On June 4, 1984, Bruce Springsteen released Born in the U.S.A., his seventh studio album, and kicked his career into an unpredictable new gear. Augmenting his well-loved classic rock style and haunted lyricism with polished production and accessible pop melodies, the Jersey icon struck gold, platinum and diamond with Born in the U.S.A.: it was the best-selling album of 1985 (it was certified 17x platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2022), spun off seven Top 10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 - an achievement only matched once before by Michael Jackson's Thriller - and led to his biggest live shows yet with The E Street Band, in football stadiums across the globe.

It was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon that's been explored in almost everything but reissues and box sets. (Only a new color vinyl pressing of the album, with new liner notes, will be issued by Legacy Recordings to commemorate the milestone.) Conspicuously absent, too, are traces of Springsteen's most notable era-specific foray into truly uncharted territory: dance remixes. Columbia Records commissioned extended, dub and radio-friendly versions of Born in the U.S.A.'s first three singles - "Dancing in the Dark," "Cover Me" and the anthemic title track - that were unlikely crossovers on Billboard's dance/disco survey. Unlike the non-LP B-sides of singles like these, none of the mixes have ever been compiled or released on CD, and you won't find them on digital services like Spotify or Apple Music - just YouTube rips of the old vinyl by remix enthusiasts.

You'd be forgiven for thinking Springsteen might have been embarrassed by this left-field step - a position emphatically denied by Arthur Baker, the legendary producer/mixer who created all these versions of the songs. In a chat with The Second Disc, Baker shed some light on how he came to mix one of rock's least mixable icons, the legendary session players that made them possible, the enthusiastic reactions from the artist, and who's really to blame for their lack of availability.

There's Something Happening Somewhere

If you were a fan of dance music in the '70s and '80s, Baker's reputation was established, less as a remixer and more as a proper producer. The Boston-raised DJ oversaw some disco sessions at Intermedia Studio that were bought by production heavyweight Tom Moulton and released as TJM for Casablanca. Relocating to New York in the early '80s, Baker was the producer of the highly influential electro/hip-hop smash "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa and The Soul Sonic Force as well as "Confusion," a treasured single by British post-punk outfit New Order. His Streetwise label released 1983's Candy Girl, the debut album by Boston R&B boy band New Edition.

Baker's fortunes changed when he was commissioned to do club mixes of Cyndi Lauper's breakthrough single "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and follow-up "She Bop." The exciting mixes put Baker's name on the lips of tastemakers, particularly at CBS Records (who distributed Lauper's label Portrait). "[Cyndi] brought me to the attention of an A&R guy who's a friend of mine, Joe McEwen," Baker explained. "He had been a music journalist and radio DJ who lived in Boston. He heard my Cyndi mix and he spoke to Jon Landau [Springsteen's manager] about me potentially doing a mix on 'Dancing in the Dark.'"

Born in the U.S.A.'s lead single was Springsteen's boldest bid for pop crossover ever: a hypnotic melody propelled by synthesizers and a monster rhythm track by E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg. The big-budget music video showed the newly-buff singer leading the group through the song in concert, climactically pulling a fan (played by future Friends star Courteney Cox) onstage to dance at the clip's end. For Baker, a fan of Springsteen ever since attending the fateful Harvard Square concert in the fall of 1974 that prompted Landau, then a reviewer, to proclaim his eventual client "rock and roll's future," he was thrilled at the prospect of working on a Springsteen song, although he was most excited about taking the track back to the singer's roots.

"I thought it was a really good song, and I thought it was really underproduced, almost like a demo," Baker said. "Usually his songs had a lot of overdubs and arrangement; this was very sparse. I figured I could add some more music, some sweetening, going more in the Phil Spector approach that some of his earlier records had...If you're gonna call it 'Dancing in the Dark,' you better make sure it's a good dance record!"

The suite of "Dancing in the Dark" remixes - the 12" "Blaster Mix," its radio cutdown and a dub version - deviate the least from the album versions, mostly turning up the juice on the mix (with the help of engineer Chris Lord-Alge) and adding thundering electronic percussion and keyboard overdubs courtesy of "Planet Rock" co-writer John Robie. Springsteen's simmering guitar chords were brought to the fore, and the finishing touches came courtesy of "answer" backing vocals throughout, recorded by session singers Cindy Mizelle, Jocelyn Brown and Baker's then-wife, Tina B.

"We went into The Power Station to do some overdubs and started working on the mix there," Baker recalls. "Chris was from New Jersey, so he was really excited about working on it. We went into my studio afterward to cut the background vocals, then I went back to The Power Station to finish mixing." In those days, his approach would be to create different song passages - working here from two 24-track master recordings working as a 48-track - then mixing them down to 1/2" tape, cutting them together and creating efficient edits for the different versions on the single.

"You tried to get shit done quickly," Baker explained. "When I worked in my own studio, I could take time, leave the mix up and mess around. At the time I was doing quite a bit of cocaine, too. But when they're paying for studio time, when there's a budget, you want to get it done quickly."

The session was augmented by one very special extra personnel: Springsteen himself stopped by The Power Station to get a glimpse of Baker at work. "Bruce came in and hung out, which was really cool," Baker said fondly. "He wanted to see what was going on. He actually got us a case of beer while we were working! The AC went out while we were mixing, and he went around the corner and got us a case of Budweiser." (Springsteen's main bit of feedback was a wish to downplay the backing vocals, which were nonetheless used more prominently on the dub.)

Whole World is Rough, It's Just Gettin' Rougher

"Dancing in the Dark" became Springsteen's biggest hit on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 2 - but surprised industry watchers when the 12" helped the song land at No. 7 on Billboard's dance survey in August 1984. It later became the biggest seller on the format that year, but was not without its share of listeners shocked by what Baker did to The Boss.

"I remember on one of the New York radio stations, I woke up one morning - I didn't hear the song, but I heard them say, 'That was just the controversial Arthur Baker remix of "Dancing in the Dark"! What do you guys think?'" Baker recalled with a laugh. "They started ranting about it. Someone said, 'Someone should kill that guy! There's no way Bruce knew about it!' It was really controversial!"

Baker was undeterred by any detractors, knowing that his client was satisfied. "I just did what I did, you know?" he said. "After I finished that and they liked it, I didn't feel any pressure, other than the want to make something that was good. You want each mix you do to be better than the next one." Not long after "Dancing in the Dark" proved itself as a hit, Baker had an opportunity to make lightning strike twice with another Springsteen single, getting a call from McEwen to consider remixing the album's second single, "Cover Me."

For Baker, the first challenge was in McEwen's message from Springsteen himself about the track: "Bruce doesn't like the song - he doesn't know how to play it." "Cover Me" was written at David Geffen's request for Donna Summer, but Landau convinced Springsteen to keep the track for himself. (Summer recorded another song Bruce gave her, "Protection," in 1982.) The artist seemed conflicted about how much to make the song another dance track, keeping the rhythm lively but adding layers of searing guitar as if to obscure his intentions.

"I liked the song, but I didn't like the track," Baker said of the album version of "Cover Me." "It was a little fast - I don't know if they sped it up - and the groove was not great. It was really just a rock track. It wasn't 'Dancing in the Dark.' It needed something." That "something" became Springsteen's most radical reinvention on record yet. Working this time with Springsteen's longtime engineer Toby Scott, Baker reshaped "Cover Me" into a reggae-influenced number, akin to Third World's 1978 transformation of The O'Jays' "Now That We Found Love." The "Undercover Mix" added fresh bottom end from Moja Nya bassist Brian Rock (who Baker had just recruited for new bass lines on a remix of The Rolling Stones' "Too Much Blood"), replaced much of the guitar with organ and keyboards by Gary Henry, who'd played on many Sugar Hill Records releases; and flavored the track with percussion by session legend Bashiri Johnson.

There was one last cherry on top, too: going through the "Cover Me" multitracks, he discovered an unused, "Gimme Shelter"-style female backing vocal that he quickly identified as his friend Jocelyn Brown, who'd contributed to the "Dancing in the Dark" remixes, and promptly reinstated her work. "I'm bringing up tracks and I hear this female singer ad-libbing. And I go, "Shit, is this Jocelyn?'" Baker remembers. "I called her up and asked if she'd ever done ad-libs on a Springsteen track. She said, 'Oh, yeah! A few years ago, I did.' I think I told her I'd make her more famous than she was, because I was gonna use her ad-libs." (Brown, a session singer with the Salsoul Orchestra and Inner Life, coincidentally scored her only Billboard Hot 100 hit that same year, the terrific "Somebody Else's Guy." A No. 1 dance hit released in 1985, "Love's Gonna Get You," has become a cratedigger classic, prominently sampled in the SNAP! smash "The Power," George Michael's "Too Funky" and countless others.)

Talking with Baker, it was clear the "Cover Me" remixes still excite him. "That one I play often, when I DJ," he said. "If I'm gonna play any kind of vinyl set, I'll play that." Audiences loved it too: "Cover Me" reached No. 7 on the Hot 100 and gave Springsteen another dance hit, too, peaking at No. 11 on Billboard's disco survey. (In addition to the "Undercover Mix," the 12" included a radio cutdown and two dubs.) Just as crucially, it finally cracked the code for Springsteen as to how to incorporate it in his live sets. "I went to see Bruce at Giants Stadium on the Born in the U.S.A. Tour," Baker recalled, "and he opened with 'Cover Me,' using our intro and our bass line." (Listening to the version on Live 1975-85, it's clear that Garry Tallent took a cue from Rock's work.)

40 Years Burning Down the Road

Born in the U.S.A wasn't losing steam by the year's end, and Columbia next picked the title track for single release. What began life as an acoustic tune sung from the point of view of a burned-out Vietnam War veteran - recorded in the same brace of lo-fi demos that became 1982's Nebraska - was shockingly recast as another barn-burning pop anthem, potent enough to deeply confuse Ronald Reagan and conservative pundits during his presidential re-election campaign.

For a third time, Baker was brought in to remix a single, this time working with the duo of engineers/editors Albert Cabrera and Tony Moran, better known as The Latin Rascals. Together, they dialed up the drama, chopping and echoing samples of Springsteen's voice and sudden orchestral and electronic stabs over the existing keyboards on the track. The final result, "The Freedom Mix" (plus a radio mix and dub), was admittedly cacophonous where its predecessors were more tuneful - and Baker is pretty honest assessing it as the least of the three. "'Born in the U.S.A.,' it is what it is," he sighs. "It's in the midst of all The Latin Rascals, the orchestra hits - all that crap. I've been over the top before, but Landau liked it." But "Born in the U.S.A.," a No. 9 pop hit, did not make the dance charts at all, which did not surprise Baker.

Baker would not remix the remaining singles to Born in the U.S.A. ("I'm on Fire," "Glory Days," "I'm Goin' Down" and "My Hometown"), although many of the mixes would be packaged on a 12" box set released in England. And Baker's work would become a calling card that got him work as a remixer and producer, including with a few of Bruce's friends (Baker co-produced the all-star protest song "Sun City," organized by then-former E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt, and also did remixes for the charity single "We've Got the Love" by Jersey Artists for Mankind, which included E Streeters Springsteen, Weinberg, Clarence Clemons, Nils Lofgren and Tallent as producer) and at least one of Springsteen's heroes (Baker mixed Bob Dylan's Empire Burlesque in 1986).

Decades later, Baker is still booked and busy, hosting Baker's Revenge on SiriusXM's Studio 54 channel, writing his memoirs and working on catalogue titles including Edsel's ongoing Dance Masters sets devoted to classic remixers and a forthcoming reissue of the soundtracks to the 1984 Beat Street for the same label. But even he wishes any of the Springsteen mixes saw the light of day, on Dance Masters, digitally or otherwise - and, to hear him say it, it's not The Boss that's the hold up, now that he sold his master recordings and publishing to Sony Music Entertainment for a healthy payout.

"I wanted to use them on Dance Masters," Baker tells us. "When I tried to get them, no one would even answer my request at all. But about six months ago, Bruce played Ft. Lauderdale. I went to the gig and I had dinner with Steve Van Zandt and Jon Landau. I hadn't seen them in forever. I mentioned it to Jon, and he said, 'We really have nothing to do with it, but if you ever need to, I'll give you a call and I can help.'" Here's hoping that call takes place some day, to reacquaint audiences with a time where Bruce Springsteen truly had the world dancing in the dark.