Roll of the Dice: One Step Up

Let’s get this out of the way first: “One Step Up” is, without a doubt, one of the finest songs Bruce has ever written, and one of the most emotionally honest songs by anyone about the internal struggle that leads us astray from a relationship.

Bruce is at the top of his craft: the lyrics are poetic, steeped in metaphor but with no trace of his usual tropes save for the “old Ford.” Bruce’s catalog is littered with lyrical cross-pollination, but “One Step Up” shares no DNA with any of them. It is a complete, stand-alone creation.

The instrumental track is delicate, haunting, and not only supports the lyrics (unlike, say, “Hungry Heart,” which covers similar ground with a deceptively upbeat melody), it carries the story with equal weight.

Bruce plays every instrument on the track (guitar, bass, mandolin, keyboards, harmonica, percussion), and he’s precise in his layering, adding Patti’s backing vocals late in the song to (intentional? accidental?) devastating effect.

Even the official video is outstanding. Bruce’s videos don’t always measure up to the bar set by the songs that inspire them, but the video for “One Step Up” is soul-piercing, thanks almost entirely to the close-ups of Bruce’s face, so authentically torn, tempted, mournful, and guilt-ridden that one has to wonder if he was acting or genuinely feeling.

We know that Bruce wrote “One Step Up” during the time his brief marriage to Julianne Phillips was deteriorating, so it’s tempting to label the song as autobiographical. But I shy away from making assumptions like that–let’s just say that “One Step Up” was inspired by the inner conflict and dialogue that probably preoccupied him during that time, whether the events were literal or not.

The song begins and is carried by a simple acoustic guitar riff and a steady percussion metronome, immediately setting the stage for a man who is going through the motions of life rather than moving forward in it.

In the first verse, Bruce is pensive, reflective. He doesn’t make eye contact with the camera; he’s singing to himself.

Woke up this morning, the house was cold
Checked the furnace, she wasn’t burning
Went out and hopped in my old Ford
Hit the engine, buddy she ain’t turning

The singer lives in a cold home (literally, and as we’ll soon see, metaphorically). His car engine won’t start–he’s not going anywhere.

We’ve given each other some hard lessons lately
But we ain’t learning
We’re the same sad story, that’s a fact
One step up and two steps back

Ah, the curse of self-awareness: just because you understand what you’re doing wrong doesn’t mean you know how to fix it. We have our first concrete hint here that the singer’s relationship is on rocky ground.

His car must have eventually started, though, because now he’s driving through town, down deserted streets. Not a single car or pedestrian is there to catch his eye, and the only hint of life is a train crossing his path, carrying its occupants to their homes or offices, their lives in motion while his is stuck.

The singer arrives at a strip bar, sits down and orders. He’s clearly not at ease with his own presence, and he avoids eye contact with the bartender and dancer.

Bird on a wire outside my motel room
But he ain’t singing
Girl in white outside a church in June
But the church bells, they ain’t ringing

There are a few things to unpack here. First, he’s got a motel room, so things are either rocky enough at home that one or both of them felt he needed to be on his own for a bit, or else the rented room is there for him to connect with someone else. Given that the line is paired with an image of two hands coming together, one with a wedding band and one without, we can safely assume the latter.

Next, the metaphors of joy gone wrong: a bird that won’t sing; a bride stranded at the altar. That “bird on a wire,” by the way, is almost certainly a reference to Leonard Cohen’s song by that name. I’ve never seen Bruce discuss this, but Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” is too on-point for this not to have been an intentional name-check. Cohen’s sings about and directly acknowledges what the narrator of “One Step Up” is aware of but can’t articulate: that the love we initially pursue sometimes leaves us feeling trapped. Our instinct for self-preservation pulls us to escape and fill the empty space inside, hurting the one we love in the process–even though that was never our intent.

Cohen sings:

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

If I, if I have been unkind, I hope that you can just let it go by
If I, if I have been untrue, I hope you know it was never to you

For like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me
But I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He said to me, “you must not ask for so much”
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried to me, “hey, why not ask for more?”

Keep that in mind as we continue our story.

A gathering storm outside symbolizes the one inside the singer, lightning giving way to the strobes of the strip bar. Bruce gazes at the dancer but is clearly distracted. He averts his gaze, tapping his wedding band against his drink.

I’m sitting here in this bar tonight
But all I’m thinking is
I’m the same old story, same old act
One step up and two steps back

And as Bruce sings the words “two steps back,” he makes eye contact with us, fleetingly, for the first time, and we’re now drawn into his story.

A fellow bar patron tries to make small talk; Bruce smiles artificially but quickly withdraws into his reverie.

It’s the same thing night on night
Who’s wrong, baby who’s right?
Another fight and I slam the door on
Another battle in our dirty little war

The singer recognizes that he and his wife are caught in a self-destructive pattern. He’s self-aware enough to realize that their petty arguments aren’t worth winning if they mean they both lose in the long run, but he’s trapped in a cycle.

And now comes the most painfully direct and honest moment of the song, as Bruce for the first time faces us straight on and hold his gaze, daring us to meet his as he reveals in anguish:

When I look at myself I don’t see
The man I wanted to be
Somewhere along the line I slipped off track
Caught moving one step up and two steps back

The camera pans away. It’s evening now, and the train from earlier in the song is on its return trip. Its commuters have a day’s worth of new experiences and stories, while Bruce passed the time at the bar, no closer to resolving his dilemma.

The next verse is the final one, and it’s one of the best verses Bruce has ever written:

There’s a girl across the bar
I get the message she’s sending
Hmm she ain’t looking too married
Me well honey I’m pretending

Bruce’s eyes are cast downward and close, his face registering resignation–but no anticipation–for the course of action he knows he is about to take. He raises his fingers to his temple, and the wedding band–in such stark black-and-white relief earlier–is blurred now, obscured.

The last lines of the song are devastatingly poignant. As he makes his move on a stranger, his mind and heart are with his wife, and we realize that the singer is trying to recapture with another the magic he once had and wants again with his wife:

Last night I dreamed I held you in my arms
The music was never ending
We danced as the evening sky faded to black
One step up and two steps back

Bruce often writes cinematically, and here he literally employs a cinematic tool, fading to black as the song plays out. Patti Scialfa’s backing vocals finally appear in this verse–deliberately held in reserve until the final lines–representing (in hindsight, with irony both awful and perfect) his wife’s voice, the ghost of his lost love. Patti, of course, is the love that Bruce found around the time of this song, so her presence here adds layers of meaning and resonance beyond what the writer must have intended at the time.

Their call and response on the coda, playing out as hands separate and bodies come together, as Bruce’s direct gaze gives way to indecisive reverie and finally, in the final frames, to “what am I doing” dismay tells us that this story is far from over. Were it not for the setting, we might suspect that the narrator is still trapped in his self-destructive cycle almost 20 years later, covering similar ground in Bruce’s 2005 song, “Reno.”

Bruce performed “One Step Up” throughout the Tunnel of Love Tour, the eye contact and interplay between Bruce and Patti increasing with each performance. The song disappeared from Bruce’s setlists after 1988, though, emerging only for a handful of solo acoustic performances in 2005 during the “anything goes leg” of that tour.

Only once since 1988 did “One Step Up” make an E Street setlist–and I was lucky enough to be there for it. On May 6, 2014, Bruce and the band played the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in Houston, an intimate outdoor venue on a gorgeous evening. The pit was one of the smallest I can ever remember, and I had my best position ever in it. I was 8th into the pit, leaning directly on center stage.

A fellow fan to my right had made a beautiful sign requesting “One Step Up” superimposed on an enlarged photo of Bruce and Patti sharing a microphone on the song in 1988. The sign read “Can we take a trip back to ’88?” and “Last time played with the full band: June 21, 1988.”

The sign caught Patti’s eye long before it caught Bruce’s, and she lobbied him to honor the request. He did, bemused by the fact that much of the audience was young enough to not know it, and warning the crowd that he couldn’t vouch for the band knowing it.

The performance that followed was magical. Bruce started the song solo, calling for the band to come in “easy” after the first verse. On the final verse, Bruce seemed to lose himself in the song, locking his eyes on his wife across the stage as they sang the coda.

If you were in the room with us, you’d have known–like we did–that Bruce was going to call his wife to his side even before he did so. The video above can’t quite capture the emotion we all felt between them, but you can clearly hear the crowd recognize it as Patti walked over to her husband.

You can’t see it from the camera distance, but I’m telling you as someone standing directly in front of them (yes, I’m in the video): when Bruce and Patti stood side by side as Bruce played out, Bruce’s eyes were wet, and Patti’s cheeks were streamed with tears.

None of us can know exactly what memories and emotions this song conjures for them, but it’s clear that we witnessed a very special, intimate moment.

One Step Up
Recorded: May-August 1987
Released: Tunnel of Love (1987), The Essential Bruce Springsteen (2015)
First performed: February 25, 1988 (Worcester, MA)
Last performed: May 14, 2014 (Houston, TX)

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