Long Branch
Born To Run At 50 (Part 2)
Friday, September 5, 2025 Entry #
I woke up on my first full day on the Jersey Shore and looked out my hotel room window. The view brought a smile to my face. I was overlooking the Asbury Park Convention Hall, a storied venue where Bruce Springsteen has held special concerts and tour rehearsals over the years. Also in view was Ocean Avenue, the boardwalk, the beach, and the inviting water.
It was an easy 15 minute drive to leafy Monmouth University. I easily found the Pollak Theatre (it was cool to see the campus map already indicating the future site of the Bruce Springsteen Archives Center-#37 on the map key), the venue for the Friday night film program and Saturday’s symposium. I entered the lobby and when I pushed on the auditorium doors, they actually opened. There was a hard working crew assembling a pretty elaborate band set-up, which was intriguing because live music had not been publicized for these programs. I watched for awhile, and I contemplated asking people who looked official if they could somehow get me into the symposium. Instead, I chickened out, and left the building.
Monmouth is located in Long Branch, NJ, a municipality that played a big role in Springsteen’s early career in general, and particularly in his making of the Born To Run album. Springsteen was actually born at the Monmouth Medical Center here in town. To focus the public on Long Branch’s part in this piece of music history, the town’s Arts and Cultural Center is hosting an exhibition dedicated to Bruce Springsteen’s connections to the town. And that is where I headed next.
The exhibit definitely exceeded my expectations. There were photo boards, documents, and artifacts representing Springsteen’s many early performances at Monmouth University and at various clubs and coffeehouses around Long Branch. There was an amusing quote on the wall in which Springsteen identified the beach in Long Branch as yet another one he had slept on. There was even a birth record from a Long Branch newspaper that somewhat humorously misspelled the Boss’s last name.
However, the most important spot in Long Branch for Springsteen was a bungalow on 7 1/2 West End Court. This was the house Springsteen rented in the early 1970’s, and it became the place where he wrote each and every song for his third album, the one that turned 50 this summer, Born To Run.
This was a site that I could do more than read about in a museum. West End Court was minutes away from where I stood. I was there in a flash!
I had been to the house before, in the spring of 2023, part of a wonderful Springsteen tour of the Jersey Shore that was guided by the inimitable Stan Goldstein (See Entry #62). But, with the all the 50th anniversary attention on Born To Run, this visit was especially poignant. There had been a plaque added since I was last in Long Branch, a replica of the album cover with a quote from Bruce’s memoir affirming that he had written the songs from his iconic album right here at 7 1/2 West End Court.
Springsteen composed most of the Born To Run songs on the same piano he learned to play on, his Aunt Dora’s battered old upright spinet. When Springsteen moved to Long Branch, he took the piano with him, and it stood basically in the entrance of the small cottage-like home (it had a 1/2 in its address after all).
As has been told many times, Springsteen had a three-record contract with his record label, and the first two albums he created and released were critically acclaimed, but both had disappointing sales. For this third album, Springsteen went big, shooting for the stars. Though guitar, drum and saxophone were of course major components of the final product (it was a rock album after all), this piano origin gave the songs a grandiose and cinematic quality which proved to pack an emotional punch. This was exactly the effect that Springsteen wanted to achieve. The first sound heard on many of the songs is an evocative piano introduction, and this would have been harder to come by if Springsteen had initially written the songs using a guitar.
Because I didn’t have to get back on a tour bus this time around, I took my sweet time at the house, reflecting on the incredible creativity that had taken place there. I tried to imagine Bruce working on all those amazing songs on that piano right inside his screen door (I wonder if it “slams”). I also wandered a bit, and discovered that 7 1/2 West End Court was just a few blocks from the town beach, so I spent some time there. Then, remembering the street name from the exhibit, I located the the Long Beach strip that was a big bohemian hangout in the 1960’s and 70’s. This was the exact area that contained most of the coffeehouses and clubs where I now know Springsteen hung out and performed at while he was living in the Born To Run house. I was loving these connections already and the weekend was just getting started!
I made one more stop before returning to Asbury Park. There is a corner in the nearby town of Belmar, the intersection of 10th Avenue and E Street. It was on E Street where an early iteration of Springsteen’s band used to practice (this will not be the last mention of this version in these reports), hence their name, and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” is the band’s origin song that appears on Born To Run. So, an area artist named Bob Mataranglo created an 8-foot plywood replica of the very guitar that is depicted on the cover of Born To Run (and will also figure prominently in the weekend’s proceedings) that stands right behind the street signs.
There was still time when I returned to my hotel to do what every self-respecting Springsteen fan ought to do on a gorgeous day in Asbury Park—take a dip in the ocean! That I did, and I even got to do some beach reading of the newest book about Born To Run called Tonight in Jungleland by Peter Ames. It’s what everybody on the Jersey Shore is reading these days!
That was a lot of activity for one day, but the big stuff was yet to come. It was time to head back to Monmouth University for tonight’s program.
Day 2