Roll of the Dice: She’s Leaving

If Bruce’s catalog of officially released material was a mountain, it would be surrounded by a vast range of foothills of discarded songs. Some, undoubtedly, were wise castoffs; others were true gems, both polished and unrefined.

“She’s Leaving” is one of Bruce’s loveliest early recorded-but-not-released demos. Written and performed during the Bruce Springsteen Band era, it’s one of the few compositions from that period that Bruce carried forward into the recording sessions that would yield much of the material for his first album.

Because it was written no later than 1971 (we have a surviving live recording from that year as testament), the lyrical style of “She’s Leaving” is in stark contrast against the material Bruce would select for Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. It’s spare, straightforward, and easy on the rhyming dictionary.

It’s also heartfelt, tender, and vulnerable–almost pitiably so. It’s so different from Bruce’s typical narrative voice from this period that one can’t help but wonder if the song is autobiographical. It certainly seems to come from a very raw place in a 22-year-old singer’s heart.

Let’s take a listen.

Man, this cat has the blues bad. He’s been dumped–actually, he sings to us in the very process of being dumped–and she did it in public, too:

She’s leaving, she’s leaving, everybody knows
She’s leaving, she’s leaving, and I feel like such a fool
She left me standing here just two foot tall
I don’t see how she could do it in front of our friends and all
She had better things to do and bigger plans
I thought we could make it with just us two but I guess we can’t
‘Cause she can’t, and I’m only one man but I love her

That’s a lovely first verse. The second takes a turn toward melodrama, but it reveals an interesting twist along the way:

It’s winter, suddenly it’s winter, and I’m feeling cold inside
It’s different, it could’ve been so different, if only she didn’t feel that need to lie
Did you really think I would not understand
If you said you had a thing to do for a night or two with another man
And how could you believe that I would not know
When you came up to say goodbye, look me in the eye, you let it all show

Now it’s not so clear who’s really leaving whom. We’ve learned that the singer’s girl cheated on him and then denied it when confronted. The singer has a harder time with the lie than with the deed. It’s a shocking line when he says he’d understand a casual fling, if only she hadn’t lied about it. But she did, and now he’s leading with his wounded pride rather than his heart.

Oh and baby, yes you hurt me, oh you hurt me deep inside
Yes darling and you hurt me, ’cause I’m just a foolish boy with his foolish pride

I asked you, I asked you, baby you think I’d be enough
And what you told me, and what you showed me
Oh now you want me to believe your loving but don’t you think you make that kinda tough

It seems his girl wants to stay and make it work, but he just can’t bring himself to believe her. He sums it up in the last verse, with a brilliant final couplet that presages ones he would write years later.

When you didn’t even think that I was that strong
That you could really tell me what was going on
The truth hurts, girl, yes I believe that but still
If the truth hurts, honey, the lies they kill me

So yes, she screwed up, and yes, she’s leaving. But it’s the singer who sent her away.

In this solo form, “She’s Leaving” is a quiet elegy for an ending relationship. In concert, however, it stretches, yearns, and mourns. There’s only one circulating recording of The Bruce Springsteen Band performing it live, and the sound quality is fair at best. But the lyrics are clear (and there are more of them), Bruce’s vocals are impassioned, and the music is gorgeous. It’s certainly worth a nine-minute listen.

Here is The Bruce Springsteen Band performing “She’s Leaving” at the legendary Student Prince in Asbury Park on December 3, 1971:

There are some notable differences in this version: Instead of suffering humiliation in front of his friends, Bruce just wants to crawl up into a ball. The bridge couplet is missing, but most significantly, there are several additional verses that follow our protagonist down a tightening spiral of self-pity.

It’s not clear whether Bruce dropped the additional verses because he realized they were overkill, or whether it was a natural editing exercise. (Several of the verses that survived to the recorded demo were tightened as well.) Maybe Bruce just realized that without a band to gradually build the song’s emotional intensity, the lyrics would quickly outpace his acoustic guitar.

Regardless, the song that Bruce recorded in New York City in mid-1972 was a more concise and restrained version of his 1971 pity party.

It’s certainly easy to see why Bruce didn’t include it on Greetings. (One could also argue that “For You” covered similar territory, replacing self-pity with righteous anger, depending on whether you take that song literally or metaphorically.)

But it’s a song I’d love to hear included if we ever get that fabled Tracks Volume 2 release.

Bonus: Here’s an alternate, aborted take of Bruce recording “She’s Leaving.” (It was going fine until he forgot the words.)

She’s Leaving
Recorded: May-June 1972
Never released
First performed: December 3, 1971 (Asbury Park, NJ)
Last performed: December 3, 1971 (Asbury Park, NJ)

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