Darkness on the Edge of Town

Springsteen wrote it, and it closes Darkness on the Edge of Town (June 2, 1978, Columbia), produced by Springsteen and Jon Landau, 4:30 on the album and not a single. He conceived it in early 1976, when it was subtitled "The Racer" for a time; sessions began on June 1, 1977 and were set aside after five days, and a new version was recorded from scratch on March 8, 1978 and completed two days later at the Record Plant in New York, then mixed on March 30. The story is of a hard-luck loser who keeps his spirit alive through street racing. Rolling Stone ranks it eighth among the hundred greatest Springsteen songs, and Wikipedia counts it as his thirteenth most-played song at concerts.

The upload we hold is the live recording from The Summit in Houston on December 8, 1978, track four of set one at 4:27, first issued as video in 2010 as part of the box set The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story and as audio in September 2017 as the nineteenth release in the Bruce Springsteen Archives, with proceeds going to the MusiCares Hurricane Relief Fund. Some Houston coverage gives the date as December 12, and the upload could be the video or the audio source; only the official release is certain. The band that night was Springsteen, Roy Bittan, Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, Garry Tallent, Steven Van Zandt and Max Weinberg.