In his autobiography, Bruce Springsteen says he loosely envisioned "Born to Run" as a series of vignettes, following its character throughout the day, with "Thunder Road" serving as an "invitation" to the album and opening with a harmonica that suggests the beginning of a "new day." Springsteen stated at a 1978 concert that the name of his song had been inspired by seeing a poster of the 1958 Robert Mitchum film Thunder Road, though he didn't see the movie itself. In his autobiography Born to Run, Springsteen describes Landau as an "astute arranger and editor"  who "guarded against overplaying and guided our record toward a more streamlined sound". Speaking to author Brian Hiatt about "Thunder Road" in 2005, Landau states it "was fantastic, but it was a little unwieldy, a little unfocused, a little more like a jam piece. I remember talking with Bruce about a few ideas about how to just reshuffle the deck a little bit, and keep the song building from the very beginning right through the end." Joining Landau were musicians Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg, who would go on to form the core of the E Street Band and work with Springsteen for the next forty years. Speaking with author Brian Hiatt, Bittan describes the Thunder Road's instrumental coda as a collaboration with Springsteen:  “it seemed like it needed something. So I said, ‘well, what if we do a little instrumental?’ I’d play a little something, and then Bruce would play something, so it kind of came about in a very beautiful way.” During Springsteen's writing of the lyrics to "Thunder Road", instead of "skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets", he had written, "skeletons found by exhumed shallow graves". Max Weinberg convinced Springsteen to move away from the darker lyrics and stay consistent with the blue collar spirit of the album. The lyrics to "Thunder Road" describe a young woman named Mary, her boyfriend, and their "one last chance to make it real." Musically, the song opens with a quiet piano (Roy Bittan) and harmonica (Springsteen) introduction, meant, as Springsteen said years later in the "Wings For Wheels" documentary, as a signifier that something was about to happen. The title phrase is not used until the middle section of the song. After the closing line, there is a tenor saxophone and Fender Rhodes duet played by Clarence Clemons and Bittan in the instrumental coda.