The Bruce Springsteen reject that became a Warren Zevon 1980 hit
Following the moderate success of his formative trio, Earth, in the late 1960s, Bruce Springsteen set his sights on global stardom. Through the early 1970s, he built an early incarnation of his E Street Band and took the show as far out as California while working on material for his first studio exploits.
With a Columbia Records deal signed in 1972, things were looking up, but tough times were in store for the following year.
After the surprising commercial disappointment of his debut, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., in 1973, Springsteen had already begun pouring long-laboured material into his second shot, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Sadly, despite a positive reaction from critics, Springsteen’s second studio met a similar fate in the charts.
Encouraged by the critical reception of the first two studio attempts, Columbia gave Springsteen a generous make-or-break recording budget for his third album, understood to be a last-ditch effort at commercial reception.
“So, I was going to have to give it everything I had,” Springsteen recalled of the tense moment in an interview with BBC News in 2018. Thankfully, the third album Springsteen rustled up was Born To Run, a surefire golden ticket to fame and fortune.
Although the Boss soared to higher heights subsequently, 1975’s Born to Run remains one of the most cherished and essential records in his towering catalogue. As Springsteen was bruiting this gem of compact splendour, naturally, there were a few off-cuts.
Like many classic albums, Born to Run was shaped as much by the songs left behind as those that made the final running order. Springsteen’s perfectionism meant several strong compositions were set aside if they didn’t serve the overall narrative or flow of the record.
In total, there were seven known rejected tracks during the Born to Run project; some of these have been subsequently released as rarities: ‘Linda Let Me Be the One’ and ‘So Young and in Love’ appeared in the Tracks box set and mixes of ‘Lonely Night in the Park’ and ‘Walking in the Street’ were broadcast in 2005 on E Street Radio in celebration of the album’s 30th anniversary.
One of the other Born to Run rejects was ‘Janey Needs a Shooter’. The song was a regular acoustic feature of Springsteen’s live show from as early as 1972 but was left forgotten in the locker for decades. In 2020, Springsteen finally honoured the song by recording it for his album Letter to You.
Its eventual revival highlighted Springsteen’s long-standing habit of revisiting older material. Throughout his career, he has frequently returned to unfinished songs, believing that certain ideas simply require the right moment, or the right perspective, to reach their full potential.
The title, ‘Janey Needs a Shooter’, however, might ring a bell for some readers as a hit for Warren Zevon. Zevon’s reimagination of the track, titled ‘Jeannie Needs a Shooter’, appeared on his 1980 album Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School and was released as its second of three singles.
The journey of ‘Janey Needs a Shooter’ demonstrates how little truly goes to waste in Springsteen’s songwriting catalogue. Even songs that fail to make the cut can enjoy a second life years later, whether through reinterpretations by other artists or fresh recordings by Springsteen himself, reinforcing the remarkable depth of material he produced during one of the most fertile periods of his career.
Listen to Warren Zevon’s ‘Jeannie Needs a Shooter’ and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Janey Needs a Shooter’ below.
