In the summer of 1977, Bruce Springsteen wrote a song with a very specific voice in his head: Elvis Presley’s. It was called “Fire,” a slow-burning rock-and-roll love song built on the kind of smoldering groove Elvis had owned in the 1950s. Springsteen had just seen Presley perform — May 28, 1977, at the Spectrum in Philadelphia — and the encounter lit a fuse. He finished the studio recording on June 17, 1977, and sent a demo toward Graceland. Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977, before the tape could reach him. The song Springsteen wrote for the King would have to find other voices.
“Fire” was recorded during the long, fraught sessions for Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen’s fourth album. It was one of 52 tracks left off the record — a staggering number that tells you how much material he was generating and how ruthless the final cut was. His manager and co-producer Jon Landau reportedly worried that Columbia Records would hear “Fire” and insist on releasing it as a single; it was that catchy, that obvious. Springsteen, protective of the album’s bleak, hard-won mood, kept it in the vault. Thematically, “Fire” was too joyful, too uncomplicated for the record he was making.
But Springsteen has never been precious about letting other singers have his songs — this is, after all, the writer who handed “Blinded by the Light” to Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (a US number one in 1977) and “Because the Night” to Patti Smith (number 13 in 1978). The first artist to release “Fire” was rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon, who had befriended Springsteen through E Street bassist Garry Tallent. Gordon cut it for his 1978 album Fresh Fish Special, recorded in December 1977 at Plaza Sound Studios in Manhattan and co-produced by Richard Gottehrer — with Springsteen himself playing piano on the session. Gordon’s version earned airplay on album-rock radio and even dented the Record World 101–150 chart, peaking at 106 in September 1978. A respectable showing, but not the breakout the song deserved.
The breakout came from an unlikely direction. The Pointer Sisters — Anita, June, and Ruth, newly slimmed down to a trio — were recording their 1978 album Energy when their producer, Richard Perry, played them Springsteen’s demo. Anita Pointer, who would sing lead, reportedly balked: “It’s too low for me,” she said. Perry insisted, the key was adjusted, and the result was magic. Released as a single in October 1978, “Fire” climbed to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1979, held off the top only by Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” It tied “Slow Hand” as the highest-charting single of the group’s career, reached number 14 on the R&B chart and 22 on adult contemporary, went Gold, and hit number 1 in Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and South Africa. A critic at Knight Ridder compared its girl-group drama to the Ronettes — high praise, and accurate.
Think about what that means: a song Springsteen wrote in 1977 imagining Elvis became, two years later, a defining record for a female vocal trio — sung by a woman who initially thought it was too low for her. That is the mark of a great song: it survives the journey from one imagined voice to another, picking up new meanings along the way. The Pointer Sisters didn’t just cover “Fire”; they possessed it, turning Springsteen’s smolder into something cooler, more controlled, and somehow more dangerous.
Springsteen, meanwhile, kept “Fire” in his own live repertoire. A scorching version recorded at Winterland in San Francisco on December 16, 1978, appeared on the Live/1975–85 box set, and in January 1987 — with the Pointer Sisters’ version long established as the hit — Springsteen finally released his own studio recording as a single. It reached number 46 on the Billboard Hot 100 and 45 on Cashbox, with a video built around an acoustic performance at the 1986 Bridge School Benefit. The single also charted in Ireland (18), Canada (42), Britain (54), and Australia (82). His own studio version wouldn’t see official release until 2010, when The Promise — the Darkness-era box set — included it with a newly recorded vocal.
The song’s cover history reads like a map of rock and pop’s tributaries. Shakin’ Stevens put it on the B-side of a 1979 single. Cher sang it on her 1992 Love Hurts tour. Babyface and Des’ree recorded it as a duet for the 1997 film Hav Plenty. Robin Williams performed a memorably unhinged parody of it as Elmer Fudd in 1983. And Leslie Cheung recorded a Cantonese version, carrying “Fire” into the Cantopop world. Few unreleased album outtakes have traveled so far.
There is a final twist worth savoring. In January 1987, when Springsteen released his own “Fire” as a single, the Pointer Sisters’ version was eight years old and thoroughly established as the definitive hit. Most artists would have left it alone. Springsteen put it out anyway — peaking at 46 on the Hot 100 — as if to say: this one is mine too. And in a sense, the two versions don’t compete; they complete each other. Hers is the hit; his is the source. Every great song has both a birthplace and an address, and “Fire” is lucky enough to have two.
What to listen for
“Fire” is the great might-have-been of Springsteen’s catalog that became a triumph anyway — just not his. He wrote it for Elvis, lost it to history, and watched it become someone else’s signature. If there’s a moral, it’s that songs don’t belong to the voices we imagine for them. They belong to whoever sings them like they mean it.