Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run’ lyrics up for auction

NEW YORK – Tramps like us, baby we were born to bid.

A handwritten, working lyric sheet for Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 hit “Born to Run” could sell for as much as $100,000 on Thursday, Sotheby’s has predicted.

The document used to be in the collection of Springsteen’s former manager, Mike Appel, said Sotheby’s, which did not reveal the identity of the seller.

Most of the lines in this rough 1974 version, written in Long Branch, N.J., are apparently unpublished and unrecorded, but the manuscript does include “a nearly perfected chorus,” the auction house said.

The title track of Springsteen’s 1975 album has revved up generations of fans — some of whom still refer to themselves as “Tramps,” like in the song.

Springsteen is known to scrawl his songwriting stream-of-consciousness in notebooks. His thought process, written in blue ink on an 8 1/2-by-11 sheet of ruled notepaper, could trigger a spell-checker meltdown:

“This town’ll rip the (out your) bones from yourback / it’s a suicide trap (rap) (it’s a trap to catchthe young) your dead unless / you get out (we gotto) while your young so (come on! / with) take myhand cause tramps

/ like us baby we were born to run.”

There are also some notes in the margins — “Wild” and “Angels” and a word that looks like “velocity,” with the letter “t” in Springsteen’s curlicue cursive.

“Although Springsteen is known to have an intensive drafting process, few manuscripts of “Born to Run” are available, with the present example being one of only two identified that include the most famous lines in the song,” Sotheby’s said.

Springsteen told The Associated Press in 2010 that he and Appel were “very good friends.”

The “Born to Run” manuscript is included in a sale of fine books and manuscripts. The low end of the pre-sale estimate is $70,000.