Boaz, Bruce and ‘Born to Run’
I took my autistic teen to see Springsteen in concert: “Do they really all take Viagra?” he asked
With money gifted for his sixteenth birthday, my son, Boaz, bought a portable Victrola record player and a vinyl copy of Bruce Springsteen’s seminal 1975 album Born to Run. For weeks, “Born to Run,” Springsteen’s de facto rock anthem, played on repeat, Boaz taking particular interest in the album’s attendant crackle and hiss. At a certain point, I begged Boaz to listen to “Backstreets” or “Jungleland,” but he flat-out refused. It was “Born to Run” he wanted, and “Born to Run” only. That groundbreaking titular track—over and over and over again. Presumptively, because of the obvious trigger word embedded within (suicide), Boaz’s pruning adolescent brain latched onto the lyric: At night we ride through mansions of glory/in suicide machines. He spent days parsing its poetic meaning. Was it really just about motorcycles—or was there something deeper?
I can trace my own connection to Springsteen to a jazz dance class when I was nine years old. Our dance teacher, who had spiky platinum hair and wore shiny black leggings like Olivia Newton-John in Grease, would toggle between “Thunder Road” and “Rosalita” as she sashayed in front of the studio mirror modeling scissor steps and fan kicks. I was a terrible and disinterested dancer, clumsy and lazy, and overtly ecstatic when chicken pox derailed my participation in our end-of-semester recital. But Bruce stuck, and his songs have stayed with me ever since.
• Apr 18, 2024 (Updated: Aug 21, 2025)
