This was probably the first Springsteen song I ever heard: it’s the opening track of his breakthrough album Born To Run. And still one of his best.

Like everyone else seduced by that “new Bob Dylan” ad campaign in 1975, I rushed out to buy it to see what all the fuss was about.

It didn’t disappoint.

I love(d) the tension of that gentle piano intro by Roy Bittan and Bruce’s harmonica setting the scene for his story of a blue-collar couple, Mary and her boyfriend, and their “one last chance to make it real.”

It was gripping, pared back for the purpose of a song lyric, but with the feel of a Raymond Carver short story.

I loved the wordplay “skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets” was so evocative of Americana at an age where I could only dream of one day visiting the USA.

And I noted the cultural references to one of Bruce’s musical inspirations, with Roy Orbison “singing for the lonely” on the radio.

It was like a mini-movie, and the album was filled with vignettes that painted a fantasy America in a new era after the bobby socks and milkshakes in the diners of those Sixties movies I’d seen.