Roll of the Dice: Night Fire

When the long-awaited anniversary box set for The River was announced, fans were excited to learn it would include a collection of unreleased outtakes. The prospect of complete, unreleased River-era Springsteen music unearthed and released from the vault certainly had me salivating.

What we got, however, was not quite what was advertised.

There were some authentic vintage gems in the set, to be sure, but similar to The Promise, this latest set of “outtakes” included songs that had some work done on them. “Night Fire” is one of those.

I was pretty excited to listen to this one–it had been floating around as a bootleg recording for quite some time, in what I assumed had been a rehearsal take, because the vocals were so muffled that it seemed like no one was even trying to capture them. I can’t even begin to guess how many times I listened to it with headphones on, trying to make out the lyrics to no avail. (See if you can–here’s the old unreleased 1979 outtake.)

So when I listened to the official track when the box set came out in 2015, two things immediately jumped out:

First, the instrumental track is exactly the same as the bootleg version above–at least as far as my ears can tell. Check it out:

Second (as you could probably tell), Bruce’s vocals are obviously not from the original session. In fact, they’re not even from the same century. This version of “Night Fire” features modern-day Bruce backed by the 1979 E Street Band–a bit of a head trip at first.

But after listening to it a couple of times, a third realization dawned on me: not only were the vocals brand new, so were the lyrics. I don’t mean “new” as in “comprehensible” — I’m pretty sure they’re just a completely new set of lyrics. Go ahead and listen carefully to the bootleg compared with the released version. I can’t make out the specific words in the former, but I’m almost certain it’s not what Bruce is singing in the latter. A few words and phrases jump out here and there that don’t match up, and the meter is off in places.

At this point, if you’re not a hardcore fan, you might be rolling your eyes. Why does it matter what Bruce was singing in the original take if we have an officially released version now? At least this isn’t a “Whitetown” situation, where the released version was unrecognizable from the bootleg outtake.

I guess it matters to me because I love tracing the evolution of songs and trying to figure out how and why Bruce crafts his songs the way he does. So this drives me nuts. If you can make out any of the original lyrics, please let me know.

Okay, now that that’s off my chest: the song. Honestly, it’s not one of Bruce’s best. It deserved being cast off the island. The melody is repetitive, the guitar-work is uninspired, and Bruce’s vocals are strained.

And now I’m gonna obsess about the lyrics again. Because the “finished” lyrics sound very much like a primitive version of “Point Blank,” which we know Bruce was actually performing as early as the Darkness Tour. The final version of “Night Fire” covers the same ground as “Point Blank” but nowhere near as artfully.

And this is what drives me nuts about not being able to make out the original lyrics–because what if they were better? Maybe, like “Whitetown,” the new version is a very different song from the old one.

Compare the early lyrics from “Point Blank” around the same time:

Eyes filled with anger, hearts filled with hate
You see their faces on the street and you just turn away, but baby it’s too late
You hear them crying to you in the night
Oh you hear them knocking at your door, there’s no sleep for baby tonight
And so you stumble out into the morning searching for your usual fix
But girl them old distractions, man, they just don’t give the kicks they used to
So you go home and pack your pistol, you go out looking for someone
But girl can’t you see they got you caught in the middle, you don’t know where to aim your gun

…with the released lyrics for “Night Fire:”

All the faces staring down your throat
All the eyes, darling, that never closed
In your sadness, girl, maybe there’s something that you ought to know

Well they punch your ticket as you grow old
Do you really get used to being bought and sold
Does a brand new dress keep out the cold
Do your brand new friends help you to keep
Your pretty eyes from seeing what they shouldn’t see

Pretty similar, right?

Sigh. The tribulations of being an obsessed fan.

“Night Fire” has never been performed live (and isn’t likely to be, I think), so here’s a bonus clip instead of a live one: Bruce and Clarence working out the sax solo for the song.

Night Fire
Recorded: June 13, 1979 (instrumental track) (vocal track probably 2014-2015)
Released: The Ties That Bind: The River Collection
Never Performed

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