Ramones would have been gifted Bruce Springsteen's first hit single if Springsteen's manager hadn't intervened

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After seeing Ramones play in New Jersey in 1979, Bruce Springsteen wrote a song for the New York punks, but was advised not to give it away

Ramones and Bruce Springsteen
(Image credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images | Aaron Rapoport/Corbis via Getty Images)

On March 25, 1979, Bruce Springsteen went to the Fast Lane nightclub in Ashbury Park, New Jersey to see his friend Patti Smith play. One year earlier, Smith had scored her first Billboard chart hit single with Because The Night, a song originally written by Springsteen during his studio sessions for his Darkness on the Edge of Town album, and passed along to the punk poetess by Jimmy Iovine, who was working on both Darkness... and Smith's Easter album. The Fast Lane show actually inspired Springsteen to write another punk rock song, not for Smith, but for the Ramones, who were also on the bill that March 1979 evening.

"I saw the band, I had a lot of fun, talked to them backstage, and I said, Maybe I'll write a song for the Ramones," Springsteen recalled in a December interview with Howard Stern. "I went home, middle of the night, took about 20 minutes, it was done."

As was customary, Springsteen played the song for his manager Jon Landau soon after writing it. Landau had observed that a number of Springsteen's more direct, poppier songs had become hits for other artists - Manfred Mann's Earth Band had scored a US number one single covering Springsteen's Blinded By The Light, while The Pointer Sisters reached number 2 on the Billboard chart covering Fire - and upon hearing Hungry Heart, he told Springsteen "Keep it for yourself."

Springsteen heeded the advice, and after recording the song for his 1980 album The River, it was chosen as the record's first single. Released without an accompanying video, the song reached number 5 on the Billboard chart, giving the New Jersey singer/songwriter his first mainstream hit.

"That's good management, dammit," Springsteen told Stern. "This thing was our first actual hit. We became a 'date night' band suddenly, where women started to come to the shows... Jackson Browne had all the good looking girls, the guys came to see us... some homoerotic undercurrent in our music, that was all there was to it [laughs]."

Ramones would never score a Top 40 hit single in America.

Watch Springsteen's full interview with Howard Stern below.

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Paul Brannigan
Paul Brannigan
Contributing Editor, Louder

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.