Racing in the Street

Springsteen began writing it after a New Year's Eve show in 1975 and recorded it between July 1977 and March 1978, the most worked-over song of the sessions, with Springsteen and Jon Landau producing. The album came out on June 2, 1978. It is a ballad that opens with Roy Bittan's piano and ends in a long instrumental coda: the narrator has a dead-end job, prizes the car he built and races for money. The title nods to Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Street", and the instrumental break alludes to the Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby". A faster 1978 alternate, "Racing in the Street '78", on The Promise (2010) has the car as a 1932 Ford. It reached number 1 on radio airplay in Australia.

It was a regular on the 1978 Darkness tour and an eight-minute standalone on the 1980 and 1981 River tour; the Tempe 1980 version runs 8:30. Our upload comes from the concert film of the Darkness album performed at the Paramount Theatre in 2009. Townes Van Zandt covered it in 1993 with a country arrangement, Emmylou Harris in 1982 and Roger Taylor of Queen in 1984.