What to say about “We’ve Got to Do It Now…”
Well, for starters: it’s one of the few early, early unreleased Springsteen songs for which we have both a high-quality live recording and hand-written song lyrics (which fetched $1,195 in a 2008 auction). So that’s pretty cool.
Also, “We’ve Got to Do It Now” is unusual in its shared lead vocals. You can hear Bruce trade off with Robbin Thompson in their 1970 performance as Steel Mill below.
But that’s pretty much all that’s remarkable about this very of-its-time composition. This one, as they say, is for the completists.
Honestly, it’s a pretty weak song. The sentiment is admirable: it’s a call to metaphorical arms, with Bruce and Robbin exhorting their cohorts to choose love not war (or at least to choose period):
Well, come with me brothers, come with me sisters
The time has come, we’ve got to help each other
So pick up your guns or send out your lovers
The choice is yours, it’s one or the other
Now hurry up before it’s too late
There’s even no time to waste
The sooner it’s done, I know, the better
So longer we wait the harder they’ll make it for us to get together
But that message was also delivered by many other musicians of that era, typically in a more artful fashion.
In fact, the lyrics are so atypical of Bruce’s writing at the time that I suspect they were a co-writing exercise. (The handwritten lyrics are in Bruce’s handwriting, but we don’t have any record of where, when, or by whom the song was actually invented).
There is one verse in particular that sounds like early Bruce–and differs enough from the preceding ones to lend credence to co-authorship:
There’s no backing out cause you’re already in
The choice is yours, you have to make it my friend
You’re branded as an outlaw and set on the run
Hunted by soldiers marked as the one
The notion of being cast as an “outlaw”–specifically the use of that term–is a theme that comes up often in Bruce’s very western-influenced writing at the time. The sudden shift of focus and tone from peace and love to the very real consequences of refusing to participate in a morally unjust war–that sounds like Bruce as well.
But we’ll probably never know, and it would rank pretty close to the bottom of things I’d ever ask Bruce about if I had the chance. “We’ve Got to Do It Now” is likely to remain a historical curiosity.
We’ve Got to Do It Now
Never recorded
Never released
First performed: November 27, 1970 (Asbury Park, NJ)
Last performed: November 27, 1970 (Asbury Park, NJ)
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