El 34 Disco Mas Vendido De Los 70 - Born To Run

Después de que sus dos primeros discos tuvieran unas ventas decepcionantes, Springsteen revisó la línea de su groupo de acompañamiento, la E Street Band, y realizó una gira por todo el país con conciertos de tres horas mientras escribía material nuevo. Su tercer trabajo, Born To Run, con su conmovedor tema central de la desoloción y la redención, consolidó firmamente la reputación del cantautor nacido en New Jersey. La canción que da título al disco llevó a Springsteen ante un público enorme a ambos lados del Atlántico. Born To Run, grabado en La Record Plant en New York, fue el primer disco de Springsteen en entrar en las listas tanto norteamericanos como británicas: en las primeras alconzó en numero 3, mientras en las británicas conseguió un más modesto numero 17. El disco vendidó más de 700,000 copias en las semanas siguientes a su lanzamiento en EE UU. Se convirtió en disco de oro el 8 de octubre de ese año y se convirtiría en el primer álbum en conseguir el nuevo certificado de disco de platino otorgado por la industria discográfica norteamericana.

Dos sencillos del disco entaron entre las 100 mejores norteamericans: 'Born To Run' que alcanzó el numero 23 y 'Tenth Avenue Freeze Out' que llegó al numero 83, aunque ninguno de ellos consiguió puestos altos en RU. El éxito del disco colocó a Springsteen en la primera página de Time y Newsweek. John Landau, uno de los productores, se convertiría más tarde en el manager de Springsteen.

Now for those of you that do not know Spanish you may be wondering what the hell I am doing posting this story in Spanish. Well, I am still sort of trying to learn the language. Not too much. Just a little bit. I figure that it will come in handy when I make that left turn at Mexico next year.

So, in addition to the odd class and a bit of homework, I have decided to dig out a book that I bought when I lived in Madrid. The book is called Los 100 Discos Más Vendidos De Los 70 - The 100 Best Selling Albums of The 1970s. The book contains articles for each of the albums that offer all sorts of meaningless information about the biggest records of the 70s - exactly the kind of rhubarb that totally interests me.

I try to read one article every few days, translating as I go along and making a list of all the words that I don't know. I'm not sure that it will help me much in my quest to learn Spanish but at least, when I am stuck, I can talk about all sorts of trivial nonsense from the music of the 70s.

There were several things that I found interesting about this article. First, Springsteen was under a bit of pressure to sell some albums as his first two were basically commercial flops. So, before he recorded Born To Run, he changed the members in his E Street Band and scheduled a massive nation-wide tour where he started playing his famous 3+ hour marathon shows. During the tour he wrote all the songs for Born To Run. The album was recorded in New York and 10 days before it's release on 25 August 1975 he began a five night stand at The Bottom Line club.

By the time the album was released there was massive public interest and (despite the lack of a hit single) the record went gold (500,000 copies sold) in only 6 weeks. It then went on to become the very first album ever to achieve platinum status (1,000,000 copies sold), which the recording industry had only introduced earlier that year . He became so popular from the record that he was on the covers of Time and Newsweek in the same week (27 October) in 1975. It is the record that put him on the map. It is the record that made him 'The Boss'.