“Spirits in the Night” – Single by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band
from the album Nightingales & Bombers
B-side: “As Above So Below Part 2”
Released: July 18, 1975
Songwriter: Bruce Springsteen
Charted No.97 in US
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band is an English rock band formed by South African musician Manfred Mann. Their hits include covers of Bruce Springsteen’s “For You”, “Blinded by the Light” and “Spirit in the Night”. After forming in 1971 and with a short hiatus in the late 1980s/early 1990s, the Earth Band continues to perform and tour.
Keyboardist Manfred Mann started in the 1960s with the self-titled band that had such hits as “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” and Bob Dylan’s “The Mighty Quinn” and then moved on to jazz fusion-inspired Manfred Mann Chapter Three before forming the Earth Band in 1971.
The original line-up of Manfred Mann’s Earth Band consisted of Mick Rogers (guitar and vocals), Manfred Mann (keyboards, Minimoog synthesizer and vocals), Colin Pattenden (bass guitar) and Chris Slade (drums and vocals). In its very earliest stages, the band was simply billed as “Manfred Mann” and thus a continuation of the 1960s group.
The US breakthrough for the band came in the third week of February 1977, when they charted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light” from The Roaring Silence. Before this hit, Mick Rogers and Colin Pattenden had left the band (after Nightingales & Bombers) and Chris Thompson (lead vocals, guitar), Dave Flett (lead guitar, backing vocals) and Pat King (bass) had been quickly recruited to replace them (although Rogers still contributed backing vocals to the album).
Taking advantage of the publicity of their hit song, the band re-released another Springsteen song, “Spirit in the Night”, re-titled “Spirits in the Night”, which the band had released the previous year on Nightingales & Bombers, in a vocally re-cut version with Chris Thompson taking a new lead vocal in place of Mick Rogers’ vocal on the original album version. Following this popular success, the Earth Band released the aforementioned Watch (1978), which produced another UK hit single in “Davy’s on the Road Again”.
This single reached #No 15 in the Dutch Top 40 on on 4 October 1975
Broadcast date: 19 September 1975
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