Roll of the Dice: Downbound Train

Of the many adjectives used to describe Bruce Springsteen’s songwriting, “cinematic” is one of the most frequent.

“Cinematic” is a hard term to define, however. Ask three different motion picture professionals, and you’ll likely get three different answers. Often, it refers to the use of screenplay-like stage direction to more effectively paint the scene. For example:

The screen door slams. Mary’s dress waves.  Like a vision, she dances across the floor as the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely.

Most songs focus on a narrative; Bruce spends the first verse of “Thunder Road” simply describing the scene.

Sometimes, “cinematic” songwriting refers to something more sophisticated–the art of evoking a movie in the mind of the listener without actually describing it specifically:

It was a small town bank, it was a mess
Well I had a gun, you know the rest
Money on the floorboards, shirt was covered in blood
And she was cryin’, her and me we headed south
On highway twenty nine

In “Highway 29” the central event that drives the narrative is never actually described, and yet we have it vividly in our mind. Bruce takes advantage of our familiarity with film tropes to trust that if he sets the stage, plants the prop, and skips to the outcome, we’ll do the job of filling in the story.

And sometimes, “cinematic” simply refers to the telling of a tale through song, focusing solely on the story with no thought to a hook or a chorus:

Rainey Williams’ playground was the Mott Haven streets, where he ran past melted candles and flower wreaths, names and photos of young black faces, whose death and blood consecrated these places. Rainey’s mother said, “Rainey stay at my side, for you are my blessing you are my pride. It’s your love here that keeps my soul alive. I want you to come home from school and stay inside.”

Bruce’s catalog is filled with cinematic songs that fit one or more of the above descriptions. But to me, there’s no song in Bruce’s catalog more cinematic than “Downbound Train” (although “Reno” shares the podium with it).

“Downbound Train” fits all of the above definitions: it’s narrative-driven, filled with imagery, and enlists the listener to act as cinematographer. But “Downbound Train” goes a step further: it uses the backing track to heighten the emotion and tension of the song in the same way that a movie soundtrack would.

That’s actually pretty rare for Bruce. Bruce is just as likely to choose a melody that belies a song’s content rather than enhances it. More often than not, he’ll write an instrumental arrangement that pairs well with the song but doesn’t necessarily drive it forward. “Downbound Train” is a shining example of how to truly write cinematically in song.

But it didn’t start out that way.

Although it was released on Born in the U.S.A., “Downbound Train” was actually written–and recorded–during Bruce’s Nebraska songwriting and home demo period. Bruce famously tried to come up with electric band arrangements for the songs before giving up and simply releasing his demos as a finished album, but “Downbound Train” was actually one of the songs that successfully made the leap from acoustic to electric. That was for the better–take a listen to Bruce’s original Nebraska session recording of “Downbound Train” below.

Although the song is lyrically complete (we won’t quibble over a few minor wording changes), the song isn’t anywhere near as powerful as the Born in the U.S.A. version.  Bruce opted for a driving rockabilly arrangement with almost no variation throughout the song. The effect is one of a fast-moving train, which may be exactly what he was going for–but by doing so, he barrels through the narrator’s torment rather than drawing us into it.

Bruce must have realized that fairly quickly himself, two other demos reveal him slowly evolving toward the song’s final melody:

Bruce recorded the final version with the band in early 1982, long before the song would see the light of day on vinyl. That version is the one we’re familiar with from Born in the U.S.A. Take a listen below to re-familiarize yourself, and then we’ll delve into what makes this song so wonderful.

…and by “wonderful,” of course, I mean evocatively dark,  depressing, full of torment and devoid of hope. But it’s so artful, how can you not love this song?

Bruce starts us off with the main guitar riff, with Max and Garry entering shortly thereafter. Here we have our first cinematic technique: foreshadowing. Max’s drumbeat is not very train-like, and that’s intentional–although we won’t learn why until the surprise twist at the end of the song.

Cinematic technique #2: the opening verse that frames the scene:

I had a job, I had a girl
I had something going mister in this world
I got laid off down at the lumber yard
Our love went bad, times got hard
Now I work down at the car wash
Where all it ever does is rain
Don’t you feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train

That opening line–“I had a job, I had a girl”–is so good, Bruce would use it again years later. Look at how much Bruce conveys with such economy of language: in eight syllables, we’ve learned that our narrator once had everything he needed.

We don’t even really need the next two lines to tell us what happened–we already know. He lost his job, and although it’s not yet clear what the status is on the romantic front, it’s clear things are troubled there, too.

And that car wash line is right up there with one of my favorite Springsteen lyrics ever–it’s wry and sad without edging into corny or melodramatic. But that last line is curious–following such a clever line about a car wash, that train metaphor comes from out of the blue. There’s no setup or rationale for it, but once again, Bruce is telegraphing. He’ll reveal all, but he’s very deliberate in how he paces his clues.

She just said “Joe I gotta go
We had it once we ain’t got it any more”
She packed her bags left me behind
She bought a ticket on the Central Line
Nights as I sleep, I hear that whistle whining
I feel her kiss in the misty rain
And I feel like I’m a rider on a downbound train

Another terrific piece of songwriting here. That speech by the narrator’s lost love is perfect in its meter, economy and internal rhyme, telling us all we need to know in two lines. And then comes our first revelation: she left him by train. No wonder he’s obsessed with the metaphor–he’s haunted by the sound of the whistle of her train departing, unable to even conjure the memory of her kiss without the soundtrack of her departure.

And this is the point of the song where Bruce elevates it from great to masterful. The first half of the song is complete, the stage is set. We’re prepared for the narrative to propel us forward, but instead…

We stop.

The percussion, guitar, and bass that carried us this far fades away, leaving us in an ethereal dream state limned by Steve’s mandolin and Roy’s synthesizer. Bruce already set up the segue just before the instrumental break, his main character drifting off into his nighttime reverie. What follows next is pure art:

Last night I heard your voice
You were crying, crying, you were so alone
You said your love had never died
You were waiting for me at home
Put on my jacket, I ran through the woods
I ran till I thought my chest would explode
There in the clearing, beyond the highway
In the moonlight, our wedding house shone
I rushed through the yard, I burst through the front door
My head pounding hard, up the stairs I climbed
The room was dark, our bed was empty
Then I heard that long whistle whine
And I dropped to my knees, hung my head and cried

This may be my single most favorite passage from any song in Bruce’s catalog. Every time I hear it, I marvel at the way Bruce takes us deep into the dream, using meter and melody and language and octave to heighten the tension. The repetitively short phrasing sounds like the main character panting as he runs through the woods, escalating simultaneously in key and in desperation.

And oh, the pathos: his wife (we’ve just learned that they were married–see how Bruce cleverly snuck that piece of info in there?) yearns for him, waits for him, so he runs–through the woods, across the highway, through his yard, up the stairs, into their bedroom–only to find it empty. And that damn whistle–it torments him endlessly, reminding him over and over again of his loss. His hopes dashed, our hero descends once more into despair. We can visualize this entire scene as if in a movie. Bruce is the director, our mind the camera. It’s interesting to note the similarity to the pivotal scene in the contemporaneous “My Father’s House,” which also features a dreamlike journey to a shining house. It seems Bruce was captivated by this notion. (Thanks to reader Mike Thompson for pointing out the parallelism!)

(Update: after this article was originally posted, Mark Loughney clued me in to a very cool historical footnote. On August 7, 1982, Bruce performed at Big Man’s West with Beaver Brown. In the middle of “Lucille,” Bruce segued into a work-in-progress song he called “On the Prowl.” But if you listen carefully to the lyrics of that new song, they sound awfully familiar.

And finally, now, an almost literal coup de grace, as we learn the reason for the song’s peculiar drumbeat as it returns for the song’s final stanza:

Now I swing a sledge hammer on a railroad gang
Knocking down them cross ties, working in the rain
Now don’t it feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train

In a cruel twist of irony, Joe finds himself forced to work on the railroad tracks, hauling a sledgehammer (which, thanks to Max’s percussion, we now realize has been the backdrop of the entire song) that breaks his back, haunted by train whistles that break his spirit.

And that is how you write a cinematic song.

In concert, “Downbound Train” has been relatively rare since the 1980s, when it was a staple throughout the Born in the U.S.A. Tour. I’m actually not a fan of those early performances; the synthesizer is too dominant in the mix (it was the eighties, after all), and the performances–although strong–sound dated to my ears.

A bona fide rarity for the first decade of the 21st century, “Downbound Train” has made a bit of a comeback since the Wrecking Ball Tour, although it still remains on many fans’ chase lists.

When Bruce does perform it, I’ve noticed that more than with most songs in his catalog, the song requires him to be truly immersed in it. The key section–the dream sequence–is what makes the song, and Bruce performs it differently almost every time he sings it. Here’s one of my favorite performances, from 2013. Listen to the emotion in his voice:

On three occasions only, Bruce played “Downbound Train” solo, accompanying himself not on guitar, but on the pump organ. These performances highlight Bruce’s vocals but transform the song into a dirge, robbing it of the percussion that foreshadows the train gang reveal, and more importantly lessening the impact of the dream sequence by casting the entire song in the same fashion.

Still, these are fine and unusual performances and worth watching (even if Bruce flubs a key line):

“Downbound Train” continues to be a favorite of both fans and artists (it’s covered with some frequency–see here and here for a couple of great ones), a rarity within reach of most fans, and a song that holds its power both in stadiums and theaters.

Downbound Train
Recorded: April 27 – May 6, 1982
Released: Born in the USA (1984)
First performed: July 2, 1984 (St. Paul, MN)
Last performed: July 2, 2023 (Oslo, Norway)

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