Poor “Frankie.”
Written and debuted during the peak of Bruce’s romantic post-Born to Run songwriting period, she was meant to play a starring role on Bruce’s 1976 follow-up album (an album, of course, that was destined to never be).
Bruce brought her out on stage for the first time on March 26, 1976 at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, where she had the distinction of being the very first new song debuted post-Born to Run, and the only one until the floodgates opened six months later.
Unfortunately, no audio circulates from that first performance, but we have a very nice recording from almost two weeks later. Take a listen to that performance below, and pay attention to the lyrics: this younger version of Frankie is harder, faster, and more cynical than the lush, romantic version we’d come to know later. That gorgeous riff is instantly recognizable, though, as is that lush, sudden sax-laden coda–Frankie’s signature would never change.
It’s remarkable, isn’t it, how recognizable this version of “Frankie” is, yet at the same time so very different. Let’s take a deeper look:
Dark weekends in the sun, out on Chelsea Road
Descending the stairs, Frankie my love
Check your make-up in the mirror, come on, baby, let’s go
We’ll dance ’round this dirty town, ’till the night is all gone
Let all the finer things sleep alone tonight
Let all the minor kings lose their thrones tonight
Don’t worry about me baby, I’ll be alright
This first verse is almost identical to the released version. The imagery and metaphor are identical (including, thankfully, that wonderful “minor kings” notion), and the few wording changes are minor. The final one, though, is significant and symbolic of Frankie’s journey to come: Bruce tells Frankie not to worry about him, because he’ll be alright. Six years later, they’d be a team, and he’d sing “Don’t worry about us, baby, we’ll be alright.”
In the second verse, the divergence becomes more obvious. In this version, Bruce sings:
There’s machines and there’s fire on the outside of town
Young boys for hire waiting to blow us all down
There are strange flashes in the sky up above
That’s some impressionistic imagery there (and yes, that first line would end up in “Drive All Night” five years later); Bruce paints a gritty street scene as backdrop for the lovers. Six years later, the song would instead be set against a town dying a slow economic death. (It would be easy, in fact, to imagine the 1982 version of Frankie set in the same place is “My Hometown.”)
In both versions, though, Bruce takes his time painting a stark backdrop so he can play up his hero’s romance in the foreground, and when his lyrics open up, we feel our hearts open, too:
I’ll spend the night at the movies with my secret love
At dusk the stars all appear on the screen
Just like they do each night in my dreams
But tonight’s no dream, Frankie, I can feel myself too
Living and dying like I was born to do
In 1982, Bruce wouldn’t keep his love secret. He was a lot less self-centered, too: instead of “living and dying like I was born to do” he’s sing “now and forever, baby, my love is for you.”
The first chorus is mostly the same in each version. In 1976, Bruce sings:
Walk softly tonight little angel
I wanna be alone with you
Talk softly to me tonight angel
Make all my dream worlds come true
In 1982, Bruce again shifts the focus away from the narrator and on to the pair: instead of “I wanna be alone with you,” he notes that “into these shadows we’re passing through.”
That third and final verse though… boy, that early version is dark:
I remember standing in the freezing rain
Reading them want ads out on Chelsea Row
Winging down the street in search of new games
Hustling through the night packs where the actors go
Frankie they’re real crazy, let’s run and hide
In the darkness there’ll be hidden worlds that shine
When all of the fury in this desperate land
Will rise like raindrops in the palm of my hand
It’s also somewhat familiar–when I listen to this version of “Frankie” and reach this point, I feel as if I’m back in the world of “Incident on 57th Street.” Our narrator could easily pass for Spanish Johnny, and our lovers’ shining, hidden world of the street (Bruce would rescue that imagery for “Candy’s Room“) feels like the very same streets of “Incident,” the romance of two not-so-innocent lovers falling in love against a seedy, seamy backdrop.
If the theme and setting are tried and true, however, Bruce’s skill with imagery and metaphor has grown rapidly in the not-even-three years that separates the songs. That final line–“when all of the fury in this desperate land will rise like raindrops in the palm of my hand”–is just beautiful. And even those raindrops are a metaphor inside of a metaphor, as we realize when Bruce improvs a few lines that implore Frankie to let her sadness rise.
So yes, this early incarnation of Frankie is melodramatic and self-centered, but gloriously so, as the fires of youth should be.
Oh, and if there’s any doubt about just how far the similarities go between Frankie and her unnamed beau compared with Puerto Rican Jane and Spanish Johnny, listen to Bruce and the E Street Band working on “Frankie” in the studio a year later, on June 3, 1977. Bruce bluffs much of the lyrics, but the first verse is complete and a few lines jump out at us in their starkness:
Yes, we heard that right: instead of…
Let all the finer things sleep alone tonight
Let all the minor kings lose their thrones tonight
Don’t worry about us, baby, we’ll be alright
Bruce sings:
Tricks are all over with plenty of time
The dicks are all covered, straight down the line
There goes Frankie, she’s not that kind
…which gives us some brutal insight into those night packs we hear about in that original early version.
By the time Bruce recorded that demo in 1977, he’d come out the other side of long legal battle with former manager Mike Appel, and by that time Bruce was in a much darker vein for a bright star like “Frankie.” Bruce’s songwriting imagery had grown increasingly dark, stark, and almost nihilistic, but despite what we just heard, Frankie proved too seductive to allow her creator to soften her shine.
So into the vault she went, but Bruce couldn’t quite quit her. During the Born in the U.S.A. sessions, he’d try one more time to rescue her from obscurity, and although it never made that album either, this is the version Bruce eventually released sixteen years later on Tracks.
Besides maturing into a more selfless romance, this version of “Frankie” features one of the E Street Band’s finest moments in the studio. Listen to the band in their full glory–especially that coda:
Besides the other lyrical differences we noted earlier, Bruce has significantly scrubbed and softened the final verse:
Well lately I’ve been standing out in the freezing rain
Reading them want ads out on Chelsea Road
I’m winging down the street in search of new games
Hustling through these nightlights’ diamond glow
Well Frankie I don’t know what I’m gonna find
Maybe nothing at all, maybe a world I can call mine
Shining like these streetlights down here on the strand
Bright as the rain in the palm of your hand
All traces of 57th Street have been erased, and the focus is on our characters, as it should be. This new backdrop is much brighter than the old one, literally: the nightlights glow like diamonds, the streetlights shine, the rain is bright. Bruce does nothing by accident; this is Bruce’s deliberate (if unsubtle) attempt to lighten the weight of the song and imbue the main characters’ love with a fiery passion.
And all through the years, the coda remains true, with Bruce pleading:
Walk softly tonight, little stranger
Into these shadows where lovers go
Talk softly to me, little angel
Whisper your secrets so soft and low
…as he and Frankie find a haven on the streets, no matter how dark or light they may be.
Bruce performed “Frankie” so frequently in April 1976 that fans who witnessed it must have been certain it was destined for his next album. “Frankie” is lush, long, romantic, and has that “epic” sweep that’s hard to define but which clearly includes songs like “Backstreets,” “Racing in the Street,” “Jungleland,” and “Incident on 57th Street” in scope and grandeur.
But it wasn’t to be.
“Frankie” disappeared from sight after April 24, 1976, even though we know that Bruce continued to revisit the song in the studio for at least the next six years. “Frankie” wasn’t seen again for 23 years, in fact–until the night of August 9, 1999, when Bruce strode to the microphone and said, “This is for you aficionados out there…”
It was an unexpected but beautiful performance (even if the band didn’t quite know how to end it).
In the two decades since, “Frankie” has come out only a baker’s dozen times (of which I’ve somehow and amazingly been fortunate enough to catch four!). Only Bruce can say why, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the perfection of the studio recording. “Frankie” is one of the rare songs that the E Street Band has been unable to improve upon in concert, although on one particular night at Fenway Park in 2012, they came pretty darn close, thanks to a gorgeous new introduction, a mid-song story, and some impromptu summer firefly ambiance provided by an enthralled, appreciative crowd.
Magic. Just magic.
Bonus #1: “Frankie” came out a few times on Bruce’s 2005 solo acoustic tour. I wouldn’t count any of them among Bruce’s best performances, but they’re unusual enough to warrant watching. Here’s his performance from Seattle, August 11, 2005.
Bonus #2: Here’s another “Frankie” studio outtake, this one from the 1982 sessions. Very, very close to the released version, this one is notable for Clarence’s absence in the coda. A curiosity, but by no means essential listening:
Frankie
Recorded: May 14,1982
Released: Tracks (1998)
First performed: March 26, 1976 (Atlanta, GA)
Last performed: July 20, 2016 (Horsens, Denmark)
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