Born in the U.S.A.

After reading Ron Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July, meeting Kovic and playing a 1981 benefit for Vietnam veterans, Springsteen began a song called Vietnam. He took the new title from a Paul Schrader screenplay lying on his desk, and wrote Light of Day for Schrader's film instead. A solo version went on the Nebraska cassette with a note to Landau that it should be done very hard rocking, and that demo appeared on Tracks in 1998.

The band cut it at the Power Station in spring 1982. Roy Bittan says he heard a six-note figure in the sung chorus and played it on his new Yamaha synthesizer, aiming for a strange, Southeast Asian sound. Engineer Toby Scott sent the snare through a broken plate reverb, and Springsteen told Max Weinberg the drums mattered as much as the vocal. Takes ran to about ten minutes, and the record cuts most of the closing jam. Springsteen has said the song was about standing somewhere, and its desperate verses run against an anthemic chorus.

Misread

In September 1984 the columnist George Will wrote about Springsteen, and Ronald Reagan invoked him in a speech at Hammonton, New Jersey. Two nights later in Pittsburgh, Springsteen introduced Johnny 99 by saying he doubted the President had been listening to Nebraska. The song reached number nine in America and number five in Britain, and was nominated for Record of the Year.

He has played it more than a thousand times, at every show of the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, often as the opener, and in a snarling solo acoustic version throughout the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour. Covers include Stanley Clarke, Richard Shindell, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires, and the Replacements live in 1987. The upload in the hypersongs web is John Sayles's 1984 video, which sets concert footage from three Los Angeles shows to the album recording.