The Evolution of Born to Run: "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"
For the 50th anniversary of Born to Run, a track-by-track breakdown of the evolution of each of the songs on the record.
For the 50th anniversary of Born to Run, here's a track-by-track breakdown of the evolution of each of the songs on the record, going in order from start to finish. Side 1, track 2: "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out."
On an album where more than a handful of songs took months to get to completion, “10th Avenue Freeze-Out” seems to have been -- with one notable exception -- blessedly simple. On May 5, 1975, Bruce Springsteen walked into the Record Plant with this song for the first time. There are four known takes, two of which have not circulated publicly, and there are no huge variations between them, the song you hear is pretty much the song we ended up with. Of the two circulating versions, one is the version we all have and love. And then there is this one, known as v2.
It’s a very complete version for a demo, even if there are no horns, just Bruce singing some horn lines that are not unrecognizable. The piano takes center stage, as it did for most of the songs on the record. The big difference is that there’s more specificity in the lyrics: the Big Man is a character – “When the Big Man take off his hat / Should have seen them dudes turn back” is probably my favorite. Steve Van Zandt gets a mention, too – “Big Man played it up / He and Miami had us shoot their shot” – and this is even before the moment in which he earned his paycheck and got added to the lineup.
Speaking of that, it’s clear from v2 that Bruce absolutely knew what he wanted the horns to sound like – he could sing a least a rudimentary horn line – and so it is interesting how much trouble they had getting the hired horns to understand what he wanted. The whole point of bringing in guys like that is that not everyone is a skilled horn arranger and so (in my opinion, at least) they should have absolutely been able to translate a melody into a riff. But the fact that they couldn’t gave us one of the best legends of E Street.
In case you are reading this and are unaware of the story (probably my favorite piece of E Street Band lore), let's talk about the night SVZ was hanging out in the studio and earned his place in the band by singing each horn player their parts to this track. They’d brought in David Sanborn, Wayne Andre, and the Brecker Brothers to “enhance” the horn parts. (Has anyone ever asked where the Jukes horns were during this time, given that their manager was apparently free enough to be lounging on the control room floor?) But despite (or more likely because) of the existence of the horn charts and the pricey session guys, they couldn’t meet Bruce’s expectations. Bruce asked his friend what he thought, and Steve told him, “I think it sucks.”
Bruce’s response? “Well, then, fix it!”
[I like the part in Dave Marsh’s Born To Run where he states, “Everyone knew Steve, but no one knew whether he could pull this off.”]
And that’s when Miami Steve walked into the studio and said, “Okay, boys! You can toss those charts away now.” He sang each player his part, ran through it once all together, and then told the engineer to roll the tape. This time, it didn’t suck.
“Let’s get this boy on the payroll,” Bruce told Mike Appel. “I’ve been meaning to tell you--he’s the new guitar player.”
“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” stands out on BTR because it is the one song that breaks the pattern. On this record, Bruce deliberately wanted to write more universally and less locally, while this song stays firmly planted down the Shore. People like to debate whether the Tenth Avenue in question is a reference to the cross street in Belmar adjacent to David Sancious’ parents’ house on E Street (my vote) or whether it was some kind of reference to the fact that the Record Plant was on 44th Street between 9th and 10th Avenue. I feel like there’s scant evidence for the latter, especially in a song that was, and remains, the story about the band.
The first live performance of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” took place at the Palace Theater in Providence, Rhode Island, on July 20, 1975. This is, not coincidentally, the band’s first show since they finished recording the record literally hours before they got on the bus (legend has them finishing Clarence's sax solo in "Jungleland" around 10am) and drove the 4 hours up I-95 to the Ocean State, as well as the first E Street Band show with Steve Van Zandt in the lineup.
The band rehearsed all night in one room at the Record Plant while they were still working on recording the record in another room. We will discuss this show in greater detail later on, but for now, please enjoy the debut performance of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” It is brisk and fairly unadorned from what it would later evolve into, but this is also a show during which only three songs from Born to Run were performed despite this ostensibly being the opening night of the Born to Run tour. There was a lot going on!
Contrast that to this delightful performance from 9/20/78 at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, NJ. This video is from the Capitol’s in-house video system and about a minute in it switches to remastered audio via the fine folks at JEMS. Things to watch for: Bruce’s exceptional dance moves; Danny’s beard; how Bruce is absolutely drenched in sweat but has not removed his sport coat; he pinches Clarence’s butt instead of high-fiving him; Obie is front and center.
9/20/78
Caryn Rose
Of course, the purpose of this series is to focus on how each of the record’s songs got to the point they could be on the album and not to chart the entire evolution of the song over its lifetime, but that would have made for a very short post in this case! Unlike other frequent fliers in the repertoire, this is not a song that truly changed much over the decades. But it is worth pointing out in this particular context that I always admired and appreciated how “Tenth Avenue” was always about the band and remained about the band, even when we were two men down.
