Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / The Story Behind 'Born To Run''s Iconic Album Sleeve [Highlight From Episode 322]

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The Story Behind 'Born To Run''s Iconic Album Sleeve [Highlight From Episode 322] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here was a highlight from a recent episode of book
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Don Rock. John Egan is the author of Bruce Springsteen
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: and Born to Run fifty Years. The gatefold sleeve one
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  Speaker 1: of the best. You say, it's emblematic of the album's
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  Speaker 1: vivid and widescreen nature. That great shot of Bruce and
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  Speaker 1: saxophone as Clarence clemmons. This, you say, appears to have
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  Speaker 1: occurred more through serendipity than calculation. What's the story behind that?
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  Speaker 1: Gatefold sleeves usually was done for double albums, not single albums.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he had to get special dispensation to make this
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  Speaker 2: one a gatefold sleeve because they were quite expensive to
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  Speaker 2: do and he didn't really have much in mind for
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  Speaker 2: the album. He went to the photographic studio of Eric Meola,
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  Speaker 2: who was a photographer that he vaguely knew, and he
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  Speaker 2: just turned up in his street clothes. He was wearing
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  Speaker 2: a leather jacket with an Elvis Presley fan club button
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  Speaker 2: on it, and Clarence came with him. That the only
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  Speaker 2: thing that Bruce knew that he wanted to do was
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  Speaker 2: to have something a picture with him and Clarence in it,
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  Speaker 2: not the E Street Band and Bruce on his own
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  Speaker 2: so he was clearly trying to communicate something with that,
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  Speaker 2: and in fact, a lot of people must have been
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  Speaker 2: puzzled when they saw that album because he wasn't that
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  Speaker 2: well known a person. A lot of people must have
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  Speaker 2: been wondering which one is Bruce? Unthinkable was that seems today?
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  Speaker 2: But Meola took plenty of pictures. There's some fascinating outtakes
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  Speaker 2: from that session, but the one that we all became
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  Speaker 2: familiar with was Bruce leaning against Clarence. Well, Clarence plays
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  Speaker 2: the sacks, Bruce is actually standing on a box because
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  Speaker 2: he's quite a bit shorter than Clarence was. So you
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  Speaker 2: only see Bruce on the front, but then you open
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  Speaker 2: the sleeve out and there's saxophone that there's Clarence with
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  Speaker 2: a saxophone on the back cover. It's a very minimalist design.
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  Speaker 2: They're surrounded by white, just their two figures and then
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  Speaker 2: there's the then there's the track listing on the back.
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  Speaker 2: But it works perfectly because you see that that sleeve,
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  Speaker 2: you're intrigued by it, and of course you never forget it,
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  Speaker 2: and it's past the test of so many iconic sleeves.
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  Speaker 2: It's been much parodied. There's plenty of people who have
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  Speaker 2: imitated that album sleeve, including Sesame Street