Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Doubleday Books, and author Peter Ames Carlin for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

I was 11 years old and staying with a family friend on their rural farm in Central New Jersey. On the way back from the beach, we stopped at a K-Mart, and I was drawn to the record section. I saw this album and thought I’d heard some good things about this Bruce Springsteen guy, and picked up this white album with two guys on the cover. That was the moment I became a part of the Gospel According to Bruce. I played that record to death. As a teen, I so identified with the characters he created in the songs; disaffected loners who didn’t quite know where they were going to fit in this ever-changing world. Even though the various characters in Born To Run are male, anyone who felt like an outsider in their own place could relate, and that was huge for me.

I preface this to say that Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run preaches to the choir when it comes to me. I’ve seen Springsteen live more times than I can count. I can honestly say that his music has been the soundtrack to my life. Better Days was the last song played at our wedding reception. I think of my daughter every time I hear I’ll See You in My Dreams. The Rising helped me deal with living in New York on 9/11. It’s that album I first picked up way back when I was a pre-teen, though, that resonates the most. I swear there’s not a bad song on that album.

I’ve already read (and reviewed) Peter Ames Carlin’s biography of Springsteen, penned before The Boss came out with his autobiography a few years later. That book was so well done, I didn’t think Springsteen would ever be moved to write his own story. Carlin concentrates here on the recording of that first album I picked up. There’s quite a bit of backstory as to how the album came to be seen as crucial to Springsteen’s success. Two critically praised albums that were also commercial failures preceded Born to Run. The man who was signed as Columbia Records’ highest-profile new talent was losing ground. Chances are, if the next album didn’t sell, he’d be dropped. Hard to believe now.

There are terms and descriptions that come with the writing and recording of music that I didn’t quite understand, despite my many years of piano lessons growing up. I’m okay with letting certain things go over my head and concentrating on what I do understand. With Springsteen, it’s his lyrics. Hearing the different versions of songs that I consider classics is very interesting, especially as they start as one song and end up recorded quite differently.

Other books written about Springsteen and by Springsteen have glided over the recording process. Carlin dives in deep here. There were days when nothing happened. Bruce and the musicians would sit in the studio, engineer Jimmy Iovine nodding off, as he sat there and stared into space, trying to perfect each song. Springsteen wasn’t a talker. He worked through things in his head. At the same time, he listened to other people. Manager Mike Appel has been painted as a sort of villain in Springsteen’s story, but Carlin seems sympathetic to the manager who gave Springsteen a bad contract initially but always believed in him as an artist. It was just before recording the album Born to Run that Springsteen became friends with Jon Landau, which would eventually change the trajectory of his career. All those factors, plus input from various others, led to take after take after take.

“… monster song with piledriver arrangement … simply one of the best rock anthems to individual freedom ever created.”

– review of Born to Run in Billboard magazine

That statement set off a lightbulb in me, more than fifty years later. With the current state of our country and Springsteen letting everyone know where he falls on the political spectrum, there are many fans from back in the day who talk about liking his music but not his politics. Springsteen has always been political to some degree, championing the blue-collar worker who seems to get the short shrift in life. However, his songs also seem to inspire that Libertarian streak where people (particularly white men) think they can live life according to their own rules and have the world conform to them. That’s not the case in a society where everyone has differing opinions. This is where the break comes among fans, and I never realized it before.

If you’re a fan of Springsteen, you’re going to love Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run. If you haven’t read Carlin’s biography or Springsteen’s autobiography, I’d recommend either or both of those before this. Carlin gives enough details that it’s easy to understand what is going on here, but it’s specific to one album. There is plenty of information on Springsteen the person in this book, but it feels like a supplement to those other books, which is why I would recommend reading them first. However, Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run tells a very detailed story of what it took to get my favorite album of all time recorded.

To be played at my funeral:

And in the lonely cool before dawn
You hear their engines roaring on
When you get to the porch they’re gone on the wind
So Mary, climb in
It’s a town full of losers
I’m pulling out of here to win