, and Paul Simon. Our interview was recorded in August when the book was published right around the time of the actual anniversary.

Let's start things off with this. In the day we sweated out on the streets of a runaway American dream

At night we rack the mansions of glory and suicide machines

Sprung from cages on highway 9-tron wheel fuel injected and stepping out over the line

Oh, maybe this town rips the bolts from your back. It's a trap it's a suicide rap we gotta get up while we're young

because trance like us baby we were born to run

Peter Carlin welcome to fresh air I really enjoyed the book looking back on Born to Run and looking ahead at what happened after it, what do you think is the significance of that album?

It's lovely to be here, Terry. Thank you. It's a hugely transformative album for Bruce in terms of his career, his record sales, but also, I think, most importantly, his understanding of his own identity and the voice he would carry forward in his music.

You know, it's such an important album, too, because his record company, Columbia, was about to drop him.

They were considering dropping him. And they told him he had a, this is in your book, they told

him he had to make a single. And if they liked it, they'd release it. Tell the Billy Joel story

about the record reps. Yeah. Well, when Bruce came on to Columbia in 1972, the president of the

label at the time was Clive Davis. And when he heard Bruce's demos and then had Bruce up to

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