Serving up a true lost gem today: “It’s Time to Go Home” is a complete, polished original Bruce Springsteen song, but one that was never recorded and only performed once (that we know of).
On the first day of September 1971, The Bruce Springsteen Band (consisting of Bruce, Stevie, Garry, Vini, and David Sancious) played a free concert in Garfield Park in Long Branch, New Jersey.
Buried in the middle of the set was this haunting song, performed virtually as a solo piano number (with Bruce playing, not Sancious, and the rest of the band lurking in the background showing great restraint).
We’re covering walking a dark, lonely road here: the narrator, like Bruce, is a musician, describing the moments immediately following the end of a concert festival. When the music stops, the communal connection is broken, and the introverted artist who just entertained thousands is now isolated and withdrawn from the crowd he so recently commanded:
Empty tin cans cover the ground
Empty love bands bled the last chords down
Stoned out people running wild
Someone announces they lost that night
Then you know, then you know
Oh, how you know
When you’re standing in the middle of a crowd and you feel so alone
The party’s over, it’s time to go home
Is Bruce singing from his imagination, or is this how he truly experiences coming down from his on-stage high? We don’t know, but this would not be the last time Bruce would visit this theme.
There’s also a particularly revealing bridge that Bruce sings with such power and feeling that it’s easy to believe it’s personal:
Sometimes I think I was born too late
To be what I wanna be
Because when I look around me I can’t relate
There’s no room, there’s no place for me
Bruce has said on more than one occasion that when he started out as an artist, he feared that he was already too late–that rock and roll had already reached its peak and there was nothing new that he could add to it. So this verse resonates with personal truth.
There’s no resolution, here, just observation. The song ends with the narrator spotting a girl crying silently behind a tree, experiencing a different kind of withdrawal, and reaching the same conclusion: like it or not, it’s time to go home.
It’s Time to Go Home
Recorded: N/A
Released: N/A
First performed: September 1, 1971 (Long Branch, NJ)
Last performed: September 1, 1971 (Long Branch, NJ)
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