ANAHEIM, Calif. — Peter Ames Carlin first heard Bruce Springsteen’s single “Born to Run” in 1975 when the future music biographer was a 12-year-old kid in a car headed home from a hike with his Boy Scout troop.

He was, he admits, less than impressed.

“I remember the disc jockey saying, ‘Well, this guy is supposedly the savior of rock and roll. Let’s see how it sounds,’” Carlin says on a recent phone call. “He played it, and it was like it didn’t sound like everything else I was used to hearing on the radio.

“Music was pretty breezy in those days,” he says. “That was the Bee Gees and KC and the Sunshine Band . Paul McCartney and Wings, and Elton John . I loved that stuff then, and I love it now.

“I hadn’t been prepared for how serious and operatic and intense the Springsteen s

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