IIRC, that was the period when Bruce was in a fight with his label and the E Street band was not recording much. I think Steve Van Zandt wrote a bit and produced Southside Johnny around then. Bruce gave away Fire and teamed with Patti Smith on Because the Night back then in part because he couldn't record.
I thought Rundgren produced Bat Out of Hell?
To make the comment above all the more timely in light of recent events, during that period the E Street Band backed Ronnie Spector on her cover of Billy Joel's "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" (which itself was a tribute to her singing—consider how both that song and "Be My Baby" begin with the same "boom, boom-boom, POW!" drum line). The record was credited to "Ronnie Spector and the E Street Band."
Backstreets magazine did a
pretty interesting article about Ronnie Spector's involvement with the Jersey Shore music scene during the 1976–77 period (she joined Springsteen on stage as a guest during two concerts; she also guested on an album by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes and then began regularly appearing live with them). It's fascinating to read that there were tentative plans for her to join the E Street Band on their next tour. But then Springsteen's lawsuit with his former manager, Mike Appel, was settled and he began recording
Darkness on the Edge of Town and there wasn't time for the band to support Spector as well. Who knows what might have been if the lawsuit had dragged on longer? I was pondering how different the E Street Band might have been with her as a vocalist in addition to Springsteen, and that in turn made me wonder whether Patti Scialfa would have joined the band in 1984 (I assume not—which in turn makes you assume she and Springsteen would not have had an affair in 1988 that led to his first wife divorcing him....).
