RALEIGH, N.C. — Bruce Springsteen wasn’t thinking about Wendy when he wrote a first draft of his 1975 classic “Born to Run.” Instead, he’s got a gold Chevy 6 on his mind, according to the original lyrics, which make their public debut this week at Duke University.

The 30 lines of lyrics, written in pen on a piece of 8.5.-by-11-inch lined paper, were purchased last December at a Sotheby’s auction by Floyd Bradley, a California man whose daughter graduates this weekend from Duke, as does Springsteen’s daughter.

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Bruce Springsteen’s original lyrics to “Born to Run” bear little resemblance to the final concert-opening anthem. The Associated Press

Bradley, 62, a retired computer software marketer who spent much of his life in London, paid $160,000 plus a commission, bringing the total to $197,000. “It was a lot. I was embarrassed to tell my children,” he said. “But they were very supportive after I told them.”

He bought them as an investment, he said. “It’s a piece of Americana, I think.”

The original lyrics, written in 1974, in Long Branch, New Jersey, bear little resemblance to the anthem that Springsteen typically plays each concert with the house lights on and the audience on its feet. But that familiar chorus of “tramps like us/baby we were born to run” is there as is a part that ended up much like the final version: “this town’ll rip the bones from your back/it’s A suicide trap/your dead unless you get out while your young.”

The “everlasting kiss” is there: “I was headin for the place where wild Angels die in An everlasting (or) neverending kiss.”

But there’s no mention of dying with Wendy during that kiss or of guarding Wendy’s dreams and visions.

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