How Neil Young wrote a ‘Born to Run’ before the Bruce Springsteen classic
There have been numerous instances of songs having the same titles over the years. As no one person can own words, this is natural. Whether it be U2 and Michael Jackson sharing the name ‘Bad’, Pearl Jam and Korn having joint custody over the title ‘Alive’, or The Doors and The Beatles both naming pieces ‘The End’, the instances of this are numerous in the world of music. Perhaps the most remarkable of all of these is that Neil Young has a song titled ‘Born to Run’, written before Bruce Springsteen released his classic in 1975.
It might seem unfathomable that there’s even another song called ‘Born to Run’, let alone by an artist of Neil Young’s stature. Before Springsteen conceived the timeless lyric, “Baby, we were born to run”, and captured his husky delivery in the studio, Young had already beaten him to the title.
Young’s track is also stylistically different from Springsteen’s iconic piece of Americana. A hard-rocking number, it features some of Young’s attitude-laden soloing, squeaking from his Gibson Les Paul. Interestingly, instead of saying that “we” were born to run like Springsteen, Young approaches the song from his own perspective.
Similar to something you’d expect to hear on 1969’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, the dovetailing guitars and rhythm section create a repetitive groove reminiscent of Young and Crazy Horse’s countercultural days when they championed a stream-of-consciousness approach. However, it was written a while after, a time when Young had refined his work, and the trappings of fame had made an indelible mark on him. He was more forlorn than ever.
Per Shakey, Jimmy McDonough’s 2002 biography of Young, the Canadian musician taught his ‘Born to Run’ to Crazy Horse in the spring of 1975, several months before Springsteen’s song and album of the same name arrived in August. Young and the band then recorded it during the sessions for their 1975 masterwork Zuma but ultimately left it off the record. That’s an interesting point, as the solo’s tone and melody are not dissimilar from that of Zuma highlight ‘Danger Bird’.
Young would then revisit the song when recording 1989’s Freedom and again for its follow-up, 1990’s Ragged Glory. However, it was still left off, waiting to make it on an official studio album. During this time, it did the rounds on bootlegs such as Archives Be Damned before Neil Young finally released it on the box set Neil Young Archives Volume II in 2020.
Listen to Neil Young’s ‘Born to Run’ below.
