Peer closely at the cover of Born to Run – Eric Meola’s enduring, black-and-white portrait of Bruce Springsteen as he leans against his bandmate, sax player Clarence Clemons – and you’ll notice a button clipped to the singer’s Fender Telecaster guitar strap. Small and easily missed amid all that leather, it reads: “Elvis the King, King’s Court, Elvis Presley Fan Club of NYC.” It’s no great secret that from a young age the Boss had worshipped the King. So on the night of 29 April 1976, 50 years ago today, the then 26-year-old decided to demonstrate exactly how much.
It was 3am. Springsteen had just played a show in Memphis – another stop on his Born to Run tour, the eight-month crusade that had turned a scrawny, scrappy bar-room poet from New Jersey into a cover star on both Time and Newsweek. Fizzing with post-gig adrenaline, he hailed a taxi and asked to be taken to an all-night diner. “Yeah, there's one right out by Elvis's house,” the driver replied, as Springsteen later recalled on The Graham Norton Show. “Elvis’s house?!” he said. “You know where Elvis lives? Take us there, right now.”
