“Like a frightened little boy”: the band Bruce Springsteen scared the life out of
Bruce Springsteen might be one of the biggest artists of his generation, selling out stadiums and arenas wherever he goes. He has sold millions of albums over the years—11 of those albums charting at number one—but curiously, he has never topped the singles charts.
Not with ‘Born to Run’ or ‘Thunder Road’; not with ‘Dancing in the Dark’, ‘Born in the USA’ or ‘Glory Days’, all of which arguably deserved it. He didn’t even chart with ‘Blinded by the Light’, which he released as a single on two separate occasions. That song has been to the top of the charts, though, but as a cover and not with ‘The Boss‘ at its helm.
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band recorded ‘Blinded by the Light’ for their 1976 album The Roaring Silence, and the single went on to top the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the only Springsteen-penned song to hit number one in the process.
Originally written and performed by The Boss for his debut record, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, three years earlier, his version is a little less slick but a whole lot more soulful. There’s more space and sparseness in the music of the original (despite so much going on in the song), but there is nothing sparse about the lyrics. By far and away, it is one of Springsteen’s wordiest songs. The images flash by relentlessly, and with so many words to keep up with, it’s no wonder that some lines could easily pass a listener by.
Perhaps that is why, in the chart-topping cover of Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, there are some discrepancies in the images. While the engine-obsessed Springsteen sings in the refrain, “cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night”, referring to the image of a 1932 V8-powered Ford automobile, which car enthusiasts have dubbed the ‘deuce coupe’, the Manfred Mann lead and backing vocals sing something different altogether.
“I don’t think Springsteen liked our ‘Blinded by the Light’, ‘cos we sang ‘wrapped up like a douche’, and it wasn’t written like that, and I screwed it up completely”, backing vocalist and drummer Chris Slade later remembered. “Warners in America said, ‘You’ve got to change ‘douche’, cos the Southern Bible belt radio stations think it’s about a vaginal douche, and they have problems with body parts down there’. We tried to change it to ‘deuce’, but then the rest of the track sounded horrible, so we had to leave it. We just said, ‘If it’s not a hit, it’s not.’”
Of course, the song was a smash and caused plenty of debate about whether they’d got the lyrics right or wrong, a debate which some people have attributed to the single’s successful journey. If you get people talking, you’ll get even more people listening so they can join in and have their say. “Apparently Springsteen thought we’d done it deliberately” Slade said, “Which we hadn’t, so if I ever saw him I’d avoid him and cringe away like a frightened little boy!”
Springsteen seems to have seen the funny side of the whole thing, though, joking about the mix-up during a 2005 instalment of VH1 Storytellers when running through what each line in the song meant. “Cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night. This is an interesting line,” he said to a knowing laugh from the audience. “This song is my only number one song. I have never had another number one song, and it wasn’t done by me. It was done by Manfred Mann, which I appreciate!”
Concluding, he said: “But they changed this line. Mine said, ‘Cut loose like a deuce’. Theirs said, ‘Cut loose like a douche’. I have a feeling that that is why the song skyrocketed to number one! Deuce was like, little deuce coupe, a two seater hot-rod. Douche, of course, is a feminine hygienic procedure. So they’re different! But what can I say? The public has spoken.”
