The lyrical, major-key style of the album's piano parts
– "Thunder Road," "Backstreets" — became a big part of what people think
of as your sound. Where did that come from? What were the musical
touchstones for you there?
The fact that
those things had these elaborate introductions and melodic parts and a
variety of movements, you can trace that back to the way the Roy Orbison
records were composed. But, also, it was just something that I liked. I
had a little old Aeolian piano sitting in the front of my living room,
and I knew I was interested in writing on the piano at that time, partly
because I was interested in those thematic movements. I suppose when
you do it correctly, a good introduction and a good outro makes the song
feel like it's coming out of something and then evolving into something. Like it's part of some sort of continuity, and
it was also dramatic and it was meant to set up the song. I think
somebody asked me about it in the little film we made, and I said part
of the idea was to make it feel that something auspicious was going to
occur. And it just set the scene. There is something about the melody of
Thunder Road that just suggests "new day," it suggests morning, it
suggests something opening up. That's why that song ended up first on
the record, instead of "Born to Run" — which would've made sense, to put
"Born to Run" first on the album. And we still put it on the top of the
second side. But "Thunder Road" was just so obviously an opening, due
to its intro. And these things evolve. I think there's only eight songs
on Born to Run — I don't think it's much more than 35 minutes
long. But as you move into it, where every song comes up in the sequence
makes a lot of sense — though we weren't thinking about it; we were
going on instinct at the time.
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