Fact #117318

Mike Smith (MD, Columbia Labels UK) : I still vividly remember my first encounter with Springsteen. There was a lad at school walking around with Born To Run under his arm. That was how you marked yourself out at school. You walked around with a record that told people what you listened to. And I remember getting my first sight of that incredibly iconic sleeve of Bruce and Clarence Clemmons, and I was so intrigued – just by the photograph, the power of that image, It made me think, ‘I wanna know about that.’

So I went up to this guy and we started talking about it and he let me borrow it and it absolutely blew my mind, took me to another place. Before that I was listening to pop music, Abba and stuff like that. I was only just beginning to find out my own tastes in music.

Hearing Born To Run, Thunder Road and Jungleland for the first time … especially Born To Run because it’s so immediate, when you’re young. What I loved was that it just conjured up a world … I was growing up in suburban Merseyside and here’s this record about cars and girls in America. It painted such an unbelieveably vivid picture of a world that I’d dreamt about and wanted to see and be a part of.

Then I was at college when Born In The USA came out and Springsteen was definitely the most iconic American artist for me, so it became the soundtrack to my college days.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, December 2008)