Born to Run: Biography

The open road, stretching away toward a distant horizon, is a potent metaphor in Springsteen’s music, starting with two of his first hits, “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road.” The road symbolizes a means of escape, both literally and figuratively. He longs to escape Freehold, but in a broader sense he seeks to escape the encroaching walls of conformity and a 1950s culture that he fears will stifle his grand ambitions. In “Thunder Road,” he articulates the hope and desperation that lie at the road’s end: “These two lanes will take us anywhere / We got one last chance to make it real.” The journey is a metaphor for life, and a journey needs a road to guide the traveler. For Springsteen, the road as a metaphor isn’t a nebulous literary device but a necessary portal to the only life he can imagine.

The cover of Springsteen’s memoir—like those of his albums Tunnel of Love (1992) and Only the Strong Survive (2022)—features him leaning against a car, that machine of cultural myth and youthful aspiration. If the road is the path to freedom, then the car (especially a convertible) or motorcycle is the mode of transportation. Springsteen considers cars one of rock music’s most compelling and enduring symbols. “Cadillac Ranch” and “Stolen Car” (The River, 1980), “Used Cars” (Nebraska, 1982), and “Racing in the Street” (Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1978) are just a few of his songs that use the car as a metaphor for escape, status, or reckless abandon.

In his California days, Springsteen rides his motorcycle through the Hollywood hills and canyons and even on an epic, 2,000-mile trek through the Southwest. The motorcycle and open road provide a sense of freedom when his restless soul can’t abide four walls. Cars and motorcycles have long symbolized rebellion and danger in pop culture—as in Joyce Carol Oates’s 1966 short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? and the films The Wild One (1953) and Easy Rider (1969)—as well as rock and roll. Springsteen, admittedly a rebellious youth, adopts these tropes as part of his lifestyle.

Another well-known symbol of rock and roll is long hair, popularized by The Beatles and taken to greater extremes through the decades. Symbolizing defiance or “otherness,” hair allowed a generation of youths to declare allegiance to a cultural movement of rebellion. Springsteen, a self-described “weird” kid, grows his hair long in solidarity with the movement and the music, much to his father’s chagrin.

To a man of 1950s homogenous, cookie-cutter culture, long hair means danger or moral and sexual ambiguity. Doug Springsteen, seeing his son’s long hair, fears it might indicate he’s gay. When Springsteen is recovering from a motorcycle accident, his father hires a barber to cut his hair, a transgression Springsteen can’t forgive (and the one time he tells his father he “hates” him). The youthful indulgences of rebellion, however, fade with time—and what remains (regardless of the dangling locks) is the music.