Fifty years ago, Bruce Springsteen set out to write the “greatest rock and roll record ever recorded.”

Speaking Saturday about the 50th anniversary of Born to Run, Springsteen and various panelists including scholars, journalists and photographers gathered at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey for a full-day symposium hosted by Springsteen’s Archives & Center for American Music about the album that launched the Boss on his path to superstardom.

The panels — which included past and present E Streeters including Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Roy Bittan, Garry Tallent, Max Weinberg, David Sancious, Ernest “Boom” Carter, former manager Mike Appel, manager Jon Landau, and more — explored the historical significance of Born to Run and how the album was made, culminating with performances  of “Thunder Road” and “Born to Run.” 

Springsteen — 25 when he was recording the album — was trying to get away from the Bob Dylan comparisons from his earlier records, shooting for something more cinematic and more like himself. He was living in Long Branch in what he described as a “shotgun shack” not far from the university, where he had performed many times as an up-and coming-musician.

“I had a three-record deal, and if the record didn’t click … I’m back in Asbury Park, except way in debt and worse off than when I started,” Springsteen recalled Saturday. 

Title track “Born to Run” came to him, Springsteen said — perhaps from something he saw on a car —and was listening to records by Duane Eddy and early ’60s music by Roy Orbison and Phil Spector. 

Inspired by Eddy’s guitar sound and Little Eva’s “The Locomotion,” Springsteen took all of his influences to create a musical “gumbo” for title track “Born to Run.” The inspiration for “Wendy” on the song? A Peter Pan poster on his wall, which he said, “speaks much about my adult life.” 

The Born to Run message of optimism post-Vietnam and Watergate arrived at a time in history when there was an overall feeling of cynicism  and “it felt like the country could go terribly wrong,” Springsteen said.

He took those characters and put them in a car with that cynicism and a lot of “dread,” with “one last chance to make it real” — for both the listener and himself. It took Springsteen six months to write the song, “line by line,” he said.

The symposium also included funny anecdotes and revelations, including Springsteen calling out for lyrics on a teleprompter, joking that he is turning 76 and can’t remember anything, and sharing that he took Jimmy Iovine, who engineered the album, n a ride from Freehold through Asbury Park to the house in Long Branch where the iconic song was written to celebrate the record.

“Born to Run” wasn’t immediately embraced by radio stations, former Columbia Records executive Paul Rappaport recalled, adding that one program director complained that Springsteen “mumbles.” Rappaport then joked that Springsteen mumbled himself to a hit record.

Springsteen also talked how the album was not a “concept album,” but “conceptual” in the way it framed a day in the life of his characters, setting the scene from “great friendship and great betrayal” of “Backstreets,” and his experiences of “dark summer nights” in Asbury Park and Freehold.

“The idea that it was a day in the life of these people, the morning of “Thunder Road” and midnight in “Jungleland,” he said. 

Appel spoke of his early passion for Springsteen and the lengths he went to for the artist, including paying off a concession stand at a show to the tune of $3,500 so kids hanging out in the lobby would be forced to go see the show. He also regaled the audience with stories of Springsteen simulating dying on stage at the end of “Jungleland,” performing with a 102-degree fever (“He’s superman,” he said), and trying to fix the sound of a theater attaching foam to the ceiling, not realizing that they could have created a fire hazard with girls on their boyfriend’s shoulders holding up cigarette lighters.

Other panels included a talk moderated by Springsteen’s sister, Pamela, with photographer Eric Meola discussing the iconic album cover with Springsteen and Clarence Clemons, Meola explained that he wanted the excitement that makes audiences want to see Springsteen perform on stage “captured in a photograph.” A  free exhibit of photos from that session will be open to the public in Monmouth University’s Rechnitz Hall DiMattio Gallery through December 18, 2025. 

In a raucous panel moderated by Robert Santelli, photographer Barbara Pyle described her experience shooting the “Born to Run” tour as a “nightmare,” taking photographs of musicians that “didn’t want to be photographed,” with the exception of Clemons.

The evening was capped off by a finale with Springsteen, Van Zandt, Tallent, Weinberg, Carter, Sancious, Bittan and Eddie Manion on saxophone. It was a historic performance melding current members of the E Street Band with former members Sancious on keyboards and Carter — the drummer on the single, “Born to Run” — joining in for the finale.