"Thunder Road" is the first track on Born To Run, a crucial album for Springsteen. His first two albums sold poorly, and he was in danger of losing his record deal if he did not produce a hit. With songs like this one about escaping to the open road, he connected with an audience that proved extremely loyal.
He considered this song the "invitation" to the album, with the opening notes being the welcome. "Something is opening up," Springsteen said during his 2005 Storytellers appearance. "What I hoped it would be was the sense of a larger life, greater experience, sense of fun, the sense that your personal exploration and possibilities were all lying somewhere inside of you."
Spiritually, "Thunder Road" is a close cousin to "
Born To Run." Both songs are about grabbing a girl and hitting the road to see what's out there. In both songs, Springsteen was taking his real-life experience of leaving Freehold, New Jersey at 19 and seeding it with rich, romantic images and a giant ray of hope. "Thunder Road" he sums up in the last line:
It's a town full of losers
I'm pulling out of here to win"Born To Run" was released as a single and became the hit, but "Thunder Road" is just as venerated in his catalog.
The vocal sound was inspired by Roy Orbison. Springsteen pays homage to him with the line: "The radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely," a reference to Orbison's 1960 hit, "
Only The Lonely (Know The Way I Feel)."
Is it "Mary's dress
sways" or "Mary's dress
waves" in the opening line? In 2021, that was a
topic of debate that Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, settled by announcing "sways" is correct. "'dresses' do not know how to 'wave,'" he wrote.
The printed lyric on the album, though, is
waves, which Springsteen says is wrong. He always sings it as
sways.
The name of the girl mentioned at the beginning was changed several times. It had been Angelina and Chrissie before Springsteen settled on "Mary's dress sways."
"Thunder Road" is one of Springsteen's most popular live songs, played more than any song except "
Born To Run." It even stayed in his setlists in the '90s after he broke up the E Street Band. That was a transitional decade for Springsteen when he became a father and tried working with a new set of musicians (keyboard player Roy Bittan was the only holdover).
One memorable performance from this era was on Springsteen's 1992 concert for MTV. It was part of their Unplugged series, but Springsteen didn't want to play acoustic so he did an electric set that became "MTV Plugged." Springsteen didn't perform on TV in the '70s and '80s, but when sales of his 1992 albums
Human Touch and
Lucky Town (released the same day) lagged, he started doing shows like
Saturday Night Live and
Late Night with David Letterman for the first time. MTV, based in New York, was thrilled to have him and probably would have let him play ukulele versions if he wanted to.
The original title was "Wings For Wheels." It began as an outtake called "Glory Road."
Cars were very important growing up in New Jersey and show up in many of Springsteen songs. Bruce's first car was a '57 Chevy with orange flames painted on the hood.
At one point, Born To Run was going to be a concept album spanning the course of a day, with an acoustic version of this starting the album and the full band version closing it.
"Thunder Road" has been a great showcase for Springsteen as raconteur; he has told many stories about it when he plays it live. In the '70s, he would sometimes tell a tale about driving through the Arizona desert and spotting a sign at the head of a dirt road that said, "'This is the land of peace, love, justice and no mercy. Thunder Road.'"
Springsteen released three albums from 1973-1975, but while making Born To Run, he brought in Jon Landau as a producer, which caused a rift between Springsteen and his manager Mike Appel, who took legal action that kept Bruce from recording for about a year. His next album, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, wasn't released until 1978.
In August 1975, about a week before the album was released, Springsteen played a series of shows at a club called The Bottom Line in New York City where he played "Thunder Road" solo on piano, as he hadn't yet worked up a suitable live version with his E Street Band. It was clear this was the start of something big: the shows were sponsored by the New York radio station WNEW, whose disc jockey, Dave Herman, apologized on the air for not playing enough Springsteen the morning after the first show.
On October 3, 1980, Springsteen kicked off his The River tour in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For the encore, Bob Seger, who is to Michigan what Springsteen is to New Jersey, joined him onstage to perform "Thunder Road."
Springsteen has performed the song live many different ways: with the full band, solo with guitar, solo with piano, slowed down, etc. The version on his compilation Live 1975-1985 finds him singing over Roy Bittan's piano.
Bruce taped a performance of "Thunder Road" that was played at the funeral of James Berger, a worker in the World Trade Center who helped people get out before he was killed when it collapsed. He was a big Springsteen fan and it was his favorite song. Bruce dedicated it to Berger's sons.
This is the first track on Springsteen's live album
Hammersmith Odeon London 1975, recorded on November 18, 1975 during Springsteen's first concert in Europe. It was released on DVD in 2005, and on CD the following year.
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Suggestion credit:
Bertrand - Paris, France
After playing "Thunder Road" for nearly 50 years, Springsteen accumulated a new perspective on the song that he shared during his Springsteen On Broadway show, which opened in 2017. "There's nothing like that moment in your life of being young and leaving some place," he said. "All that youthful freedom, you finally feel untethered from everything you've ever known: your past, your parents, the world you've gotten used to and you've loved and hated. Your life laying before you like a blank page...
It's the one thing I miss about getting older. I miss the beauty of that blank page, so much life in front of you, it's promise, possibilities, mysteries, adventures. That blank page, daring you to write on it."
