Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ Lyrics Sold for $197,000
A page of Bruce Springsteen's handwritten lyrics for what became 'Born to Run' has sold for nearly $200,000 at an auction in New York today.
CNN is reporting that after a starting bid of $40,000, an anonymous bidder paid $197,000 for the 8.5 x 11 sheet of notebook paper, which was included as part of a "Fine Books and Manuscripts Including Americana" auction. The winning bid brought in nearly three times what Sotheby's had expected. When news of the auction was announced last week, the famed auction house estimated that it would fetch between $70,000 and $100,000.
The page is not the complete lyrics to 'Born to Run,' but rather an early draft. Even at this stage, however, Springsteen had the line "'Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run' fully written. Other lyrics visible, including "this town'll rip the bones from your back" and "it's a suicide trap" were slightly altered on the finished song.
Springsteen's writing process is famous for his habit of filling up notebooks with rewrites, song fragments and stray lyrics. A replica of his notebook was included in the 'The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story' box set that was released in 2010.
"One day I was playing my guitar on the edge of the bed, working on some song ideas, and the words 'born to run' came to me," Springsteen has said of the song's origin. "At first I thought it was the name of a movie or something I'd seen on a car spinning around the circuit. I liked the phrase because it suggested a cinematic drama that I thought would work with the music that I'd been hearing in my head."