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In 1977, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band released a cover of the Bruce Springsteen song “Blinded by the Light.” The song charted higher than Springsteen’s own version. The Manfred Mann version hit No. 1, and Springsteen has never had a No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Manfred Mann was worried about seeing Springsteen after the cover because of one word in the song.

A band said they worried about how Bruce Springsteen would react to their cover

Springsteen released “Blinded By the Light” on his first album. Four years after he released it, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band released their own version of the song. In it, they accidentally changed the line “Cut loose like a deuce” to “wrapped up like a douche.”

“I don’t think Springsteen liked our ‘Blinded By The Light,’ ’cos we sang ‘wrapped up like a douche’, and it wasn’t written like that and I screwed it up completely,” Mann told Record Collector. “It sounded like ‘douche’ instead of ‘deuce’, ’cos of the technical process – a faulty azimuth due to tape-head angles, and it meant we couldn’t remix it.”

He said they tried to change the line, but they couldn’t.

“Warners in America said, ‘You’ve got to change ‘douche’, ’cos the Southern Bible belt radio stations think it’s about a vaginal douche, and they have problems with body parts down there,’” he said. “We tried to change it to ‘deuce’ but then the rest of the track sounded horrible, so we had to leave it. We just said, ‘If it’s not a hit, it’s not.’”

Mann said he was worried about Springsteen’s reaction to their cover. He avoided him at events from then on.

“But in the end, it was No. 1 in America, and so many people came up to us after and said, ‘You know why it made No. 1? … Everyone was talking about whether it was deuce or douche,’” he said. “Apparently Springsteen thought we’d done it deliberately, which we hadn’t, so if I ever saw him I’d avoid him and cringe away like a frightened little boy.”

What other bands have covered Bruce Springsteen?

Manfred Mann’s Earth band is far from the only band that has covered a Springsteen song. Artists like The Band, Elvis Costello, Lucy Dacus, David Bowie, Vampire Weekend, and Johnny Cash have covered his music. 

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Manfred Mann said Bob Dylan seemed happier with their cover of his song

Manfred Mann’s Earth Band also covered some of Bob Dylan’s songs. They didn’t stay entirely truthful to his lyrics, which Mann believed Dylan respected.

“I think Dylan really loved the stuff we did, and in the early-60s he said he preferred our versions to anyone else’s,” he said. “That’s because we treated them with a lack of respect and changed things around.”

People were shocked that they would make changes to Dylan’s writing, but Mann said he didn’t care.

“On ‘Just Like A Woman,’ there’s a middle bit with ‘amphetamines and pearls’, and we thought, ‘God, no one’s gonna play that on Radio One,’ so we took it out,” he said. “People said, ‘You can’t take it out, it’s Dylan.’ And we said, ‘Just watch us.’”

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