| Open All Night | |
| Cover: | OpenAllNight.jpg |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Bruce Springsteen |
| Album: | Nebraska |
| B-Side: | "The Big Payback" |
| Released: | November 1982[1] |
| Recorded: | June 23, 1982 |
| Genre: | Folk rock, rock and roll |
| Length: | 2:58 |
| Label: | Columbia |
| Prev Title: | Atlantic City |
| Prev Year: | 1982 |
| Next Title: | Dancing in the Dark |
| Next Year: | 1984 |
"Open All Night" is a song written and recorded by rock musician Bruce Springsteen, which first appeared on Springsteen's 1982 solo album Nebraska.
Of the 10 songs on Nebraska, "Open All Night" is the only one to feature an electric guitar. With a Chuck Berry-style guitar riff, the song tells the story of an unnamed narrator's all-night drive across industrial New Jersey to reach his girl, Wanda, whom he met when she was a waitress at the Route 60 Bob's Big Boy.
"Open All Night" was released as a single in the UK, backed by "The Big Payback",[2] but did not chart. It was also released as a single in The Netherlands and Spain.[2] Though never released as a single in the United States,[2] it garnered enough album oriented rock airplay to reach #22 on the U.S. Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
Springsteen performed this song infrequently until the Sessions Band Tour of 2006, when it was transformed into an eight-minute "show-stopping rave-up" whose already surreal lyrics[3] were made more strange by being rapped against a big band swing arrangement and a pseudo-Andrews Sisters female backing vocal trio.[4] [5] [6] This is the version that appears on the Live in Dublin CD and DVD.
Jay Farrar of Son Volt recorded a version which was released in 2005 on .
In November 2014 Pearl Jam covered the song in Lincoln, Nebraska.[7]
According to authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon:[8]