Roll of the Dice: Meeting Across the River

Bruce is a pretty funny guy, but it took a while before he let his sense of humor show through in his songs. When he did, it was hard to miss.

You can hear it on display in more recent songs like “Frankie Fell in Love” and as far back as “Sherry Darling” on The River, but most of his funnier songs have been relegated to Tracks and other outtake collections. “Ain’t Good Enough For You,” “Talk to Me,” and “I Wanna Be With You” all showcase Bruce’s flair for cornball.

But I’d argue that Bruce’s laugh-out-loud funniest song is actually his first attempt at it: “Meeting Across the River” from his seminal album, Born to Run.

If you’ve never considered “Meeting Across the River” to be a farcical song, that’s probably because Bruce hides the humor in plain sight, beneath a gorgeously atmospheric film noir backing track.

Let’s take a listen.

See what I mean? You hear it now that you’re listening for it: this is a story about a loser. Heck, he’s a loser’s loser.

Our no-name narrator is planning a heist, except he doesn’t have a plan. Or a gun. Or a car. Or even a friend with a car–he has to ask a buddy to find someone else with a car. Oh, and lend him a few bucks while he’s at it, because this schmo is so broke he had to hock a transistor radio.

The brilliance of “Meeting Across the River” is how Bruce crafts the song with such cinematic skill that he draw us completely into the mind of his point-of-view character. Although the moody melody and the desperate vocals clue us into the fact that this story can’t possibly end well, it probably takes most fans several repeat listens before we realize just how absolutely bonkers this situation is.

“Meeting Across the River” is in the form of a monologue–or more precisely, one-half of a dialogue. Almost certainly Eddie is holding up his end of the conversation, but what he says doesn’t really matter. Our narrator is so lost in his own delusions that he isn’t really paying attention to Eddie anyway.

Hey Eddie, can you lend me a few bucks, tonight can you get us a ride
Got to make it through the tunnel, got a meeting with a man on the other side

Right off the bat, we know this guy’s a loser: he’s broke and car-less and needs to call on a friend to find them a ride for a mysterious meeting.

Hey Eddie, this guy he’s the real thing
So if you wanna come along you gotta promise you won’t say anything
‘Cause this guy don’t dance
And the word’s been passed, this is our last chance

And now we know (thanks to the 1940s gangster language) that this meeting isn’t for anything legal. We also know that this isn’t Eddie and friend’s first rodeo–they have earned themselves a reputation, and it’s not a complimentary one.

We gotta stay cool tonight Eddie ’cause man we got ourselves out on that line
And if we blow this one they ain’t gonna be looking for just me this time

Hey, now that’s a great way to recruit a partner in crime: remind them of how you’re already marked and how they’re likely to join you.

And all we gotta do is hold up our end
Here stuff this in your pocket, it’ll look like you’re carrying a friend
And remember, just don’t smile
Change your shirt, ’cause tonight we got style

This is probably my favorite part of the song. It cracks me up every time I hear it, because I can’t help but momentarily leave the song to wonder, what’s he stuffing in his pocket?  A banana? A hairbrush? A hose spray nozzle? A Wii controller? The possibilities are endless.

I also love the notion that as long as you wear a nice shirt and don’t smile, you can get away with a fake gun.

Next, Bruce reveals our hero’s true motivation:

Well Cherry says she’s gonna walk because she found I took her radio and hocked it
But Eddie man she don’t understand that two grands practically sitting here in my pocket

And tonight’s gonna be everything that I said
And when I walk through that door I’m just gonna throw that money on the bed
She’ll see this time I wasn’t just talking
Then I’m gonna go out walking

Ah. Of course.

The mark of a true loser is that they can’t bear to be seen as a true loser. So Cherry’s boyfriend (husband?) has lost all sense of reality because he can visualize romantic redemption so vividly that he can almost taste it.

And that final touch is perfectly self-delusional as well: he’s so proud of himself in anticipation that he’s convinced that he won’t even stick around to hear Cherry tell him he was right all along. (We know better, of course. There’s no way this guy’s going to go out walking.)

And then, with one final line, Bruce gently rouses us back to reality, as Eddie’s delusions give way by necessity to desperation, and he pleads once more:

Hey Eddie, can you catch us a ride…

“Meeting Across the River” is so different from Bruce’s contemporaneous songwriting that we have to wonder: where the heck did it come from?

Bruce was certainly no stranger to noirish street scenes: by this time, he’d already released songs like “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City” and “Incident on 57th Street.” But those songs romanticized both the street and its leading men, whereas “Meeting Across the River” features an inept would-be hood against a palpably dangerous backdrop.

Bruce himself doesn’t seem to recall the exact inspiration for the lyrics, although looking back on it, he told Brian Hiatt in an interview that it was likely influenced by Bruce’s own frustration at his inability to make the big time (remember, this was pre-Born to Run).

“By that time, I think we’d been counted out, and it probably had something to do with that, a feeling that I had about myself, maybe, that I’d been underestimated.”

Personally, I think Bruce may have been playing it just a bit coy with Hiatt, because while his narrator in “Meeting Across the River” may have been underestimated by everyone around him, it’s because he clearly deserved to be. So while I tend to credit Bruce’s suggestion that the storyline for “Meeting Across the River” was born of Bruce’s own underestimation, I think it more precisely draws on what I suspect might have been Bruce’s fears and feelings of inadequacy: what if his next album didn’t make it big and his label dropped them?

Regardless of where the story originated, the lyrics are only half of what makes “Meeting Across the River” special. The other half is the instrumental track–spare, jazzy, smoky, sounding for all the world like it came from the back of a jazz club in the big city, which is exactly where it might have been inspired. (Professor Roy Bittan had been frequenting such clubs and had been experimenting with riffs infused by his visits.)

It certainly seems that the piano came first, as we’re fortunate to have an early work-in-progress version of “Meeting Across the River” with only the piano for accompaniment. This version is called “The Heist” (as the song would continue to be called almost right up until the album’s release), and while it’s close to final lyrical form, there are a few differences that make our characters just a little bit more loserish:

But the song didn’t fully come to life until two guest artists entered the studio: Richard Davis (who previously backed Bruce on “The Angel“) on the  double bass, and Randy Brecker (making his second appearance on Born to Run–he can also be found on “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out“) on the trumpet. Suddenly “Meeting Across the River” sounded like absolutely nothing Bruce had ever written or recorded before, and although they compared a few takes before settling on the final form, each and every one of them were great. Take a listen to a couple of the alternative takes below.

These days, “Meeting Across the River” is recognized as a Springsteen classic. There’s even a book of short stories inspired by the song (I haven’t read it and therefore can neither recommend nor warn you off it).

But it wasn’t always thus. In fact Bruce himself wasn’t terribly keen on the song in the beginning. It was one of the last songs Bruce wrote before finalizing the album (he wrote it in April or May 1975, just three or four months before Born to Run was released), and reportedly Bruce never considered it a must-have for the album.

It was also the last song from the album to be performed live, not making its debut until more than two months into the Born to Run Tour.

There are fans–most of them, in fact–who would argue that “Meeting Across the River” should only be performed when paired with its album-mate “Jungleland.”

I am not one of those fans. Yes, the two songs are both “street” songs, but to my ears the epic romanticism of “Jungleland” completely clashes with the absurdity of “Meeting Across the River.” I don’t care for the pairing on vinyl, and I don’t care for it in concert. And for at least the first few years after its release, Bruce appears to have felt the same way–he wouldn’t play the two songs in sequence until the Darkness Tour.

Here’s the very first live performance of “Meeting Across the River,” the opening number at Bruce’s show in Iowa City on September 26, 1975. The beginning of the song wasn’t captured, unfortunately, so the recording starts mid-song. But the vocals are freshly inspired, and Roy’s conclusion is unusual and lovely, and both of these make it worth a listen.

When Bruce plays “Meeting Across the River,” it’s almost always in its original album arrangement. But there have been some exceptions, most notably in 1976, when the song was played in a full-band arrangement. Take a listen:

And in 2005, on his solo acoustic tour, Bruce took a run at the song by himself in an arrangement reminiscent of that original demo for “The Heist.”

In 2008 (and again for an encore a year and a half later), Richard Davis reprised his role on bass, joining Bruce and the E Street Band on “Meeting Across the River” for the first time in over three decades. (I wish we had a better quality recording of this, but unfortunately, these are the best ones I’m aware of.)

“Meeting Across the River” made a few appearances during the 2012-2014 tours. Each time it did, lucky fans witnessed a gorgeous performance in an arrangement very close to the original one, thanks to Curt Ramm’s nightly presence. Here’s one of the final performances to date:

“Meeting Across the River” has never been a setlist staple, even on the Born to Run tour. But other than its notable absence during the twenty-year stretch from 1979-1998, it’s never been fully gone either. Fans can usually depend on a few outings per tour–these days, paired more often than not with “Jungleland.” Consider yourself lucky if you catch either of them–they both rank among the best of Bruce’s catalog.

Meeting Across the River
Recorded: May 28, 1975
Released: Born to Run (1975)
First performed: September 26, 1975 (Iowa City, IA)
Last performed: March 28, 2016 (New York City, NY)

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