The Song That Took Bruce Springsteen Nearly 50 Years to Finish

Years before Warren Zevon started working on his 1980 album, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, producer Jon Landau mentioned an unfinished song Bruce Springsteen had shelved, “Janey Needs a Shooter. Zevon liked the title, but misheard it as “Jeannie Needs a Shooter” and began writing his own lyrics. With Springsteen’s blessing, Zevon went ahead and recorded his version, “Jeannie Needs a Shooter,” for his album.

The song had its origins nearly a decade earlier. Springsteen originally wrote it in 1971 and recorded a demo of it a year later at 914 Sound Studios.

Springsteen’s story is one of his most sexually graphic and centers around a promiscuous woman, Janey, and her multiple lovers, who are all wrong for her.

Well, Janey’s got a doctor who tears apart her insides
He investigates her and silently bates her sighs
He probes with his fingers but knows her heart only through his stethoscope
His hands are cold, and his body’s so old
Janey turns him down like dope

“Janey Needs a Shooter,” which features a melody pulled from the Impressions’ 1964 hit “Talking About My Baby,” was briefly considered for his second and third albums, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (1973) and Born to Run (1975), but never made it onto either one.

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The chorus is a reminder that Janey needs a different suitor, like him—Janey needs a shooter now
/ A shooter like me on her side / A shooter man who knows her style.

Janey needs a shooter now
A shooter like me on her side
Janey needs a shooter now
A shooter man who knows her style
The way that I know her style

Well, Janey’s got a priest from his marble pulpit he smiles
He provides consolation, and he hears her confession at any time
In the pages of his bible, he holds from what Janey hides
And with her doors open wide, she begs, “Come inside.”
But he’s been frozen so long on the outside

After letting Zevon listen back to the original he had worked on years earlier, Springsteen returned to “Janey” in 1979 and gave it a proper studio recording with the E Street Band.

Zevon’s version had a completely different storyline for “Jeannie” with a similar chorus.

I was born down by the river where the dirty water flows
And the cold wind cut through me, it cut right through my clothes
And the anger and the yearning, like fever in my veins
Set the fire burning

She came down from Knightstown with her hands hard from the line
From the first time I laid eyes on her I know that she’d be mine
Her father was a lawman, he swore he’d shoot me dead
‘Cause he knew I wanted Jeannie and I’d have’r her like I said

Jeannie needs a shooter
Shooter like me
Jeannie needs a shooter
Jeannie needs a shooter
Shooter on her side
Jeannie needs a shooter

After recording it in ’79, Springsteen also considered “Janey Needs a Shooter” for his fifth album, The River, but it still didn’t make the cut and was never performed live in the decades to follow.

While working on the 2020 album Letter to You, Springsteen revisited the song again, and along with the band and producer Ron Aniello, finally released it. “When he presented ‘Janey,’ in my head it was 1977,” said E Street drummer Max Weinberg, “so I played like it was 1977 but better.”

Of his long-held song, Springsteen said: “It was a lot of fun to sing in the mind of your 22-year-old self with your older voice,” said Springsteen of the song that was in waiting for nearly five decades. “It was quite a treat.”

Photo: Bruce Springsteen, 1978 (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)