100 Greatest Albums of All Time

18. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen, Columbia, 1975

Bruce Springsteen spent everything he had ”“ patience, energy, studio time, the physical endurance of his E Street Band ”“ to make his masterpiece. There are a dozen guitar overdubs on the title track alone. “The album became a monster,” Springsteen recalled. But in making his third album, he was living out the central drama in its gun-the-engine rock & roll: the fight to reconcile big dreams with crushing reality. He found it so hard to recreate the sound in his head ”“ the Jersey-bar dynamite of his live gigs, Phil Spector’s grandeur, Roy Orbison’s melodrama ”“ that he nearly gave up and put out a live album. But his attention to detail produced a timeless record about the labors and glories of aspiring to greatness.