[1] Springsteen started writing "Racing in the Street", shortly after the New Year's Eve 1975 show at the Tower Theatre, Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, along with "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "The Promise".
In late November and early December, he spent five more days working on the "harp version", which circulated for years among bootleggers, and was finally released as "Racing in the Street '78" on The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story.
[6] Midway through, Danny Federici's organ later joins in, combining to form what writer Robert Santelli termed "one beautiful, seamless sound".
[5][11] In any case, the song concludes with a moving fugue-like instrumental coda with Bittan's piano, Federici's organ and Weinberg's drums intertwining.
[15] Springsteen has said that this song commemorates the racing in the street that occurred on a little fire road outside his home base of Asbury Park, New Jersey.
[18] Rock has always had songs where women are won and lost as trophies in contests, but Springsteen treats that theme with much more compassion than usual in the genre.
[6] This perspective is amplified by writer Jeffrey B. Symynkywicz, who sees the romantic attachment formed in the story removing the protagonist from his perfectly constructed world of cars built to personal specification and no external commitments.
[19] While romanticization of the ordinary, anonymous Americans found in "Racing in the Street" is common in rock, Springsteen's detailed depiction of them in this song shows real understanding and compassion, perhaps due to his having lived among them.
[5] Rolling Stone's David Fricke echoes this view, saying it is "Springsteen's grim Darkness portrait of a generation racing to a dead end.
[20] The people in "Racing in the Street" are part of the central thematic development of Springsteen's cast of characters from Born to Run to Nebraska and beyond.
With the music almost gone, Weinberg would start tapping his drumstick, and the band would slowly begin a long instrumental build-up with Bittan's piano leading.
[28] Rolling Stone noted that in concert the song "draws its power from a deeper well, palpably accelerating with pensive desperation as Danny Federici's sorrowful organ clouds over Roy Bittan's ballerina piano figure.
Then, once "Rosalita" was dropped as the standard second-half main set closer, "Racing in the Street" often served in its stead for a while,[29] although by the 1985 U.S. stadium leg it was gone.
[30] The song virtually disappeared from Springsteen's concert repertoire in the following years, appearing just a few times on the 1995–1997 solo Ghost of Tom Joad Tour played on acoustic guitar (and usually accompanied by future E Street Band violinist Soozie Tyrell).
During the final Vote for Change concert in 2004, "Racing in the Street" was performed by Springsteen and the band with Jackson Browne sharing the vocals.
It returned in its full-band incarnation on subsequent tours beginning in 2007, including a lengthy 2009 version which appears on the DVD London Calling: Live in Hyde Park.
Springsteen released his own alternate version, "Racing in the Street '78", on The Promise, his 2010 double CD and triple LP of outtakes from Darkness on the Edge of Town.