Las Vegas Sun

May 8, 2024

Bruce Springsteen ‘Born to Run’ manuscript sells for $197,000

Bruce Springsteen

John Minchillo / AP

This Nov. 7, 2013, photo shows Bruce Springsteen onstage at the Stand Up for Heroes event at Madison Square Garden in New York.

NEW YORK — A handwritten working manuscript of Bruce Springsteen's 1975 hit "Born to Run" has sold for $197,000 at a New York City auction.

It sold at Sotheby's on Thursday. The pre-sale estimate was $70,000 to $100,000.

Sotheby's says the document had been in the collection of Springsteen's former manager, Mike Appel. It didn't reveal the seller's or buyer's identity.

Sotheby's says most of the lines in this 1974 version are apparently unpublished and unrecorded. However, the manuscript does include "a nearly perfected chorus."

It was written in Long Branch, N.J., in blue ink, on an 8½-by-11-inch sheet of ruled notepaper.

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