“Meeting Across the River” by Bruce Springsteen

Track seven on Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, out on Columbia in August 1975, "Meeting Across the River" is where the record quits sprinting and drops to a murmur. Wedged between the uptempo rush of "She's the One" and the epic closer "Jungleland", it's a dark little character sketch, its men apparently bound through the Hudson tunnel from the Jersey side toward New York with a connection waiting on the far end, and it plays like the last reel of a film noir.

E Street pianist Roy Bittan, the jazz veteran Richard Davis on upright bass and Randy Brecker's hushed, haunting trumpet are all it needs, with Springsteen producing alongside Mike Appel and Jon Landau and Jimmy Iovine engineering. It rode along as the B-side of the "Born to Run" single; in concert it usually comes paired with "Jungleland", minus the trumpet and with Garry Tallent on bass.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.