Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen Discuss on ‘Because the Night’ 45 years after

By editorial board on November 28, 2023

On March 2, 1978 - one day before the release of the album "Easter" - the single "Because the night" was released for Arista Records

As part of the research for her book Why Patti Smith Matters (University of Texas Press), Caryn Rose speaks with Bruce Springsteen on Beacuse the Night.

Following “Radio Ethiopia”’s lack of success, Arista Records would have strongly preferred that Patti hire someone with more of a production track record. “So I fought for Jimmy, and he had something to prove,” Patti said. “Jimmy worked really hard with us, but he really wanted to make a special mark on this record.” Springsteen had a backlog of material for his record and was continuing to write, so he had a lot of unfinished songs lying around. This included a track initially called “The Night Belongs to Lovers.” (Variety)

 

 

 

As it happened, this was the first song Springsteen recorded on his first day in the studio, but he only had a rough vocal and no lyrics except the chorus.

Springsteen told Caryn Rose, “I was a tremendous admirer of Patti, you know, and I was just flattered that she was interested in collaborating, and I was just happy that she found something that she could do with the song, you know, because that song would still be in my archives if it wasn’t for her. And it would be something that nobody had ever heard of.”

There was one big problem: Patti was not interested in singing someone else’s songs. Patti recalss:  Even now it makes me laugh,” Patti explained: “Every day I’d come to the studio, he [ Iovine] wouldn’t say hello to me, he’d say, ‘Did you listen to the song? Did you listen to the song?’ I’d say, ‘No, I haven’t listened to it yet.’ ‘Should we go back to your apartment and listen to the song?’ For days. ‘Did you listen to the song?’

She continued:

“At that time, I was building a romance with my future husband, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, and he lived in Detroit, so I only got to talk to him once a week. I’m home and I’m waiting for Fred to call. 7:30 comes, he doesn’t call. 8:00 o’clock, I was getting really agitated, and I noticed the tape sitting on the mantle and I thought, ‘I’ll listen to that darn song.’ I put it on and — it’s flawlessly produced, great chorus, it’s in my key, it’s anthemic. So Fred finally calls me at like almost midnight, but by midnight, I’d written all the lyrics.” 

Read the full article on Variety


Also Hungry Heart was meant to be written for the Ramones  but Springsteen decided to keep for himself.

 

The Boss was not yet the monument it would become a few years later, with the incredible hat-trick The River, Nebraska and Born in The USA, but it was already the hope of rebirth of American rock.

 

Bruce Springsteen has never been too precious about keeping material to himself, often giving tracks away to friends or to artists that he admired. However, after writing a song for punk icons the Ramones, The Boss couldn’t bring himself to let go. (Source Faroutmagazine)

Springsteen greatly appreciated the Ramones so much that when they asked for him to pen a song for them, he couldn’t resist the offer.

“I think I just started reading about it, and it was a little record store in the Village that was importing all of the punk-rock records,” Springsteen once told Rolling Stone about his first memories of punk. “And I went, and I bought every record – not that I’ve heard, but that I’ve heard about.

“So I bought all of these early punk-rock records unheard, just to see what that was about. And that was really the first time I actually heard the records, so I just brought them home and played them by myself in my room.”

Springsteen had handed Smith ‘Because The Night’, which she had a hit with, and this got Joey Ramone hoping that ‘The Boss’ could do the same with his band. That very evening, he went home and did exactly that, writing ‘Hungry Heart’. So I went home, and I sat at my table, and I wrote it in about the time it took me to sing it.

“I brought it in, and we went to make a demo for it, or I played it for [Johnny Ramone], and he said, ‘Nah, you better keep that one.’ He was right about that. It did pretty well.”

This is how the Boss tells it, but it seems that Hungry Heart’ allegedly didn’t even make its way to the band before the Boss had changed his mind after his manager, John Landau, told him there was no way that he could give the song away.

After all, Smith just had chart success with ‘Because The Night’, and if the Ramones did well with ‘Hungry Heart’, Springsteen could foster a reputation for being a ghostwriter rather than an artist in his own right.



 

 

 

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