The Boss: An exhibit of his life and music

By John Benson

SpringsteenSSRqs exhibit will be the museum’s most elaborate exhibit dedicated to a single artist.

CLEVELAND — Coinciding with Saturday’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies is the long-anticipated Bruce Springsteen exhibition.

The landmark display, which includes artifacts of the Boss’ career, opened Wednesday, three days before Saturday’s ceremonies, which returned to Cleveland for the first time since 1997. It includes the Fender guitar that is on the cover of the “Born to Run” album, and listening posts where songs from the Castiles, Springsteen’s first band, are playing.

Northeast Ohio has always been a special place for Springsteen, and one of the first places to embrace the rocker.

The region’s love affair with Springsteen began more than 35 years ago with the arrival of this New Jersey-born singer belting out working-man tales of finding love, escaping dead-end streets and making your own future.

However, the fascination of Springsteen and his E Street Band didn’t start out nearly as passionate as it would become. Former WMMS-FM 100.7 Program Director John Gorman explains how The Boss and The Buzzard came together to fly high in the SSRq70s.

“When Springsteen’s first album [1973’s ‘Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.’] came out, it did OK but didn’t get that much response,” said Gorman, now a media consultant. “And the second album [1973’s ‘The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle’] came out, and it got a little notice, but it never really captured anyone that strongly. What really made it happen was we got an advance copy — months in advance — of the song ‘Born to Run.’ And hearing the anthem qualities of it, it was like the perfect get-out-of-town, escape-from-the-world type of song. And it just fit.

“When we started playing ‘Born to Run,’ people had the reaction of ‘What is that?’ And that in turn had us go back to the first two albums and start playing ‘Rosalita’ and re-familiarizing everyone with that material. So by the time ‘Born to Run’ the album came out, the people in Cleveland knew every single Bruce Springsteen song.”

Gorman pointed out the first version of the song “Born to Run” advanced to WMMS was different from what would appear on the album. In fact, it featured a full orchestra with Springsteen’s vocals double-tracked. The result was comparable to Phil Spector’s wall of sound.

Finally, when talking about the song “Born to Run,” the other thing that comes to mind is WMMS’ weekly tradition of playing the tune at 6 p.m. on Friday nights to kick-off the weekend. At the beginning, it was also tied around Murray Saul’s famous “Get Down” rants.

“That happened around early 1975, and that was something that happened by accident,” Gorman said. “Murray Saul was discovered inside of the sales department at WMMS, and a number of different things led to the ‘Get Down.’ And ‘Born to Run’ was like the perfect lead to the ‘Get Down.’ That was kicking off the weekend. ‘Born to Run,’ you’re escaping from that week of work, and then Murray would come on at 6 p.m. and do the whole routine on the ‘slave driver’ and ‘we had freedom’ and the weekend.

“And then we went into ‘Friday on my Mind’ by Earth Quake. We used to call that the holy trinity in the early days. And ‘Born to Run’ was the absolute perfect song to kickoff the weekend.”