I don’t bring request signs to Springsteen concerts; I prefer to just let the night unfold around me.
But if I did bring a sign to show, it would be for “Crazy Rocker.”
I love this song.
I have no idea what it’s about, mind you. The lyrics are (mostly) intelligible but (completely) incomprehensible, and I’m not even going to try to transcribe them.
You don’t want to pay attention to the lyrics, anyway. I’m pretty sure Bruce isn’t. I think he’s just making them up as he goes, a complete stream of consciousness.
This song is all about the riff, all about the jam, all about the ESB-meets-CCR groove that Bruce and the band found themselves in for those five minutes.
“Crazy Rocker” rocks.
Turn this one waaaaay up loud, and just think about what a show-stopper it would have been… if only Bruce had finished the dang song!
“Crazy Rocker” is such a mystery that we don’t even have a studio log entry for it. We can date it to the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions, and we can speculate about other unknown titles in the log that it might map to, but that’s about it.
So come on, Bruce: whip this one out the next time you take the band on the road. I’ll forgive you for not polishing it up for inclusion on The Promise. Heck, you don’t even need to finish the lyrics–just bluff to your heart’s content and turn loose that mighty E Street Band.
Yeah, I know that’s probably not gonna happen.
But I can dream.
Crazy Rocker
Recorded: August 1977
Never released
Never performed
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