Over a decade ago, Peter Ames Carlin wrote Bruce, the definitive biography of singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen before The Boss wrote his own memoir. As The Boss' legendary 1975 album Born to Run celebrates its 50th anniversary, the Bruce author has once again collaborated with Springsteen to write Tonight in Jungleland about the making of the iconic album.
It's a riveting read. At the time, Springsteen's back was against the wall. He had recorded two critically acclaimed but commercially failing albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. However, he needed a hit album to appease Columbia Records executives.
The rest is history. We all know Bruce Springsteen as a legendary artist, and Born to Run is one of his signature albums. Despite the predictable outcome, Carlin wrote a page-turning account of the making of Born to Run, complete with interviews with The Boss, some of which were conducted in September 2024 after his legendary Asbury Park show.
What's it like interviewing Bruce Springsteen?
Reuniting with Springsteen was key for Carlin. He spoke to him after the Asbury Park show, as well as his 75th birthday weekend. Not many can say they had this much access to Springsteen — even Carlin acknowledges it's “very cool” — and it helps make the book special. And yet, Springsteen remains like any other “cool” person.
“On a variety of levels, he's just working from the inside out, I suppose. I mean, he's a really cool guy, right?” said Carlin. “It's like hanging out with any cool person that you admire. They're fun and interesting, and there's all kinds of stuff to talk about.
“Then there's the professional side of it, which is being able to talk to somebody who [has] achieved so much, and he's such an interesting artist and he's so self-aware and self-conscious of his own art and the interaction of his internal life and personal experience and how he filters that through art,” he continued.
Digging into the deeper meaning of his music
If you want to hang with Springsteen, you'd better know your stuff. He enjoys talking about the deeper meaning of his music, unlike some artists.
Compare that to the late Beach Boys singer Brian Wilson, who Carlin also wrote a biography about. Carlin's work in the music scene began with a piece he wrote about Wilson for People. While Wilson was “an amazing artist and capable of extraordinary things,” he didn't feel his music and the lyrics the same was as Springsteen does.
“He had no f*****g idea what you were talking about,” Carlin said of Wilson. “He just didn't think along those lines. I think he experienced it on a visceral level, but he wasn't conscious of [it] in the same way that Bruce is. Bruce completely understands and has always understood the symbolic weight of cars, for instance.”
Returning to Asbury Park
Granted, Wilson may not have “cared.” Meanwhile, Carlin has seen Springsteen play in “symbolic places,” like Asbury Park (most recently his 2024 show there). However, none of them compared to the 2024 show, largely due to the E Street Band's presence.
“Once was a light of day show in about 2011 in the Paramount Theater [in Asbury Park],” he recalled. “So, it was a small show, it was in his hometown, and he was playing with Joe [Gruschecky]. He was playing with him and his band, so they were kind of trading tunes back and forth, so he didn't quite have the power of an E Street Band show, or even a Bruce solo show, but it was still super cool.
“This thing on the beach [in 2024] was amazing because he was very aware of the symbolic importance of [his appearance] on the beach and being a part of this huge weekend. The fact that the festival even existed and that Asbury Park is thriving again is super important to Bruce, so there was a lot of energy around that show, and he was clearly having the time of his life,” he continued.
Is Bruce Springsteen “nostalgic” amidst Born to Run's 50th anniversary?
In recent years, you could argue Springsteen has become a nostalgia act. From his 2016/17 River Tour, which celebrated the Ties That Bind box set release, to Springsteen on Broadway, which saw The Boss reflect on his past, and even the 2024 Asbury Park show, which featured a setlist filled with his earliest hits, the “Dancing in the Dark” singer has, at the very least, acknowledged the past over the last decade.
Carlin is not convinced it's Springsteen being “nostalgic.” Rather, these songs have continued evolving over his 50+ year career. One prime example of this is “Backstreets,” which Springsteen and the E Street Band played at 113 of 130 shows during their 2023-25 tour.
“Backstreets has been a part of his repertoire on and off for 50 years, since he was in his 20s when it was really a song about youth and lost innocence,” Carlin explained. “Playing that song almost five decades later, it's still a song about loss and a kind of loss of innocence, but [during] the most recent tour, the song has all its power and all the internal emotional construction, but it's a song about death and grief — the loss of a friend who passes away.
“I think one of the measures of the strength of his catalog and his songwriting is the fact that even when he's writing about specific things, like a drag race or something in Asbury Park, he's so connected to the underlying feelings that the song does not depend on that specific point in history. He's singing about human experience,” Carlin continued.
The symbolicalness of “Jungleland”
So, the timelessness of Springsteen's catalog, much like the Beatles' discography, helps him avoid becoming a “nostalgic” act. Even songs like “Jungleland,” which Carlin's book is named after, have evolved.
In Tonight in Jungleland, Carlin finds an extraordinary narrative through-line in the album via Springsteen's old manager, Jon Landau.
Born to Run's opening track, “Thunder Road,” begins with a character named Mary. The final song, “Jungleland,” follows the Magic Rat through his death in the streets of New York. He is gunned down, essentially serving as his crucifixion. Initially, Springsteen shrugged it off. However, he eventually conceded that Landau may have been right. “That's about right,” he tells Carlin in Tonight in Jungleland.
This conversation arose after Springsteen's 2024 Asbury Park show. He has played it over 600 times in his career, but only five times on his 2023-25 tour.
During the performance at Asbury Park, Springsteen did something different. As the song reached its crescendo and Springsteen let out the final howls, he raised his arms in a cruciform position.
Was this sort of a breakthrough for his book? He was surprised Landau even brought it up — “I would've thought that was the part you don't say out loud, because it's biting off so much,” Carlin conceded. “But on the other hand, that wasn't a shock. Carlin traced the significance of religion to Springsteen's Catholic upbringing.
“If you've listened to the outtakes or earlier versions of the songs he played, you could see him toggling between the names of the women,” Carlin said. “Mary, Christina, Angelina — it's like, clearly [he's a] Catholic boy who is processing those ideas and finding a way to apply them and interpreting the lives of these people that he actually knows.”
The Boss' honesty
Writing something like Tonight in Jungleland can be a daunting task. Carlin is a pro at this point, but he only controls half of the equation.
Springsteen always seems open to looking back in books like Carlin's Bruce and Tonight in Jungleland and others like Deliver Me from Nowhere.
He is a larger-than-life figure in the music world, but Springsteen can play both sides of the fence. When interviewing Springsteen, you may get the “forthright and honest” version of him, or you could get The Boss, “who everyone is in awe of, including himself,” as Carlin notes.
When on stage, The Boss is still a fragment of the real Bruce Springsteen. In his autobiography, Born to Run, Springsteen recalls a dream he had involving his father. His dad asks how he does what he does on stage, and Springsteen tells him that he's channeling what he thinks his father is.
“He has always, to some extent, felt [that] when he's talking and being himself in public, which includes talking to me or other writers, he is simultaneously being pretty honest about things. But he's also, to some degree, servicing the Bruce character,” Carlin explains. “There's a facet of him that he presents to you that is definitely an honest portrayal of part of himself, though it might not be his entire self. So, the question is the extent to which he opens up to reveal that inner part of himself, which he has no obligation to reveal.”
Even so, Carlin doesn't find Springsteen's persona “dishonest.” If anything, it's “entirely honest to who he is and how complicated his life and experience [have] been.” He is more than 50 years into his career, and Springsteen is still figuring out the balance of his personas.
What's next?
Now that Born to Run has turned 50, what can Springsteen's fans expect? Could a Ties That Bind-like box set be on the way? It may, but don't necessarily expect it on the half-century anniversary. This is somewhat surprising, as Born to Run was Springsteen's breakthrough, and it's 50 years old.
Granted, Springsteen did release “Lonely Night in the Park,” an outtake from the album. This marked the first official release of the track.
Still, something could come down the line. While Springsteen is very aware of the significance of his projects, he has not always been confined to celebrating anniversaries on the decade marks.
The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story was released 32 years after Darkness on the Edge of Town. Springsteen's recent River Tour began 35 years after the original album came out.
Ultimately, Springsteen knows his fans will come out in droves, even if they don't get it down to the exact date. “I guess [if] that works for you, it certainly works for me,” Carlin quipped.
For now, fans will have a lot to dig into with Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run. It's a big year for Springsteen fans, as Deliver Me from Nowhere, which is about the making of Nebraska, is coming out in the fall. So, even if Springsteen and the E Street Band don't hit the road later in the year after ending the Land of Hope and Dreams Tour, fans will have lots to dig into.
