Roll of the Dice: None But the Brave

Bear with me, please–I’m going to take some license .

I usually feel like I’m on pretty solid ground in my analyses of Bruce’s work, but I readily acknowledge I’m stepping out on a limb when it comes to “None But the Brave.”

What makes this song so intriguing and challenging to interpret is that there are two versions out there: the first, an outtake from the Born in the U.S.A. sessions, recorded in 1982 but never released. The second version was released on The Essential Bruce Springsteen in 2003.

Lyrically, the two versions differ only by a single line that’s buried so deep in the song, a casual listener might not even notice. (Not that a casual listener would stumble across an unreleased outtake, but like I said, bear with me.) And the instrumental tracks are the same, at least to my ears.

But the substitution of that one key line (I’ll point it out later in this essay)–combined with what I am convinced is a contemporary vocal (although I can find no record, citation, or document of that) filled with the life experience and keen social empathy of Rising-era Bruce –make the two versions sound like completely different songs to my ears, with very different meanings.

Perhaps I’m reaching. But let me explain before you decide for yourself.

Let’s start with the unreleased outtake.

So let’s just lay this out first and foremost: whichever version we’re listening to, “None But the Brave” is magnificent. It’s heartfelt and heartbreaking, and it captures the E Street Band sound at perhaps its most quintessential. Why in the world Bruce chose to leave it off of Born in the U.S.A. is beyond me. Perhaps he felt the central conceit of the song–the left-behind friend/lover singing to his gone-to-greener-pastures girl–was essentially the same one used for “Bobby Jean” on that album, but in my opinion “None But the Brave” is the superior song.

Its first verse and chorus establish the scene  and the situation with Bruce’s by-now  trademark verbal economy:

Tonight down on Union Street
I’m thinkin’ back baby to you and me
The way you used to be
And your words come back to me
From passing cars, their voices sing out
In empty bars where guitars ring out
We’d walk in, talk about
Who’d be the lucky ones to get out

You said
None baby but the brave
No one baby but the brave
Those strong enough to save
Something from what they gave

This is a man rooted almost literally in his past, and haunted by it. Or maybe he’s the one doing the haunting: he drifts through town, as if invisible. He is background now, to the friends and lovers in the bars and their cars, but once he was in the foreground. Once it was his story–their story–and they shared the dreams of escape that all young adults share, but most never realize.

But his girl did–she escaped and left him behind. Because she was brave enough and strong enough to hold on to enough of her dreams and determination to escape the gravitational pull of her home, and more weightily, her circumstances.

In dreams these nights I see you my friend
The way you looked back then
Ah, on a night like this
I know that girl no longer exists

It’s interesting (and possibly significant) that Bruce addresses his love as “my friend,” creating  the momentary possibility  that perhaps this song is more universal than it first appeared–an ode to a close friend rather than a lover. That ambiguity is undoubtedly as deliberate here as it is in “Bobby Jean” or “Backstreets,” but subsequent verses make clear that if the two were friends, they were at least friends with benefits.

Whatever their relationship, the singer clearly hasn’t been able to move on. He hold on to his image of her as she was–even though he acknowledges that that particular girl no longer exists. In her new setting and new life, she is a different person and lost to him…

Except for a moment in some stranger’s eyes
Or the nameless girls in cars rushin’ by
That’s where I find you tonight
And in my heart you still survive

Again, he’s haunted: he knows she’s gone, but his image of her is so vivid that he can’t help but catch fleeting glimpses of her in passing strangers. He carries his torch in tribute, and we’re about to realize that he’s not going to move on any time soon.

Now tonight once more
I search every face on that crowded floor
Looking for, I don’t know what for
Something that ain’t there no more
There’s a girl standin’ by the band
She reminds me of you and I asked her to dance
As the drummer counts away
I take her hand, we move away

Oof–that verse packs an emotional wallop! At first evoking “My Love Will Not Let You Down,” (another contemporary outtake), the singer searches for connection in some new eyes, hoping to recapture the spark of what he had with his lost love. And then we visit “Reno” (a much later composition that paints a similar scene) as he hooks up with a girl just because she reminds him of his loss. His emotional pain is laid stark before us. (By the way, that bolded line is deliberate. We’ll come back to that later.)

Our protagonist is self-aware, at least. He knows he is defeated, and he pities his friends who are still caught up in the game, even though he knows they are destined to defeat as soon as life or love deals them a hand they’re not strong enough to play:

And tonight now I see old friends
Caught in a game they’ve got no chance to win
Gettin’ beat and then playin’ again
‘Till their strength gives out or their heart gives in

And finally, he rages:

Who’s the man who thinks he can decide
Whose dreams will live and whose shall be pushed aside
Has he ever walked down these streets at night
And looked into the eyes of
None baby but the brave

And in that final line, we understand the one thing he does not–that even though he considers himself one of the brave, robbed of the freedom and life of which he dreamt, the bravery that life demands isn’t the courage to dream but rather the strength, determination, and fortitude to make them real.

“None But the Brave” is at heart a tragic song. “Bobby Jean,” at least, features a hero at peace, even if his heart has a hole in it. The hero of “None But the Brave” is broken.

So: that’s the original version, recorded June 27, 1983.

Towards the end of the Rising Tour in 2003, Bruce announced a greatest hits compilation called The Essential Bruce Springsteen that would feature a “bonus disc” of outtakes and unreleased songs. On that disc was–finally, two decades after it was recorded–“None But the Brave.”

Or was it?

Like I wrote earlier, the released version is clearly not the same one that had been floating around bootlegger’s circles for years. Give a listen, and see for yourself:

Again, I’m pretty sure the instrumental track is the same–perhaps sped up just a touch, and certainly a more delicate mix (particularly after the bridge) but that’s all.

But I’m convinced that the vocal is new. Bruce’s voice clearly carries his age and a certain world-weariness that characterized the heavy subject matter of Rising-era recordings. And it just plain sounds like modern Bruce. But I have to note that I’ve seen no documentation of that, and Brucebase still cites the recording as hailing from the 1983 sessions.  So if someone definitively attests to both vocal and instrumental tracks as original 1983 documents, I’m gonna have to eat some serious crow. Especially with what comes next.

Go back and listen to the first two verses in each recording and compare them. To my ears, the second (modern) vocal carries more emotion and longing –it’s a far more convincing vocal performance. almost Orbisonian at times.

But what caught me short when I first listened–really listened–to the Essential version was the one line that Bruce altered. In the original version, he sang:

Now tonight once more
I search every face on that crowded floor
Looking for, I don’t know what for
Something that ain’t there no more

But on the 2003 version, he sings:

Now tonight once more
I search every face on that crowded floor
Looking for, I don’t know what for
Just waitin’ to see you come walkin’ through that door

Now that is a significant edit. In the earlier version, the singer is looking for a spark, a hint, the essence of a friendship, a love, a connection he once had but lost. He’s trying to recapture a feeling.

In the later version, he’s trying to summon a person. In fact, that line evokes a scene from “You’re Missing,” another song of aching loss which Bruce had written and recorded probably not that long before he recorded his new vocal for “None But the Brave.”

Your house is waiting for you to walk in.

Now, I don’t know whether that “You’re Missing” reference is deliberate, or whether the song–a staple throughout much of the Rising Tour–was simply on his subconscious mind.

But very little of what Bruce writes is accidental, and if you go back and listen–really listen –to “None But the Brave” through a 2003 lens instead of a 1983 lens, the song transforms.

It’s still about loss, but now the loss has more gravity, and the bravery is something else altogether.

In the newer “None But the Brave,” I hear through Bruce’s vocals, lyrics, and emotion the loss of not just a loved one, but a loved one lost on that horrific September day in 2001.

A girl who didn’t get out.

A girl who no longer exists.

A girl who was strong enough to save something from what she gave.

A girl whose house is waiting for her to walk in.

A girl who’s missing.

And a man… a man who’s defeat seems all the more understandable, and his rage and resentment at the man who decided whose dreams would live and whose would be pushed aside all the more justifiable.

A man whose bravery isn’t ironic in the least.

Is that the song Bruce wrote and recorded in 1983? Of course not. But I believe it’s the one he sang in 2003.  Bruce has shown us how songs can transform and transcend their original meanings–sometimes over long periods of time (“Brilliant Disguise“) and sometimes short ones (“My City of Ruins”).

I’ll add this one to that club. Either way, in either incarnation, it remains one of my favorite Springsteen songs.

“None But the Brave” made its live debut shortly after its album releases, at Bruce’s Asbury Park holiday shows in December 2003. Here’s the second-ever performance, from the December 7th show.

The first E Street Band performance was more than four years later, in Vancouver on the Magic tour, and I was lucky enough to be there for it. Bruce has played it a mere handful of times since (usually and comically checking with the band to make sure they know how to start it); here’s one of the more recent performances from Zurich in 2016:

But whether I was in the house or listening on CD or YouTube, in my opinion, none of Bruce’s live performances have measured up to that wonderful 1983/2003 recording. It’s part of a small subset of Bruce’s catalog that can’t be improved (or at least hasn’t been yet) when performed live.

“None But the Brave” represents Bruce’s songwriting at its finest and the E Street Band at their peak. And like all great art, it challenges the listener and invites multiple lenses and perspectives.

Am I reading too much into the song? Perhaps–I admitted that possibility at the outset. What’s your take on “None But the Brave?” I’d love to read it.

None But the Brave
Recorded: June 27, 1983 (and possibly a 2002-ish vocal track)
Released: The Essential Bruce Springsteen (2003)
First performed: December 5, 2003 (Asbury Park, NJ)
Last performed: February 18, 2017 (Hunter Valley, Australia)

Looking for your favorite Bruce song? Check our full index. New entries every week!