Oh, Onion!

Mukluks: Marley

 You see, the whole New Jersey thing really started off by accident. Growing up the son of a cinematographer in a comfortably middle-class Los Angeles suburb, I didn’t know the first thing about the best drag-racing back roads on the Jersey Shore or the gritty factory towns up and down the New Jersey Turnpike. Back then I was too busy working on my tan and surfing every day to care about the economic struggles of union folk, let alone the crude, workaday laborers from northern New Jersey whom people seem to associate me with.

But that all started to change in the summer of 1972, the first time I ever stepped foot in the state. I was in Cherry Hill visiting my aunt, and something about a song I was writing at the time—one about riding my scooter through West Hollywood—just wasn’t clicking. Then it occurred to me: Why not set the thing right there in New Jersey? It seemed crazy at the time, but I figured what the hell.
On a whim I pulled out a map, picked some dinky road in the middle of the state, and half-jokingly scribbled, “At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines / Sprung from cages out on Highway 9.” Those words later became “Born To Run.” Maybe you’ve heard it.