Some time in the summer of 1975 ads began appearing with the picture of a bloke I’d never seen or heard and the words: “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

It demanded further investigation.

Further inquiries involved much talk of “the new Bob Dylan” which wasn’t very accurate but drew attention to the newcomer (who wasn’t that new – he had already released two albums) having a way with words.

He used lots of them and, unlike Dylan, who was a symbol of the Sixties, he wrote contemporary songs for my generation.

The opening song on the album begins with piano and harmonica, setting it up like the start of a movie, which is what the song – Thunder Road – resembles.

There’s a girl called Mary and she’s got a boyfriend and between them they have “one last chance to make it real.” Like all the characters in all the songs on the album, like the title itself, their lives are rooted in disappointment.

They work hard, live for the weekend and dream of finding happiness, of finding freedom; an aspiration embodied in the exhuberant sound of the E Street Band at full throttle, enhanced by that epic Phil Spector-like production.

I could honestly have picked any track from the album, but in the end it came down to the last track, Jungleland, or this, the first one.