Born to Run: Why the Poor Sound Quality?

Wild Billy's Circus Story - that's my favorite Springsteen cut if we're talking sonics. Springsteen's early stuff was pure magic at the time.

I am not sure I am buying the claim that Springsteen wanted the album to sound gritty or whatever. My take is that, like most of the pop records of that era, record companies were encountering greatly increasing costs due to the artists' fighting for a greater piece of the financial pie. The area over which the record companies still had almost total control was in recording and producing records. Since they figured few people took care of their records nor cared how they sounded, they saved costs by putting out wretchedly bad-sounding records. I have listened to many versions of this LP including the Classic and the half-speed, and it appears as if the problems is the recording itself. Like they say, you cannot polish a turd.

springsteen has had total control, since record 'one', thanks to john hammond. close enough for rock and roll

I have a US first pressing of "Animals" and it's terrific.