Today, the dice land on another entry from 18-year-old Bruce’s handwritten notebook of mystery songs, never recorded and possibly never performed. (See “Until the Rain Comes” for the backstory.)
Crystal is the second song from that notebook. We may never know whether it was a ballad or a rocker, but the lyrics are about what you’d expect from a teenage Bruce, an ode to the elusive mystery girl who lights his world afire as she nears and saps the color and brightness as she walks away.
It would be easy to dismiss this a throwaway song, but the lyrics function either literally (the object of a high school crush walking up to and past a boy too shy to speak to her) or metaphorically (an entire relationship in fast forward):
Hey there, Crystal, walking through your marble halls, I can’t see you at all
Hey there, Crystal, I can hear you calling me near
Now I hear you coming, I hear you coming to me, to me, hey Crystal
Hey there, Crystal, you kissed the green summer leaves, you created the trees
Hey there, Crystal, you’re as free as the sea, help bring life to me
Now I hear you coming, I hear you coming to me, to me, hey Crystal
I’m lost in the center of your resistance, united as one in your wisdom, hey Crystal
Hey there, Crystal, I can feel you nearing to me
Hey there, Crystal, you’re fading away into a cloudy day
Now I hear you coming, I hear you coming to me, to me, hey Crystal
Goin’ from me, hey Crystal, you’re fading, you’re fading
That central line (“I’m lost in the center of your resistance”) almost certainly was intended to be the song’s fulcrum, and it’s a very clever literary device.
I would have liked to have seen what this would have developed into.
Crystal
Never recorded
Performed: Possibly May 1968 (Red Bank, NJ)
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