SEE BELOW TO VIEW THE GALLERY It's hard to imagine the cover of Born To Run being anything but the iconic image of a smiling, bearded Bruce Springsteen leaning on the shoulder of sax player Clarence Clemons. Clad in leather and a ripped white vest, Springsteen looked every inch the rock star for this, his third album, released in August 1975. But 30 years on, New York photographer Eric Meola, who took the classic shoot, reveals it wasn't the choice of the Boss himself, who preferred one of the far moodier outside shots taken that day: "Bruce wanted another image - one of the fire escape shots, he wanted a 'serious artist' shot," says Meola, speaking from his home in the States. "One wonders what would have happened had we gone with it, but Jon [Landau, Bruce's manager] prevailed, and I thought it was the greatest cover the moment I saw it, it really had a sense of friendship and warmth, inviting you to listen to the music." The singer himself once admitted: "I always thought it was one of those records that you didn't have to hear. When you saw the cover, you said 'I want that one.'" "I remember very clearly the moment I first saw the cover shot," remembers Meola, whose exhibition of previously unseen pictures from the shoot receives its world premiere in Birmingham this month. "If you look at the contact strips there are images which are similar but also dissimilar - you can feel them leading up to it; it was that one magic moment because Clarence is leaning to the left and the guitar is going off to the right, there's an incredible sense of movement which went perfectly with the title." In all, 35 images will be on show and on sale - as well as a string of fabulous images from the Born To Run shoot, Meola is exhibiting a handful from his sessions for the album Darkness on the Edge of Town, including the wonderfully atmospheric picture Valmy, at one time considered as a possible cover for the 1978 album. Springsteen's third album, Born To Run celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2005, sparking Meola to dust down his negatives and compile an exhibition and book from the famed studio session. November is a double whammy for Brummie fans of the Boss; Snap Galleries, recently moved to Fort Dunlop from its former home at the Custard Factory, hosts the world premiere of the show, opening two days after Springsteen plays the NEC Arena with a night of folk, gospel and blues off the back of his recent We Shall Overcome Seeger Sessions album. "Life is now different for both of us, but he's still the same guy, the most genuine guy you ever met," says Eric. Meola first (literally) ran into Springsteen in the mid 70s when sheltering from the rain under a hotel awning, the two chatting about music and discussing lyrics from Bruce's second album, 1973's The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. The two met a week later at a Springsteen gig in Red Bank, New Jersey, before Meola got a call from his manager asking if he would do some photography for the album cover: "At the time I knew it was [called] Born To Run, I had heard a couple of the songs, early versions in concert, so I knew what the music was like," says Eric. "I had a sense of what the album was about. "We had talked about a few things, one of which was I wanted to shoot in black and white, which Bruce had his doubts about," says Meola. "He questioned me at length - I thought black and white would be more distinctive, you wouldn't have any distractions with colour; I asked them to bring black and white props with them, so everything they brought was black or white - Clarence's fedora, black leather pants, Bruce's black leather jacket... "What we had also talked about was the fact I kept reading there was a disparity between what you heard in concert and what you heard on the album - I couldn't do anything about the music obviously, but what I could do was somehow try and convey the imagery, that intensity and power. "It was Bruce's idea to just have him and Clarence on the album because they played off each other," Eric adds. "It was pretty much a situation where I asked them to do a lot of what they did on stage, moving around, playing off each other visually - which is a hard thing to do. "There were great moments when it looked relaxed and natural," says Eric. "We shot very quickly, changed the moment and set-up as much as possible, get a lot of variations - but there were awkward moments when it didn't feel right, so during those moments I would move in and do some close-up portraits of Bruce and Clarence and they'd break up laughing and we'd go on to the next thing." * Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run, unseen photographs from the archives of Eric Meola is at Snap Galleries, Fort Dunlop, from November 11 2006 to January 20 2007. Call 01327 861 091 or go to www.snapgalleries.com
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