Wow.
I remember listening to “Stray Bullet” for the first time when it was released in 2015 along with other lost outtakes from the River sessions on The Ties That Bind: The River Collection. “Where did this come from?” I thought.
(If you haven’t heard this song before, listen before reading further–the power of the song lies in how it sneaks up on you.)
Musically, it’s unlike anything else Bruce recorded at that point in his career; lyrically, it covers some very dark and very bloody ground.
I can see why it was left off The River: it conjures up some of the same imagery as that album’s title track and overlaps thematically with “Point Blank” (even if “Stray Bullet” is literal while “Point Blank” is metaphorical).
But as a standalone song, “Stray Bullet” is haunting and deceptively idyllic.
The melody is lilting and gentle, carried by Clarence’s brooding sax–gentler than any track Bruce had set down on vinyl to that point–and as the first verse unfolds, it seems as if this may simply be an alternate-universe version of “The River.”
In the tall grass we held hands
Down by the river we made plans
Of what would and would not be
It was impossible to see
There’s foreshadowing there, but Bruce’s writing at the time typically dealt with disillusionment and disappointment down the road, and it would be natural to assume this song would fit right in.
The next verse introduces mysterious others and signals impending darkness linking them with his girl through literal blackness (their shoes, her hair).
Their black boots shone in the sun
They were waiting on the Annandale train when my baby come
Little girl with the long black hair
Do you know what lies ‘neath the long coats that they wear
We still don’t know what’s to come, although that last line teases something ominous.
Bruce breaks the narrative at this point, raising the stakes by raising his pitch, and beginning to make it clear that things may not have worked out as planned, the soft background vocals rhyming like memory:
Once I swore you’d ride with me (to some far and distant shore)
Down where this river meets the sea (I’ll make you mine forevermore)
Over these dark hills I’d walk along (just to hold you in my arms)
To lie with you on a bed of stone
Finally, the narrator returns to the present, and to the river imagery:
River blood red with the years
You can flood this valley with a thousand tears
Wash away all that’s been found
…and only at the end, as the song perseverates on the final line, do we learn why:
But you’ll never wash away the sound
Of the stray bullet that shot my baby down
Random violence? Gang-related? A planned murder? We never learn; the only certainty is that the narrator’s love was an innocent bystander, killed by the stray bullet.
The minute-and-a-half instrumental coda dwells on the memory through Roy Bittan’s questioning, understated piano, and then moves onward with Bruce’s guitar and Clarence’s saxophone to a gentle fade.
Bruce has never performed “Stray Bullet” in concert, and it’s unclear whether it would translate well to a concert setting. It remains a beautiful, haunting and haunted orphan in his expansive catalog.
Stray Bullet
Recorded: February 24, March 9, and April 10, 1980 (it’s unclear from which session this take originates)
Released: The River: Outtakes (2015)
Never Performed
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