NEW YORK — In the summer of 1975, Bruce Springsteen was nobody's Boss.

His nascent career was crumbling, just another over-hyped "new Dylan" about to get dumped by his label. Two of his band members had quit. The bearded bard of the boardwalk was wrestling with his third (and last?) album, obsessively rewriting the lyrics and rearranging the music, spending an outrageous six months on a single song.

Yet Springsteen remained sustained by a lonely but ambitious vision, convinced he could recreate the little symphonies echoing through his head for an audience of millions around the world. He was right.

"Born to Run" was released in August 1975, a rock 'n' roll masterpiece that assumed near mythic proportion. Thirty years later, as a special anniversary edition of the album was readied for release, Springsteen recalled how making the record consumed his young life.

"Everything I knew and dreamed about was packed into those songs," said Springsteen. "I had the desire to be great, to do something passionate, to capture something about living that I was yearning for myself.

"I wanted the whole thing."

He got it, from the opening notes of "Thunder Road" to the album-closing epic "Jungleland." But little came easy as he chased an elusive sound that was part Roy Orbison, part Phil Spector and all Bruce Springsteen.

For Clarence Clemons, sax player for Springsteen's E Street Band, that meant 16 straight hours creating the solo that anchors "Jungleland." For the hit single "Born To Run," sessions stretched out over half a year.

"I was 25 years old, with no place to go and nothing to do — that helped," Springsteen said of his slavish musical devotion. "We worked, and worked, and worked. It was very frustrating. But in the end, luckily, all of everything we did ended up in there."

In a documentary DVD accompanying the remastered "Born to Run," band members offer their recollections of the often fruitless recording sessions.

"Everyone remembers the experience quite truly," Springsteen said with a laugh. "And everyone was centered around this thing, that we suffered. No one forgot that. Everyone had that in common."

They all shared another thought: Springsteen, child of the Jersey Shore arcade, was going for the brass ring this time.

"I knew, because I knew the songs, that this album was going to be phenomenal," said "Born to Run" co-producer Jon Landau, who eventually became Springsteen's manager.

After "Born To Run," Springsteen wound up in a protracted legal battle with his first manager; his follow-up album, "Darkness On the Edge of Town," didn't appear until three years later. By then, the sprawl and bombast of "Born to Run" was in Springsteen's rearview mirror, never to return on record.

Springsteen, in fact, confessed that he hadn't listened to the album in two decades until earlier this year. When he finally did hear it again, the setting was perfect: driving in his car, at night, through the New Jersey landscape immortalized on the record.

"I thought I knew exactly how it would sound, but it surprised me," Springsteen said. "It was a nice moment driving back from the city, and it caught me by surprise again. There's no other record (of mine) quite like it ... I never made another one."