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Springsteen drops in 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. At Chuck's request, Springsteen donates his unreleased, never-performed song "Pink Cadillac" to the Midler project (Springsteen's only recording of it, at the time, was on January 3, 1982, the Nebraska demos). Midler and the studio musicians learned the song from a tape Plotkin provided, which had the demo on it. It is unknown whether Springsteen spent any time working with the session musicians. The Midler recording of the song took place a couple of weeks later, without Springsteen's involvement. Midler gave the public world debut of "Pink Cadillac" on December 8 in Portland, Oregon, and was performed as the show opener during her entire December 1982 – September 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 onto the end. Although Midler performed the song in that arrangement throughout her tour, when Chuck played her studio recording for Bruce for final approval, Springsteen immediately withdrew his permission for her to release it. According to Brian Hiatt in Stories Behind the Songs, Midler got very upset, claiming it cost her $25,000 to record it, and called Springsteen "a stiff" (see his book for additional details). It was replaced by a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Beast Of Burden". The video on our Media tab is one of her live performances of the song, not the actual studio recording.
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