Clipping Silver

Born to Run at 50 and the album Springsteen nearly released instead

Born To Run

This week marked the 50th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run. It is one of the great records—and I would say that even if I wasn’t required to by law as a native New Jerseyan. To commemorate the occasion, Bruce released “Lonely Night In The Park”—a 1975 studio outtake from the Born To Run sessions.

Here’s Stereogum:

“Lonely Night In The Park” was tracked during the Record Plant sessions for Born To Run and included on the Boss’ proposed tracklist for the LP. Jon Landau reportedly wanted it on the album too (over “Meeting Across The River”) but his co-producer Mike Appel successfully argued against it.

What fascinates me isn’t the song itself—at least not yet—but the idea that it was almost included on Born To Run.

Springsteen and Landau had a complicated and contentious relationship with Appel, especially in and around the time this album was recorded. Just a year later, Bruce had sued and Appel was out.

And yet, I must agree with Appel on this one. Perhaps that’s not saying much fifty years after the fact. I just find it impossible to imagine “Lonely Night In The Park” on Born To Run because Born To Run is Born To Run. I mean it’s carved into stone.

First, there’s the idea of losing “Meeting Across The River”.

It sounds like Appel fought to keep this song because he just really liked it. In his own words, Springsteen “never was as interesting, musically, as little songs like Meeting Across the River.”

I think it would have hurt the record, too (artistically, not commercially). “Meeting Across The River” may be the least streamed song on the record (by a wide margin, per Spotify), but it plays such a vital role in grounding the whole thing before it explodes into the cinematic romanticism of “Jungleland”.

Track Plays
Thunder Road 164,067,197
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out 36,433,645
Night 9,208,297
Backstreets 24,291,287
Born to Run 429,131,263
She's the One 13,082,090
Meeting Across the River 6,656,325
Jungleland 24,838,531
Timestamp: August 28, 2025

Then there’s the addition of “Lonely Night in the Park”.

This is also not an uncomplicated maneuver. “Lonely Night” is less polished and far less dramatic than the rest of BTR. It’s also much looser, which really stands out on a record that was so obsessively and meticulously crafted. Fifty years later, it feels like a better match for The River; or even Darkness on the Edge of Town or The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle.

Here’s Appel on how all of this drama unfolded:

“I won my way on things,” former Springsteen manager/Born to Run co-producer Mike Appel told Backstreets in 1990. “When [Landau] and Bruce would say ‘Here’s Lonely Night in the Park and Linda Let Me be the One.’ They came in and they thought that was going to be a commercial song. And I won my way. I said ‘These are such dogs and the lyrics are so bad.’ I said, just go away. I said these songs aren’t staying on the record − over my dead body. I told him this stuff was ‘shit.’ And nobody today would talk to him like that.”

Hard to see how their relationship collapsed and they never worked together again…

And lastly there’s the sequencing.

Adding “Lonely Night in the Park” would have meant rethinking the sequencing altogether. I know this because I have a small obsession with sequencing mixes. (See: my pretentious mixtape club).

According to Rolling Stone, Springsteen included it in several possible Born To Run track lists in his notebooks, but if those drafts exist, they’ve never surfaced—at least not where I can find them. (My Born To Run 30th Anniversary Edition box set might hold the answers, but it is—shamefully—buried in storage.)

So, where would “Lonely Night” fit? Swap it in for “Meeting Across The River,” you risk kneecapping “Jungleland”. Drop it in after “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” and the album starts to feel lopsided.

And so maybe Appel was right and “Lonely Night in the Park” got cut because it was just a “dog.” Or maybe, as Bruce kept tinkering—which is really the only way to sequence anything—he realized that the song just wasn’t a good fit.

Of course, in the end, neither was Appel. Though in this case, he did get it very, very right. ●

Loose Change

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