He helped Springsteen so much on Born to Run that he received a credit as co-producer.īorn to Run – which includes Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, Jungleland and, of course, Born to Run - is considered one of the greatest rock ‘n roll albums ever.

Jon Landau knew enough about record production to advise Springsteen to switch studios. More importantly, Springsteen asked Landau’s advice about getting the wall of sound he wanted on the album. Springsteen’s record company built a campaign for Springsteen’s breakthrough album, Born to Run, around that quote. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.

I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. Novelist Nick Hornby called the column ‘influential, exciting, career-changing, and subsequently much derided and parodied article.’ It became one of the most famous pieces of rock criticism ever. In the issue of The Real Paper, Jon Landau wrote a column about the concert. Jon Landau wrote for the Real Paper, one of Boston’s alternative weekly newspapers. Landau attended the second set, and it blew him away. During the second set, Springsteen unveiled Born to Run. They played I Sold My Heart to the Junkman during the first set, and closed the second with a frenzied version of Twist and Shout. Springsteen announced his band as The E Street Band for the first time ever. Then on May 9, 1974, Springsteen played two separate shows opening for Bonnie Raitt at the Harvard Square Theatre. The two had met in April that year outside Charlie’s Place, a Cambridge bar where the band played. He only liked Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder – and Bruce Springsteen. The MC5’s Back in the USA flopped, and he failed at producing J Geils’ debut album.īy 1974, rock ‘n roll bored Landau. Landau had also parlayed a friendship with Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records to produce a few records. I flipped for the Animals’ two-hour show at Rindge Tech the Rolling Stones, not just at Boston Garden, where they did the best half hour rock’n’roll set I had ever seen, but at Lynn Football Stadium, where they started a riot Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels overcoming the worst of performing conditions at Walpole Skating Rink and the Beatles at Suffolk Down… Realizing he’d never play rock ‘n roll, he became a critic for alternative newspapers, including Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy and The Real Paper. Landau blamed himself he was too much of a perfectionist to work with others. In 19 he played in a band called the Jellyroll that never made it. Jon Landau had been born in suburban Boston and spent much of his time at Brandeis in the ‘60s listening to rock ‘n roll records. So perhaps it was inevitable that Springsteen’s career would get its biggest lift in the town where the mayor once bailed out the Rolling Stones.

He then went to MIT and named his band after the town. In far off Toledo, Ohio, Tom Scholz listened to rock ‘n roll on Boston’s WBZ radio. Aerosmith seemed to perform at every frat party, high school and country club in Greater Boston. The city’s many colleges provided a ready audience for groups like the Cars, The J. In the spring of 1974 his band was touring college auditoriums and small theaters to support his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.īoston was a paradise for rock ‘n roll fans in the 1970s. He also couldn’t quite get the sound he heard in his head onto vinyl. Springsteen’s first two albums had flopped commercially. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 1977.

The e street shuffle e street radio