Roll of the Dice: Song for Orphans

I think "Song to Orphans" is less about the call and more about the dangers, distractions, temptations, and seductions that lie in one's path when answering it. They're good album-mates, these two songs.

— Ken Rosen (@Krosen) October 21, 2020

Updated 10/23/20: Context matters. As of a few minutes ago, we finally have a fully realized official E Street Band recording of “Song for Orphans” via Bruce’s just-released Letter to You album. And while the song is still as lyrically dense as ever, the subtext that I alluded to in the original essay below (about the temptations facing an aspiring rock star) seem much less sub- and much more primary. As I mused in my Twitter conversation with Anthony above, Bruce seems to pair and place “If I Was The Priest” and “Song for Orphans” deliberately, as a look back (on multiple levels) to the beginning of his journey from his current location far, far up the road. I’ll let my original essay stand for now; perhaps someday I’ll revise it to reflect the tremendous modern version. But for now, it feels like honoring the spirit of the album to preserve the past alongside the present.

Deep into the penultimate show of the Devils & Dust Tour in Trenton’s Sovereign Bank Arena, Bruce Springsteen drew a wild card.

Instead of playing his usual nightly rendition of “The Hitter,” Bruce informed the audience that they were about to hear an outtake from (he thought) his very first album, one that had never been released in any form, not even on bonus discs, box sets, or b-sides.

“You’re not gonna know this bastard,” he warned, and then realizing what had brought the song back to top-of-mind, he added, “Or some of you may. Some of you actually may. I like that in some of you.” (The following night, he’d explain which “some of you” he was talking about: “those of you who know more about me than I do about myself.”)

What followed was Bruce’s first performance of “Song for Orphans” in 32 years.

If you looked around the room during the performance, you’d have seen jaws drop; if not for Bruce’s playing, you could have heard pins drop.

What brought this forgotten song back to the stage? Apparently, Bruce had been listening to the brand new Sirius satellite radio station, E Street Radio, at the exact moment the station was playing the song off of an old bootleg.  Bruce was immediately taken by his ancient composition and decided to reclaim it.

As he often does, he did a bit more than resurrect it–he also re-arranged it, massaging the melody of the verses into something less dirge-y and more Bobby Jean-y and adding piano accompaniment in the form of Alan Fitzgerald. The result was something fresh and new even for hardcore fans well familiar with the song from decades-old bootlegs.

As for the original song, “Song for Orphans” (sometimes referred to as “Song to Orphans” or “Song of the Orphans”–Bruce seems to have been prepositionally conflicted) does indeed date back to the Greetings from Asbury Park era, but Bruce may be mis-remembering it as an outtake from that album.

While he was certainly performing it live prior to his first issue on Columbia Records, all evidence indicates that he didn’t record a demo of it until a month after Greetings hit store shelves, making it a candidate for inclusion on The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle instead. Surviving records indicate Bruce was considering it for inclusion on Born to Run as well, so the song was clearly not one that Bruce intended to abandon easily.

Take a listen to that first recording below–lyrically it’s virtually identical to Bruce’s 2005 version, except for a head-scratching change or two, and interestingly, the chorus uses the same melody as the verses, even though Bruce had already performed the song live using the chorus melody Bruce employed in the 2005 version above.

Honestly, if I place “Song for Orphans” in historical context, I can’t second-guess Bruce’s decision to not release it. By 1973, Bruce had written so many musical street scenes populated with colorful characters amidst a drug-riddled backdrop that he was at risk of inventing a genre.

Stylistically, “Song for Orphans” falls somewhere in between the gritty realism of “Hollywood Kids” and the more accessible “Santa Ana” without surpassing either of those pre-label gems (which makes sense, since evidence indicates that “Song for Orphans” was written in mid-1972, in between those two songs). On vinyl, Bruce already had similar ground covered in “Lost in the Flood,” and by the end of that year, he’d put the icing on the cake with “Incident on 57th Street.” Although records indicate “Song for Orphans” was at least temporarily considered for inclusion on Born to Run, it would have been fruitless to try to top “Incident,” and did he really need to include a genre song on three consecutive albums? I’d argue no.

But “Song for Orphans” is a beautiful song nonetheless (especially in its resurrected 2005 form), ornamented in fine if typical early Springsteen style:

The multitude assembled and tried to make the noise
Them black blind poet generals and restless loud white boys
But times grew thin and the axis was left somehow incomplete
Where instead of child lions was left aging junkie sheep

Perhaps more so than in any other of his contemporary songs, Bruce wastes no time romanticizing the situation but rather immediately establishes the cost that drug addiction has exacted from the kids on this particular street. (Although never expressly stated, the “orphans” are implied to be runaways or perhaps abandoned rather than true orphans.) At the prime of their youth, they were already feeling ravaged.

And how many wasted have I seen signed “Hollywood or bust”
Left to ride those ever ghostly Arizona gusts
Oh, cheerleader tramps and kids with big amps soundin’ helpless in the void
High society vamps and ex-heavyweight champs mistakin’ soot for soil

Although not well-traveled at the time, as an aspiring musician Bruce had obviously encountered his share of fellow wayward dreamers (he buries the reference to would-be rock stars, but we can’t help but suspect that it’s the fear that drives the song), but he also notes that time in the spotlight can be exceedingly brief, and the way down can be as hard as the way up.

And now we have our first chorus, although musically it’s indistinguishable from a verse in the demo version:

So break me now big Mama as Old Faithful breaks the day
Believe me my good Linda, let the aurora shine the way
The confederacy, she’s in my name now, and the hounds are held at bay
Oh the axis needs a stronger arm, do you feel your muscle play

Although I like to think I’m pretty adept at interpreting and contextualizing Bruce’s lyrics, every once in a while some of them escape me. The chorus to “Song for Orphans” is one of those times. To my ears, it sounds awkward and clunky, with a half-dozen different metaphors, none of which are fully realized. Given that Bruce didn’t set it apart musically, I can’t help but wonder why he included it at all. He must have been trying to say something with it, and if I had to take a stab at it, I’d say that Bruce’s narrator is re-affirming his commitment and determination to escape the street at all costs, but honestly that’s a guess that’s based more on insight from contemporary work than from these words themselves. (If you can explain the chorus, by all means please leave a comment and enlighten me!)

The doorstep blanket weaver, oh Madonna pushes bells
From house to house I see her givin’ last kisses and wishin’ well
To every gypsy mystic and hero that all the babies might find a place
Who’ve been lost to true fathers and mothers on their time travels deep in space

As the song continues, we’re now deep in orphan metaphor, as a Madonna searches for foster homes for abandoned children. Bruce strongly implies that for these kids, drug abuse is generational–their true parents lost in “time travels deep in space.” (Bruce thought it necessary to re-write that one line as “weekends deep in space” for his 2005 version. I don’t know why.) And the homes that take in the kids… well, they don’t last long either:

Now the sons return for fathers, but the fathers are all gone
Oh and the lost souls search for saviors, but saviors don’t last long
Those aimless questless renegade brats who live their lives in song
Run the length of a candle, and in a goodnight whisper and a puff they’re gone

“Song for Orphans” tends to be heavy-handed and over-laden with metaphor, but a few lines–that last “length of a candle” one in particular–are delicate and lovely.

That subtlety is short-lived, however. Bruce ends the song on an even more brutal note than he began it with–his street orphans are locked out and preyed on, and even the one friendly soul–an old travelling musician who appoints himself a mentor–encourages the kids to give up their dreams and embrace grim reality to survive.

The missions are filled with hermits lookin’ for a friend
The terraces are filled with cat-men lookin’ for a way in
And orphans abandoned on silver mountains are jumped in celestial alleyways
Wait for that old tramp Dog Man Moses ’cause he takes in all the strays

He told me, “don’t grow on empty legends, boy, or lonely cradle songs
‘Cause Billy the Kid was just a bowery boy who made a living twirlin’ his guns
And this night she’ll be long and lanky, and she’ll speak in a mother tongue”
And then he lullabied the refugees with an amplifier’s hum

It’s a fascinating song, isn’t it? But like I wrote earlier, it just doesn’t feel like it was destined for classic status, even if Bruce had included it on one of his early albums.

That’s not to say the song doesn’t translate well to the stage, though. Besides the pair of 2005 performances, we have a couple contemporaneous recordings from 1973, one of which hails from a live show; through it, we can hear the difference that a live audience makes on Bruce’s delivery. He’s in full-on dramatic storytelling mode here, with Danny Federici adding color in accompaniment. In my opinion, this performance from Max’s Kansas City on January 31, 1973 is the definitive performance of the song.

Song for Orphans
Recorded: February 19-20, 1973 (solo), November 2019 (band)
Released: Letter to You (2020)
First performed: December 7, 1972 (New York City, NY)
Last performed: November 22, 2005 (Trenton, NJ)

Looking for your favorite Bruce song? Check our full index here. New entries every week!