There are three songs on Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks II: The Lost Albums boxed set on which other songwriters get credits. Two are “Follow That Dream” and “Johnny Bye Bye,” both from LA Garage Sessions ’83. They both borrow enough from other songs — the 1962 Elvis Presley hit “Follow That Dream” and Chuck Berry’s 1960 single “Bye Bye Johnny,” respectively — that songwriting credit had to be shared. But they are so different from the original songs that they shouldn’t really be considered covers.

“Poor Side of Town,” though — from Somewhere North of Nashville — is a bona fide cover. Though it has a very different feel, Springsteen doesn’t make any major lyrical changes from the original — a No. 1 hit for Johnny Rivers, who co-wrote the song with producer Lou Adler.

A Louisiana native who is now 82, Rivers was a regular presence on the pop charts from 1964 to 1974. “Poor Side of Town” was his only No. 1 hit, but he made the Top 10 eight other times, and his best known song is probably “Secret Agent Man,” which rose to No. 3 the same year that “Poor Side of Town” hit No. 1: 1966.

Coincidentally, 1966 was the year that Springsteen made his first attempt at committing his own music to vinyl, recording two songs (“That’s What You Get” and “Baby I”) as a promo single with his band of the time, The Castiles.

I started doing a little research, and wondered if I could find 10 points of connection between Springsteen and Rivers. Yes, I could (though I had to stretch a bit). Check them out:

1. Here, first of all, are Rivers’ and Springsteen’s versions of “Poor Side of Town”:

2. Darlene Love, who later became Springsteen’s friend and collaborator, sang on Rivers’ “Poor Side of Town” along with her partners in the group The Blossoms, Fanita James and Jean King. The music on the track is by Rivers (guitar) along with three members of Los Angeles’ famed “Wrecking Crew” group of session musicians: Larry Knechtel (piano), Joe Osborn (bass) and Hal Blaine (drums).

3. Rivers had a Top 10 hit with Harold Dorman’s “Mountain of Love” in 1964. Springsteen covered this song 11 times from 1975 to 2013, according to Brucebase. Here is a performance from Buffalo in 2012:

4. Though Springsteen has usually performed “Mountain of Love” as a band song, his most recent version of it — in Solna, Sweden, in 2013 — was solo acoustic, and thrown together quickly in response to a sign request.

5. The first two lines of “Secret Agent Man” (see above) are nearly identical to the first two lines of “Repo Man,” from Somewhere North of Nashville. “Well, there’s a man who leads a life of danger/With everyone he meets, he stays a stranger,” Springsteen sings. The only differences are that Springsteen changes Rivers’ “to everyone” to “with everyone,” and adds “well” as the first word.

6. Springsteen played Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man” recording on the Oct. 9, 2022 edition of his SiriusXM satellite radio DJ show, “From My Home to Yours.” That was the show on which he reminisced with old friends and bandmates from Freehold. Before Springsteen played the single, Mike Domanski mentioned that the first song ever played by his Freehold band The Legend, at the Freehold YMCA, was “Secret Agent Man.”

7. Springsteen has never performed “Secret Agent Man” completely, in concert, though, according to Brucebase, he did include a snippet of it at the start of “Light of Day” on May 4, 2000, at The Air Canada Centre in Toronto.

8. Springsteen and the E Street Band covered the Willie Dixon-written blues standard “Seventh Son” in 2009 at The Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina, using the arrangement of Rivers’ 1965 single (a Top 10 hit).

9. Rivers basically discovered songwriter Jimmy Webb, signing him to a publishing deal and recording his “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” in 1966 (before Glen Campbell did). He also recorded seven Webb songs for his 1967 album Rewind. Most significantly, perhaps, he got the The 5th Dimension — signed to Rivers’ record label, Soul City — to record Webb’s “Up, Up and Away”; the 1967 Top 10 hit was Webb’s first major success, and won both Song of the Year and Record of the Year at the 1968 Grammys.

Springsteen has cited Webb as a major influence on his Western Stars and Twilight Hours albums. “Glen Campbell, Jimmy Webb, Burt Bacharach, those kinds of records,” he has said of the recording sessions that led to both albums. “I don’t know if people will hear those influences, but that was what I had in my mind. It gave me something to hook an album around; it gave me some inspiration to write.”

10. As mentioned in the previous item, Rivers had a record label of his own, called Soul City. He used it for his own recordings, as well as those of The 5th Dimension and other artists. Perhaps that is where Springsteen got the idea for his song “Club Soul City,” which he gave to Gary U.S. Bonds to record for his 1982 album On the Line.