This is one of those few albums of which you can flatly state that if you don’t have it, you should. Thirty years after its release Born to Run remains a testimony to rock’n’roll as a force of release and empowerment. Naive maybe, but at this stage Springsteen’s worldview had not yet been tainted by avaricious business and personal questioning. The album was Springsteen’s flamboyant farewell to the power of possibility. The opening track, Thunder Road, states the case definitively: “Well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk/And my car’s out back if you’re ready to take that long walk.” It is also the final instalment in the New Jersey trilogy, prefaced by Greetings from Asbury Park and The Wild, the Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle.Three years later, burnt by an injunction from his former manager and smarting from the criticism prompted by what was perceived as hype (he appeared on the covers of Newsweek and Time in the same week, billed as “The Future of Rock’n’Roll”), Springsteen would release the aptly titled Darkness on the Edge of Town. Growing up was painful, but Born to Run catches him and his friends at a moment of triumph. Eric Meola’s classic sleeve photograph of him casually leaning against the “big man” – Clarence Clemons – says it all: the rock’n’roll dream come true.The album has been remastered; the sound remains the same, only cleaner, but it survives the wages of time remarkably well. Two essential DVDs (for Springsteen anoraks, anyway) complete the box set: one detailing the preparations, the other a long-lost record of the famous 1975 London shows. Essential.www.brucespringsteen.com