PINK CADILLAC

Official studio version

Well now you may think I'm foolish
For the foolish things I do
You may wonder how come I love you
When you get on my nerves like you do
Well baby you know you bug me
There ain't no secret 'bout that
Well come on over here and hug me
Baby I'll spill the facts
Well honey it ain't your money
'Cause baby I got plenty of that
I love you for your pink Cadillac
Crushed velvet seats
Riding in the back
Oozing down the street
Waving to the girls
Feeling out of sight
Spending all my money
On a Saturday night
Honey I just wonder what you do there in the back
Of your pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac

Well now way back in the Bible
Temptations always come along
There's always somebody tempting
Somebody into doing something they know is wrong
Well they tempt you, man, with silver
And they tempt you, sir, with gold
And they tempt you with the pleasure
That the flesh does surely hold
They say Eve tempted Adam with an apple
But man I ain't going for that
I know it was her pink Cadillac
Crushed velvet seats
Riding in the back
Oozing down the street
Waving to the girls
Feeling out of sight
Spending all my money
On a Saturday night
Honey I just wonder what it feels like in the back
Of your pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac

Now some folks say it's too big
And uses too much gas
Some folks say it's too old
And that it goes too fast
But my love is bigger than a Honda
Yeah, it's bigger than a Subaru
Hey man there's only one thing
And one car that will do
Anyway we don't have to drive it
Honey we can park it out in back
And have a party in your pink Cadillac
Crushed velvet seats
Riding in the back
Oozing down the street
Waving to the girls
Feeling out of sight
Spending all my money on a Saturday night
Honey I just wonder what you do there in the back
Of your pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac

Page last updated: 24 Feb 2010

Intro

Music and lyrics by Bruce Springsteen, PINK CADILLAC was first released in May 1984 as the B-side to DANCING IN THE DARK, the Born In The USA album's first and biggest hit single. The song was later included on the Tracks box set in 1998 and on the 18 Tracks collection the following year. It was heavily covered over the years, and a version recorded by Natalie Cole became a Top 10 hit single in 1988.

Studio Recording

Springsteen recorded a home demo of the song on or around 03 Jan 1982 at Thrill Hill East, Springsteen's home studio in Colt's Neck, NJ. See the home demo for the detailed story.

A full band take of PINK CADILLAC was recorded on 31 May 1983 at The Hit Factory, New York City, NY, and was officially released on 09 May 1984 as the b-side to DANCING IN THE DARK, about a month before the official release of the Born In The USA album.

PINK CADILLAC was initially stated for inclusion on the Born In The USA album. As the album was prepared for release at the dawn of the compact disc era, a packaging standard had yet to be set. The plastic jewel-box was not initially the rule and cardboard CD package prototypes were made (see example pictured below). The album's track listing had yet to be finalized when these prototypes were designed; the outer packaging listed PINK CADILLAC and omitted NO SURRENDER and I'M GOING DOWN.

On 21 Aug 2008, during at Magic Tour show at Sommet Center, Nashville, TN, Springsteen introduced I'M GOING DOWN saying that "this is a song that almost didn't make the Born in the USA record; it was this or 'Pink Cadillac.'..."

Lyrics

Springsteen took the lyrics "Eve tempted Adam with an apple" from his late-1981 home demo LOVE IS A DANGEROUS THING.

The lyrics "My love is bigger than a Honda / Yeah, it's bigger than a Subaru" in a song about a Cadillac is probably a reference to Buddy Holly's NOT FADE AWAY which has a line that goes "And my love is bigger than a Cadillac / I'll try to show it if you drive me back".

PINK CADILLAC is viewed to be using automobile travel as a metaphor for sexual activity, as it was the case with the Wilson Pickett 1966 R&B classic MUSTANG SALLY (originally written and recorded by Mack Rice in 1965) and later Prince's 1983 song LITTLE RED CORVETTE.

Single Releases

The "DANCING IN THE DARK / PINK CADILLAC" single was released on 09 May 1984. It was issued worldwide with no remarkable picture sleeve variations. PINK CADILLAC also appeared on several EPs worldwide. For a close-to complete and detailed list, check out the PINK CADILLAC official releases list.

Album Releases

PINK CADILLAC was included on the Tracks box set which was released in November 1998 (see section below), and the 18 Tracks collection in April 1999.

The song was also included on Killer B's (From The U.S.A.), a rare 1985 Canada-only promotional compilation cassette of Springsteen single B-sides; catalogue # COL CDNT 239.

The Tracks Box Set

In the liner notes of Tracks, Bruce Springsteen introduces the box set as follows:

During long intervals between my record releases, as I was spending more and more time in the studio, when I met a fan out on the street I was often asked, "What are you guys doing in there?" I regularly pondered that question myself.

What we were doing in there was making a lot of music, a lot more music than I could use at any one time. As a result, my albums became a series of choices – what to include, what to leave out? I based my decisions on my creative point of view at the moment – the subject I was trying to focus on, something musical or emotional I was trying to express. In certain instances, as on Darkness on the Edge of Town, Nebraska, and The Ghost of Tom Joad, these choices crystallized the album I was making. On some of my other records the reasons I had for choosing one song over another, in hindsight, feel a good deal less significant. One of the results of working like this was that a lot of music, including some of my favorite things, remained unreleased.

This collection contains everything from the first notes I sang in the Columbia recording studio, my early and later work with the E Street Band, through to my music in the 90s. It's the alternate route to some of the destinations I travelled to on my records, an invitation into the studio on the many nights we spent making music in search of the records we presented to you. I'm glad to finally be able to share this music; here are some of the ones that got away.

-- Bruce Springsteen, September 1998

Bruce Springsteen's albums were thematically linked even if they were not strictly concept albums; so some tracks that didn't fit the theme of the album ended up orphaned, not necessarily because they didn't meet his high standards, but because, he says, they didn't fit in with the tone or themes he mined for each set. Many of these unreleased studio outtakes got under the hands of bootleggers. Discussing that issue in 1984, Springsteen told Rolling Stone's Kurt Loder, "We record a lot of material, but we just don't release it all. [...] I always tell myself that some day I'm gonna put an album out with all this stuff on it that didn't fit in. I think there's some good material there that should come out. Maybe at some point, I'll do that."

During a break in The Ghost Of Tom Solo Acoustic Tour, Springsteen thought that "if it's gonna be a year or longer in between records, I have all this music that I know is very good that I never released and I should release some of it whether it was just a CD or something. In that period of time, I should put something out because people would like to have it and I'd like to see it get out." He told Toby Scott (his audio archivist and recording engineer), "send me all the archives, send everything that we recorded". Scott then went to work gathering the potential material from Springsteen's massive audio library (located, along with Sony's sound archives, in the high-tech Iron Mountain facility near Buffalo, NY). "For a week or so," he told Billboard in a Nov 1998 interview, "I just listened to everything that I'd done that we hadn't put out. I made some very brief notes in a notebook, and then I just put it away. It was something that I could do at some point when I get to that place in a new project where I'm not sure how long it's going to take and it would be nice to sort of fill the gap so the fans wouldn't be so long without hearing any music from me".

Springsteen told Mark Hagen in an interview for Mojo Magazine published in January 1999, "So it began just with that idea and we listened to about 250 songs, maybe more, I made quick notes in a notebook and put it away. A year went by, more maybe, and I came off the Tom Joad tour and I began to write acoustically again and I wrote about half a record. Then I got stuck and said, 'Well, I'm going to put this aside for a while.' Then I wrote half of an electric record, and hit the same place. So I thought, instead of waiting for another year to put something out I'll put some of this music together. So once again I went back to the archives." According to interview comments made by engineer Toby Scott (Springsteen's audio archivist and recording engineer), it was in February 1998 during solo sessions being conducted at Thrill Hill East (Bruce's home studio in Colt's Neck, NJ) that Springsteen told Scott that the time was right to proceed with the long-anticipated box set of archived, unreleased studio takes. Thrill Hill East served as the main operational center for all Tracks project activities.

Springsteen told Billboard that the songs were culled from between 200 and 300 tunes. According to Toby Scott, the number was down to about 128 songs by late June 1998. It was then narrowed down yet again in July to about 100 songs that were prepped for the Tracks release. Although the project was originally projected to be a 6-disc set, there was a commercial decision made later in the summer to reduce the size of the release to a 4-disc (66-track) set. The package was delivered to Sony in mid-September in order to facilitate the mid-November 1998 release schedule.

Unreleased songs from the Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ sessions were not included on the box set due to ongoing and still-unresolved court proceedings involving most of these unreleased 1972 recordings. The court battle wasn't resolved until in 2001, and those material are now free for release at any time. The opening four tracks of the box set – which were culled from Springsteen's 03 May 1972 Columbia Records audition – were not part of the court proceedings.

The Tracks box set was released on Columbia Records on 10 Nov 1998. It's a 4-disc set consisting of a total of 66 tracks (almost 4.5 hours long), 10 of which were heretofore unavailable single B-sides, 6 were demos and alternate versions of already-released material, and 50 (48 studio and 2 live) were never-before-released songs recorded during the sessions for Springsteen's many albums. Some tracks were treated with a recent touch-up here or there to give the older recordings a fresh polish.

• Disc 1 consists of material from 1972 to 1980, including Springsteen's very first Columbia Records audition for legendary A & R executive John Hammond. This disc also features additional songs most of which recorded for (but never released on) Springsteen's first four albums.
   
• Disc 2 consists of material from 1979 to 1983, taken primarily from the recording sessions of The River, Nebraska, and Born In The USA. Springsteen describes this disc as "almost the completely other album from 'The River'."
   
• Disc 3 consists of material from 1982 to 1987, taken primarily from the recording sessions of Born In The USA and Tunnel Of Love.
   
• Disc 4 consists of material from 1989 to 1998, taken primarily from the recording sessions of Human Touch.

Click here to display/hide detailed track listing with locations and dates.

Live History

PINK CADILLAC debuted on 01 Jul 1984 at the Civic Center in Saint Paul, MN, the second date of the Born In The USA Tour. It was frequently performed throughout the 1984-1985 tour, making a total of 94 appearances out of the 156 dates of the tour. Check out the live 19 Nov 1984 version.

[Click here to display/hide detailed 1984 and 1985 on-tour performances list]

After the Born In The USA tour, however, PINK CADILLAC essentially disappeared from the Springsteen repertoire; it was later performed only a handful of times.

PINK CADILLAC has long been a staple of Melissa Etheridge's live repertoire. During her 02 Oct 1996 show at Bradley Center in Milwaukee, WI, Springsteen joined Etheridge onstage to close the show with a duet of PINK CADILLAC. The song was also played off-tour, with Clarence Clemons, on 06 Nov 1998 at Club 251 in West Palm Beach, FL.

[Click here to display/hide detailed 1996 and 1998 off-tour performances list]

During The Reunion Tour, PINK CADILLAC was sound-checked twice (17 Oct 1999 at Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA, and 14 Mar 2000 at Alltel Arena in Little Rock, AR) but never played in the regular set. In Los Angeles, it was only the song's instrumental intro that was played, mostly with Nils on guitar and Max on drums; this is the instrumental intro that was played during the 1985 stadium tour.

[Click here to display/hide detailed 1999 and 2000 sound-checks list]

On 01 Sep 2001, Bruce joined Clarence Clemons and his band at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ, for a short encore to close the show. PINK CADILLAC was among the four songs on which Springsteen played. Check out the live 01 Sep 2001 version. Bruce also played the song during a birthday bash for Clarence Clemons that was held on 12 Jan 2002 at BB King's Nightclub in Foxwoods Resort And Casino, Mashantucket, CT.

[Click here to display/hide detailed 2001 and 2002 off-tour performances list]

PINK CADILLAC appeared very rarely during The Rising Tour, played during the encore of only two shows. Check out the live 03 Oct 2003 version.

[Click here to display/hide detailed 2003 on-tour performances list]

The song was played on 29 Apr 2007 at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ, during a private benefit for the Ranney School of Tinton Falls, NJ. For this gig, Springsteen was backed by Bobby Bandiera and his band. Backstreets described the song as "bluesy" and "driven by 'Peter Gunn'-style horns". Springsteen also played the song at next year's benefit, on 13 May 2008 at The Stone Pony, again backed by Bobby Bandiera's band.

On 17 Oct 2009 Springsteen performed at The Stone Pony during a private fundraising benefit for his son's school. He was backed by Bobby Bandiera's band and PINK CADILLAC was among the songs played that night.

The Light of Day celebrated its tenth anniversary on 16 Jan 2010 at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park, NJ. The unbilled Bruce Springsteen made a surprise guest appearance, joining several of the acts onstage: Willie Nile, Jesse Malin, and Joe Grushecky & The Houserockers. During the latter's set, Springsteen played PINK CADILLAC on which he was also joined by Danny Clinch and Willie Nile. The songs was also performed on 23 Jan 2010 during a private benefit for the Ranney School held at The Stone Pony. Springsteen was again backed by Bobby Bandiera's band. By the time this page was last updated, this was the last time PINK CADILLAC has appeared live.

[Click here to display/hide detailed 2007-2010 off-tour performances list]

PINK CADILLAC rarely appeared during the Working On A Dream Tour, appearing only four times.

[Click here to display/hide detailed 2009 on-tour performances list]

The Garden Of Eden Story

During Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's landmark 1984-1985 Born in the USA Tour, PINK CADILLAC was used as a second-set comic relief number, elongated to include a low-budget skit involving Springsteen as a Jimmy Swaggert-style televangelist, alternating with a sleazy used-car dealer, describing the history of "the conflict between worldly things and spiritual health", using a wheeled-out blackboard to locate the Garden of Eden, first in Mesopotamia, but later discovered to actually be "ten miles south of Jersey City, off the New Jersey Turnpike." The story of Adam and Eve was altered to include their heretofore unknown exit strategy: "But right here on this back lot -- for $9995 and no money down -- I've got their getaway car. And if you've got the nerve to ride! son, I've got the keys... to the first... pink Cadillac!" For an example, check out the live 19 Nov 1984 version.

Appearance in Movies

PINK CADILLAC was used in the Brian De Palma directed 1986 film Wise Guys, but was not included on the film's soundtrack album. The song plays while Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo are driving a pink Cadillac to Atlantic City.

Plot: Harry Valentini and Moe Dickstein are both errand boys for the Mob. When they lose $250,000, they are set up to kill each other, but they run off to Atlantic City and comedy follows. Starring: Danny DeVito, Joe Piscopo, Harvey Keitel, Dan Hedaya, Lou Albano Directed by: Brian De Palma Produced by: Aaron Russo Written by: George Gallo, Norman Steinberg Distributed by: MGM Release date: 18 Apr 1986

Covers

The most famous version of PINK CADILLAC is Natalie Cole's cover which she recorded in an R&B style. She released it on her 1987 album Everlasting and became a Top 10 hit single the following year. Check out Natalie Cole's version for more details. Jerry Lee Lewis recorded the song as a duet with Bruce Springsteen, releasing it on his 2006 album Last Man Standing. Check out Jerry Lee Lewis' version for more details. Another notable cover is by Graham Parker, recorded for the Light Of Day: A Tribute To Bruce Springsteen tribute album. Check out Graham Parker's version for more details.

According to Brucebase, in October 1982 Springsteen dropped in at Clover Studios in Los Angeles to visit Chuck Plotkin and Toby Scott, who are the respective producer and recording engineer for Bette Midler's work-in-progress album No Frills. Springsteen donates his (at the time) unreleased and never-performed song PINK CADILLAC to the Midler project. It is unclear if a pre-recorded demo was submitted or if Bruce spent some time teaching the song to session musicians. The actual Midler recording of the song took place a couple of weeks later, but Springsteen wasn't involved in that formal session. Midler gave the public world debut of PINK CADILLAC on 08 Dec 1982 in Portland, OR. She used it as a show opener during her entire Dec 1982 - Sep 1983 tour. However the Midler live version, which apparently mirrors her studio version, is a major adaptation, with Bruce's middle lyric verse removed and additional lyrics of a song by John David Martin called CADILLAC WALK sequenced into the end of Bruce's song. Although Midler was allowed to perform the song in that arrangement throughout her 82-83 tour, Springsteen, after hearing the Midler studio version, would not allow her to release it on her July 1983 No Frills album. The song was pulled from the album and replaced by a Midler cover of the Rolling Stones' BEAST OF BURDEN. However, a live version of PINK CADILLAC / CADILLAC WALK was released on a promotional CD titled Art Or Bust (Atlantic, catalogue # 30805-1).

PINK CADILLAC was heavily covered over the years, found on many artists' studio and live albums, compilations, and singles. It is also included on many Bruce Springsteen tribute albums. For a complete and detailed list, check out the PINK CADILLAC released covers list.

Available Versions

List of available versions of PINK CADILLAC on this website:

• Official studio version
• Home Demo
• Live 19 Nov 1984 version
• Live 01 Sep 2001 version
• Live 03 Oct 2003 version
• Natalie Cole's version
• Jerry Lee Lewis' version
• Graham Parker's version

Related pages:

• Official releases list
• Released covers list

Credits / References

Thanks Jake (ol'catfishinthelake from BTX and Greasy Lake) for the lyrics help.

Some of the above info about the studio recording and the live performances are taken from Brucebase. Info and scans for the some of the above Bruce Springsteen official releases are taken from the Lost In The Flood website. "The Garden Of Eden story" section is copied from Wikipedia.

Request

Any additions, comments, or corrections to this page are welcome. You can contact me via the below form or by email: . You will be credited. Thanks in advance.