2 March, 1978.

So this is what happens to Bruce Springsteen rejects!

Originally written by Springsteen, he and the E Street Band first recorded this in June 1977, but it didn’t go well. In fact, Springsteen spent months struggling with the song and was about to give up on it completely, seeing it as just ‘another love song’, until his engineer Jimmy Iovine came up with a suggestion.

At the time Iovine was producing Patti Smith’s album Easter, his big break as a record producer, and desperately wanted to find a song that would give her a hit record. Knowing that Springsteen wasn’t going to include the track on his next album Darkness on the Edge of Town, he suggested giving the song to Smith. Springsteen agreed saying, “if she can do it, she can have it.” – and do it she did.

On its release this hit the top twenty in six countries, including reaching number thirteen in the US, whilst making the top ten in Sweden and here in the UK – where it spent twelve weeks on the chart and peaked at number five, making it her only UK hit.