With the recent announcement of Bruce Springsteen continuing his Land of Hope and Dreams Tour in the U.S. later this spring, fans are already anticipating the unparalleled feeling of hearing “Born to Run” and the accompanying anthemic energy that surges through the audience. While “Born to Run” is arguably one of Springsteen’s most popular songs, the inspiration for the song’s love interest, Wendy, has been a long-kept secret until now. I recently sat down with Bruce Springsteen to discuss the creation of the song that launched his career.
As he was coming off his tour in 1974, Springsteen was also in the market for a place to live. He eventually found 7 ½ West End Court in Long Branch, New Jersey, a twenty-five-foot-wide shotgun shack that sat a few blocks away from the beach. “I never lived in a free-standing home of my own,” he explained. “That was the first house I had ever lived in without a roommate or girlfriend, so it was kind of a big deal. It was the perfect size for me, for a kid at twenty-four. I still have a lot of affection for that house.” His previous two albums, “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” and “The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle,” were not making the desired impact, meaning the pressure was on for this next album to be the one, or else he risked being dropped from the label entirely in accordance with his three-record deal with Columbia.
In the freedom of having his first house since he stayed behind in New Jersey in the wake of his family relocating to California five years prior, the young Springsteen did not have many possessions to move in. What he did bring with him was a spinet piano that he set up in the living room and an acoustic guitar that usually occupied his bedroom. Most of the songs from “Born to Run” were composed on that spinet piano, but the title track found its origins on that acoustic guitar in his bedroom.
There are several key features of the bedroom that provide a perfect snapshot of where the young rocker’s songwriting found influence, all of which were revealed in the October 1975 cover issue of Crawdaddy magazine written by Peter Knobler. These included a record player positioned on a table next to the bed for optimal roll-over needle drops and a disorganized assortment of motorcycle magazines and ’50s and ’60s 7” singles scattered across the floor. The main feature of the bedroom was the only piece of decor: a poster of Peter Pan leading Wendy Darling out of her nursery window to take her to Neverland, hanging over the head of the bed. One might wonder why a twenty-something aspiring rock star would choose a children’s film like “Peter Pan” to be the centerpiece of his bedroom. In my interview with Springsteen, he recalled the significance of “Peter Pan” coming from his childhood: “It was one of the first pictures I remember seeing. I remember seeing ‘Peter Pan’ with my grandmother. Mary Martin as Peter was one of the first pictures I saw in black and white. It was just a story that sort of transfixed my imagination at the time.”
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As famously told in concerts around the world as well as in his autobiography, Springsteen worked out the first stabs at “Born to Run” on his guitar while sitting on his bed. After connecting the stories, it appeared that as Springsteen was working out a rough version of “Born to Run,” he was facing the poster of Peter Pan and Wendy Darling, thus finding inspiration for the name of his latest leading lady. When I asked Springsteen about the namesake for Wendy, my theory was confirmed. “In a lot of my songs, I had a lot of different names for characters before reaching the final ones. When I was working on ‘Thunder Road,’ it took me trying a few names before I landed on Mary. In this case, I was writing the song in my room and looking for a generic name, and I looked up and said, ‘Oh yeah, Wendy.’” This confirmation opens new avenues for deeper connotations within the song. When asked if he saw the narrator of “Born to Run” as Peter Pan, Springsteen said, “No, not really, but there’s a little bit of a ‘Peter Pan’ subtext in ‘Born to Run’ if you look for it. It’s a song about searching for something better and running away. There’s this youthful eternity that you’re in pursuit of.”
While it is still being rented out regularly to tenants, 7 ½ West End Court has now been christened “The Born to Run House” by Springsteen’s fans. Given the house’s significance in forging one of America’s greatest rock albums, it has become an obligatory stop on Springsteen tours of the Jersey Shore.
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