Record Plant — 'Born to Run' Sessions, New York

The Record Plant at 321 West 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan was the primary studio for the recording of Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run' (1975) — an album that took fourteen months to complete, consumed an enormous budget by the standards of a Columbia Records act not yet proven at commercial scale, and produced one of the most celebrated records in the history of American rock. Springsteen and producer Jon Landau, who came aboard midway through the sessions, worked with obsessive attention to detail — the title track alone reportedly took six months to complete to Springsteen's satisfaction — building the record's wall-of-sound production layer by layer in the Record Plant's studios.

The 'Born to Run' sessions were marked by a combination of enormous ambition and enormous anxiety: Springsteen knew this was the album that would determine whether he had a career, and he responded by refusing to release it until it met an internal standard that kept shifting upward. The title track, recorded first, set the template — Phil Spector's Wall of Sound production aesthetic applied to rock and roll, with layers of guitars, glockenspiel, and Clarence Clemons's saxophone building to an almost orchestral density. The rest of the album was built to match it. Jon Landau, who had written the famous line 'I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen' before joining as producer, brought a focus and decisiveness to the sessions that helped Springsteen finish what he had started.

The Record Plant was one of New York's most significant recording facilities from its opening in 1968 through its decades of operation. Jimi Hendrix recorded there; John Lennon's 'Double Fantasy' was completed there shortly before his death. The studio closed in 1987 and the building has since been converted to other uses. The 'Born to Run' album it helped create went on to be certified platinum many times over and is consistently rated among the greatest albums in the history of rock and roll.