Because the Night

Despite her large cult following and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career (she was inducted in 2007), "Because The Night" was Patti Smith's only hit, making it an anomaly in her discography, which was aimed at a far more narrow audience. For many not familiar with Smith's career or the history of punk, this is the only recognizable song of hers. The producers of the 2013 movie CBGB played to that audience when they portrayed Smith singing this song at the famous club in 1975 - two years before she recorded it and a year before it was written. In the film, Smith is played by Mickey Sumner, who is Sting's daughter.

Bruce Springsteen started writing this song in 1976, but he didn't work on it in a studio until a year later, after settling a legal dispute with his manager, Mike Appel. He started recording it for his 1978 Darkness On The Edge Of Town album, but he wanted all the song to follow a theme: how people react when they don't have "freedom from dread." "Because The Night" didn't fit this narrative, so he didn't slate it for the album. The song lay dormant until Springsteen's producer, Jimmy Iovine, convinced him to give a copy to Patti Smith, who eventually got around to filing in the verses and recording the song. Iovine was also producing Smith's Easter album and convinced her to record it for the set.

Smith wrote the verses in one night in 1977 while waiting for her boyfriend, Fred "Sonic" Smith, to call. Fred, a founding member of the MC5, lived in Michigan and performed with his band Sonic's Rendezvous; Patti was in New York. They relied phone calls to stay in touch, but they were both poor and long distance calls were very expensive, so they limited their talks to about once a week, always at night when the rates were cheaper. One night, Patti was expecting his call at 7:30, but it didn't come. That's when she played Springsteen's cassette demo for the first time, listening to it over and over while she wrote lyrics about her yearning love. She got rather specific: Love is a ring, a telephone By the time Fred called around midnight, the song was done. This was very unusual for her, as she typically took a lot longer to compose lyrics.