Bruce Springsteen Talks Early Gigs and 'Born To Run'

Bruce Springsteen joined Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show last night (Dec. 12) for an in-person but socially distant chat. Topics ranged from Springsteen’s earliest New Jersey Club gigs to Born to Run‘s iconic album cover photo.

“It was an Elks Club in Freehold, New Jersey,” Springsteen said of his teenaged shows. “I went back a month ago just to see if the room was there that I first played in, but they redesigned the inside so it wasn’t recognizable. But they had a nice little bar downstairs,” he said with a chuckle.

“It was 35 cents to get in, you played on Sunday. The bands would set up in a circle and every band would play like three songs, and then the next, and the next would play for a little bit. All the bands were playing for free. There were less than 100 kids there. But it was an amazing place to kind of start out. I got up and sang ‘Twist and Shout’ and I’ve been singing it ever since.”

Fallon pulled out Born to Run, which just turned 45. Commenting on the cover photo, Springsteen said, “The nice thing about that cover is it tells a story. It’s the beginning of a narrative; it immediately makes you think about friendship, electricity, musical magic. It’s the beginning of some tall tale. The physical aspect of it … it was just a picture he snapped.