What is your favorite genre of music?
Today’s prompt is What is your favorite genre of music? Which fits amazingly well with what I came here to write. Almost too well. Of course the answer is Classic Rock, headlined by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
I’d seen that Wings for Wheels, the documentary about the making of Born to Run, was available to stream (on Paramount+), perfect Sunday morning watching. I can say that even if you’re not a fan of Bruce’s you’ll probably still enjoy it for the stories behind the scenes and the insights into how a complex record gets made in a highly pressurized environment.
Today everyone takes for granted that Bruce is a huge star and icon. But in 1974 and early ’75 as he was writing and then recording that wasn’t at all the case. In fact based on how poorly The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle had done this album was either going to be a hit or the end of his Columbia recording contract.
Aside: Wings for Wheels was the original title of the song that became Thunder Road.
I don’t know if this was fortunate or common practice at the time but Bruce’s manager Mike Appell had a film crew in the studio pretty much the entire time they recorded so this documentary includes a lot of footage from then as well as interviews with the band members, plus Appell, producer Jon Landau, Jimmy Iovine (Born to Run was one of his first industry gigs as recording engineer), and Nils Lofgren and Patti Scialfa.
BillSaysThis 