Bruce Springsteen Once Made Amends to a Film Director With a Hit Song in 1987

Songwriters are voracious creatures. They will devour inspiration anywhere they can find it if it leads them to a fantastic song. Occasionally, that can cause issues for those who provided that inspiration in the first place.

Bruce Springsteen took a title from a movie director and repurposed it for one of his most iconic songs. But at least Springsteen stepped up and atoned by doing the director a major solid.

Busy Being “Born”

Bruce Springsteen epitomized the working-class American superstar. As such, many filmmakers wondered if Springsteen could translate that quality to the silver screen. Paul Schrader, a top screenwriter and director, was one of them.

Around the time that Schrader was winning raves for his 1980 film American Gigolo, he set his sights on a script he’d written about a down-on-his-luck young man with hopes of making it in the world of rock and roll. He thought Springsteen would be ideal for the film.

Schrader sent the script to Springsteen. Bruce passed on acting in the film. But the title of the proposed movie, Born In The U.S.A., immediately lodged into Springsteen’s brain. He used it not just in his song about a Vietnam vet’s difficult return stateside but also as the title of the album that would make him a pop superstar in 1984.

Guiding “Light”

Meanwhile, Paul Schrader still had hopes of making his movie, albeit with different actors. Once Springsteen released Born In The U.S.A. and the phrase wedged indelibly into the culture, there was no way that the director could get away with that title.

Springsteen, guilty about his pilfering of the title, took Schrader out to dinner to talk to him about it. What if, he asked the director, he offered him another song to help him with the film? Schrader agreed to it. Springsteen came through with a song that, ironically enough, he’d first recorded as one of the countless tracks that were in contention for, but didn’t make it onto, Born In The U.S.A.

The song was originally titled “(Just Around The Corner To The) Light Of Day”. Schrader shortened it to “Light Of Day”. And, in a reversal of roles from what had happened earlier, he also used that as the title of the film.

Jett and Fox

Michael J. Fox snagged the role that was supposed to have belonged to The Boss in Light Of Day, which finally made it to theaters in 1987. Alongside rocker Joan Jett, Fox performed the song in the movie. Jett did a studio version with her band The Blackhearts, albeit credited to the movie’s fictional band The Barbusters.

That version squeezed into the Top 40 in 1987, spurred on by MTV giving the video plenty of play. But the movie itself didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Meanwhile, Springsteen, realizing the value of the track, started playing it live.

The only official release of “Light Of Day” by Springsteen came on his Concert/MTV Plugged live album, released in 1993. This song, and “Born In The U.S.A.” before it, prove that titles can make quite the impact even before they’re fleshed out into a whole work of art.

(Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images)

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