“Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” by Bruce Springsteen

"Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" is Bruce Springsteen's origin myth set to a strut, a track from Born to Run in 1975 that tells how the E Street Band came together. The hero, Bad Scooter, is Springsteen in thin disguise, and the song makes a point of the arrival of Clarence Clemons. What the title means, Springsteen admitted he never figured out; he just knew it mattered.

Steven Van Zandt came up with the horn intro, and the horn section is stacked: Clemons and Michael Brecker on tenor sax, Randy Brecker on trumpet and flugelhorn, David Sanborn on baritone and Wayne Andre on trombone, with Roy Bittan's piano, Garry Tallent's bass and Max Weinberg's drums strutting underneath. Springsteen produced with Mike Appel and Jon Landau, and Jimmy Iovine engineered. As a single it flopped, but album rock radio and the faithful never let it go.

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