Runner Blinded By The Light Manfred Mann's Earth Band

Runner Album: Somewhere in Afrika (1984)
Blinded By The Light Album: The Roaring Silence (1976)
by Manfred Mann's Earth Band

"The Runner", also called simply "Runner", is a song written by Canadian rock musician Ian Thomas and released in 1981 on his album of the same name. Inspired by the story of Terry Fox, "The Runner" was covered by French singer Sheila later that year, but its most famous rendition was recorded by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, a British band known for making hits of reworked cover songs, and released as a single in 1984, shortly before that year's Summer Olympics. The timing of the Manfred Mann's Earth Band version made it a success, and it reached number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.

Ian Thomas is a Canadian singer, songwriter and musician, whose songs have been successfully covered by several other artists.

Thomas was inspired to write "The Runner" by the story of Terry Fox, a Canadian athlete who lost a leg to cancer and attempted to run with his prosthetic leg from the East Coast of Canada in Newfoundland and Labrador to the West Coast in British Columbia, but was forced to stop in Ontario due to medical concerns when cancer had been discovered in both of his lungs. Fox died in 1981. Thomas said that in making the song he "wanted to capture that gallantry, the importance of passing on the flame".

His version was included in The Terry Fox Story, a 1983 docudrama about Fox.

The timing on the Manfred Mann's Earth Band version was especially good, as it came out right before the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, prompting especially heavy play. Trevor Rabin, at that time the guitarist of the progressive rock band Yes, played the guitar solo on this track.

The video for this version, directed by Lindsey Clennell, received heavy airplay on MTV. In it, the band performs near a campfire at night (shot on a soundstage), interspersed with video of runners racing or carrying the Olympic flame, much of which was footage shot for the previous Summer Olympics in 1972 and 1976. A 12-second sequence focused on American sprinter Robert Taylor, along with other parts from the 100 metres in Munich.

This version of Runner was used in the movie The Philadelphia Experiment (1984).

The song was included on the American release of their album Somewhere in Afrika (1984). With the 1998 series of remastered reissues, the song was instead appended to the reissue of Criminal Tango. It was also included on the compilations The Best of Manfred Mann's Earth Band Re-Mastered, Odds & Sods – Mis-takes & Out-takes, the Leftovers disc of the 40th Anniversary box set and the deluxe edition of Mannthology.

The single edit (which fades early) is rarer on CD, having only been reissued on The Complete Greatest Hits of Manfred Mann and the 50th anniversary release Mannthology.

This is Manfred Mann's cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded By The Light," though you'd hardly recognize Springsteen's version after being familiar with this one. And familiar you must be - it has gotten monster airplay on radio stations throughout the English-speaking world, and continues to be played daily. It is one of the most triumphant covers ever recorded. Even Bruce sucks at Bruce (IMHO).

Manfred Mann altered some of the lyrics, changing "cut loose like a deuce" to "revved up like a deuce," which results in one of the most notorious mondegreens in rock history as generations of fans misheard it as "wrapped up like a douche." Springsteen has even joked that his song didn't become popular until it was re-written to be about feminine hygiene products. Said Springsteen: "Deuce was like a Little Deuce Coupe, as in a 2-seater Hot Rod. Douche is a feminine hygienic procedure. But what can I say, the public spoke."

"With 'Blinded by the Light' I didn't really know what it all meant, just that each line sounded right to me," Manfred Mann admitted to Mojo magazine. "I really should have checked more carefully, as Springsteen had written 'cut loose like a deuce.' And in the process of rehearsal, I somehow landed up with 'rapped up like a deuce.' And the record was so difficult to make that I just overlooked the error. I also landed up with a slightly different chord structure, just through my endless fiddling about, not by design."

Two other records set by Blinded By The Light: First, it is so far Bruce Springsteen's only songwriting credit to have a #1 hit. Check The Boss's discography; his highest chart is #2 for "Dancing In The Dark" (hey, that must be what happens after you're blinded...). The other record was the longest a group up to that time had gone between #1 hits; previous to "Blinded by the Light," their #1 was "Do Wah Diddy Diddy."

This cover was such a breakthrough success for Manfred Mann's Earth Band that they decided to cover another Springsteen song, "Spirit In The Night," as a re-released follow-up.

The piano noodling that shows up near the end of the bridge is a snippet of "Chopsticks," a very well-known piece performed by any piano player or student.

"When we finally finished the album track I thought it had a great vibe, but the next question was how to get that into a single. The real problem was how to get from the chorus to the verse smoothly. The way we did it on the album wouldn't work. I just couldn't figure out a way to do it. And then – and this is why you need to be in a band – our drummer Chris Slade said: 'Play Chopsticks over it'. We already had that elsewhere in the song, and I told him it wouldn't work. But he kept insisting, and I kept saying no, until I suddenly realized that he wasn't hearing Chopsticks itself, just the chords, which fitted perfectly. So we recorded those as backing vocals and added that to the original. This was in the days when you had to try and lock two tape machines in tandem, so that took another two days."

In 2015, Guitar World placed guitarist Dave Flett's wah-driven solo at #17 on its list of greatest wah solos of all time.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band's version of "Blinded by the Light" became a big hit in the UK, then across Europe, and then it started to do well in the US. "One day Warner Brothers told us that they had a problem," Mann recalled to Mojo. "The radio stations in the Southern Bible belt were very reluctant to play the record because the chorus line sounded like 'douche' not 'deuce. They were hearing the phrase 'wrapped up like a douche.' This was a problem because it seemed to be possibly referring to a well-known sanitary product. After several more weeks the record climbed to #1. Many months later we toured the States, and on many occasions, people said to me, the reason that the record made it all the way to the top was because everyone is discussing whether it is 'douche' or 'deuce.'