In 1973, Bruce Springsteen wrote the greatest summer song ever

In 1973, Bruce Springsteen wrote the greatest summer song ever

This essay was originally published in 2025. In June 1973, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band went to 914 Sound Studios to make their second album of that year, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. He’d recorded his debut, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., with Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos the previous summer, pinching pennies just so they wouldn’t blow through their advance from Columbia Records. Upon Greetings’s descent into our …