The 1975 Bruce Springsteen song that divided America: “A vaginal douche”
When Bruce Springsteen talks about his biggest musical influences of all time, there are two names which constantly come up, and those are The Beatles and Bob Dylan.
Focusing on the latter, Springsteen would often sing Dylan’s praises, especially when it came to celebrating his lyrical ability. “I was very influenced by Dylan,” he said. “I always say he’s the father of my country. He initially provided me with a picture of a country that I recognised. One that feels real, feels like the truth.”
You can hear that influence in a lot of Springsteen’s music, but particularly his early work. His debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, is quite clearly the work of a songwriter who wants to be the next Bob Dylan. Springsteen would see more success when he wore his influences less on his sleeve, and more tucked into his cuffs, but that wouldn’t come until albums like Born To Run.
How fitting then, that the person who saw more success with Bruce Springsteen’s Dylan-oriented work also saw success with a lot of Bob Dylan’s actual work the decade prior. Manfred Mann had taken Bob Dylan tracks from the 1960s and made them bigger hits than the original songwriter did. He went on to do exactly the same thing with some of Bruce Springsteen’s offerings in the 1970s.
Mann had previously shot to the top of the charts with Bob Dylan’s ‘Mighty Quinn’ and ‘If You Gotta Go, Go Now’, and he was about to do similar with Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Blinded By The Light’. The song didn’t originally appeal to Mann much on first listen, but when he sat down with his band, played around with the structure and managed to tweak the way the chorus and verse lead into one another, he came up with something that he figured was ready for the public.
“I just couldn’t figure out a way to do it. And then – and this is why you need to be in a band – our drummer Chris Slade said: ‘Play ‘Chopsticks’ over it’,” recalled Mann. “He wasn’t hearing ‘Chopsticks’ itself, just the chords, which fitted perfectly. So we recorded those as backing vocals and added that to the original.”
Mann and his band were soon proven right with these tweaks to the track, as it shot to the top of the charts in both the UK and the US. However, there may have been another factor at play which was contributing towards the track’s success. After finding out that Southern States refused to play the song on the radio because of the obscene lyrics, Mann realised that he had recorded some of the words incorrectly, and they gave the track a completely new meaning.
“Suddenly, I had the American record label on the phone saying: ‘We can’t get radio stations in the southern bible belt to play the record because everyone thinks you’re singing about a vaginal douche.’”
Bruce Springsteen
It turns out that rather than sing “cut loose like a deuce”, Mann had instead opted for “wrapped up like a deuce.” And to make matters even worse, the way he said the word “deuce” sounded like “douche”. It would later transpire that the reason so many people bought the record was that they were interested in working out what the musician was actually singing about.
America was divided over this potential double meaning, and while it might have been controversial at the time, it’s pretty funny to look back on – however, one person who couldn’t see the humorous side was Bruce Springsteen himself. You can understand the frustration, as a song that meant a lot to him had now become a bit of a joke. “One version is about a car, the other is about a feminine hygiene product,” he said, concluding, “Guess which the kids liked to shout more?”
