The song was one of the early ones written by Bruce Springsteen in 1973 for his first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J..

It was then recorded by the Manfred Mann Earth Band in 1976, becoming a mega hit all over the world.

The song has dozens of interpretations, the most common that it’s a song about drugs – primarily cocaine and marijuana. Springsteen has never responded directly to that assertion, but he did say this about the song:

“I was under pressure from the A&R guy to have a song on the (debut) album they could release as a single. So I wrote the song one night in my bedroom, going through a rhyming dictionary. That rhyming dictionary was on fire that night.”

Springsteen also talked about the song on an episode of VH1 Storytellers. He said a lot of the references were personal, including experiences he’d had and people he’d met on the Asbury Park Boardwalk.