Roll of the Dice: Human Touch

During his solo acoustic tour in 2005, Bruce would often comment that love songs didn’t come easy to him during his early years. For his first several albums, he’d “disguise” them in other songs that didn’t seem like love songs to casual listeners.

But by the 1990s, the dynamic had shifted: Bruce had become so comfortable writing love songs, that he now used them to disguise other themes that he wasn’t yet comfortable addressing head on.

Case in point: “Human Touch.”

If your first exposure to “Human Touch” was the sexy MTV video, if you focused primarily on the title or the chorus, and if you assumed he was addressing a woman throughout the entire song, you might understandably accept it at face value as a right-down-the-middle love song.

But Bruce is rarely that on-the-nose.

“Human Touch” was the first single from the first album Bruce recorded in his post-E Street Band era. (Lucky Town was released on the same day as Human Touch, but it was recorded significantly later.) When it debuted in March 1992, it had been almost five years since Bruce had released a new album–an eternity in pop culture. Bruce had all but disappeared from the collective consciousness.

His diehard fans never lost faith, but we certainly had to wonder in those pre-Internet days from time to time: whatever happened to Bruce Springsteen? Why disperse the E Street Band for artistic reasons but not actually release any new art? Why walk off the stage while still at the height of his fame and popularity?

Bruce answered that in the very first verse of his first post-E Street single:

You and me we were the pretenders
We let it all slip away
In the end what you don’t surrender
Well the world just strips away

For the Bruce Springsteen we’d known until this point, this is a breathtakingly confessional, almost therapeutic verse.

This is Human Touch Bruce talking to Born in the U.S.A. Bruce, his private self conversing with his stage persona. On one level, we may be listening to a nameless man talking to a nameless woman, but “Human Touch” is too carefully constructed and too purposefully positioned for there not to be another more intimate message coming directly from Bruce.

For example: “pretender” isn’t just a convenient rhyme for “surrender”–it serves a double purpose. The more common one: we weren’t our true selves on that stage; the more pointed one: we aspired to the throne of rock royalty but one can’t stay there forever.

For fans who listened between the lines, Bruce reintroduced himself by explaining where he’d been and why: I was at the top. I had it all, and then I let it go. Because if I didn’t do it voluntarily, the world would take it from me anyway. Fame is fleeting, but love and art last. I let it all go because I wanted to endure.

Only with this confession out of the way does Bruce shift his focus to his “girl,” although even here I’m not convinced he isn’t also talking to himself:

Girl, ain’t no kindness in the face of strangers
Ain’t gonna find no miracles here
Well you can wait on your blessings my darlin’
But I got a deal for you right here

It’s worth noting the introduction of religious imagery here, because Bruce not only continues to employ it through the song, but throughout the video as well, weaving together scenes of the flesh and the spirit. That’s a familiar Springsteen trope, employed as far back as his first album (and even earlier), but here it serves more than just an artistic purpose. It’s the heart (no pun intended) of Bruce’s message in “Human Touch”–the closest we get to divinity is in the love we find in each other. But you have to forge that connection–it doesn’t just happen. There ain’t no kindness in the face of strangers, no miracles, no blessings to wait for.

I ain’t lookin’ for prayers or pity
I ain’t comin’ ’round searchin’ for a crutch
I just want someone to talk to
And a little of that human touch

Ain’t no mercy on the streets of this town
Ain’t no bread from heavenly skies
Ain’t nobody drawin’ wine from this blood
It’s just you and me tonight

Tell me in a world without pity
Do you think what I’m askin’s too much?
I just want something to hold on to
And a little of that human touch

No kindness in the face of strangers. No mercy. No pity.

Sure, maybe “Human Touch” is a modern-day, earthier “Two Hearts.” It certainly works on that level if you want it to.

But I can’t help but think that Bruce is also sharing his newfound awareness that he’d never find in his audience the real connection and true recognition that he craved in life. He needed an anchor, a true and intimate companion.

I should pause here to state: I love “Human Touch.” I think it easily ranks in the top quartile of Bruce’s catalog. And not just the lyrics, but also (and especially) the backing track. I am not a fan of Human Touch the album. I think it’s sterile and overproduced, and while I love most of the album when performed live, there are very few tracks that I enjoy in their studio form.

But “Human Touch” the song is a notable exception. It features an arrangement that’s in turns (and sometimes, somehow, all at once) lush, polished, funky, and gritty. Maybe it’s the presence of Randy Jackson (yes, that Randy Jackson) and Jeff Porcaro (of Toto fame). Maybe it’s the fact that it was recorded at one of the earlier sessions. Or maybe Bruce was just feeling the groove that day. Regardless, “Human Touch” feels like one of the few natural, carefree songs on the album, and the final two minutes of the album version (from that immortal “Heeeeeeeyyyyyyyy now!” onward) rock as hard as anything Bruce has ever recorded.

I state all this here because of what I’m about to say: “Human Touch” kind of falls apart as it heads into and out of the bridge–at least lyrically:

Oh girl that feeling of safety you prize
Well it comes with a hard hard price
You can’t shut off the risk and the pain
Without losin’ the love that remains
We’re all riders on this train

So you been broken and you been hurt
Show me somebody who ain’t
Yeah I know I ain’t nobody’s bargain
But hell a little touchup and a little paint

Gone are the religious metaphors and imagery that Bruce has so carefully and skillfully threaded up until this point, and with them went the subtextual layer that makes the first half of “Human Touch” so briliant. The bridge is essentially a “Two Hearts” rehash, and the verse that follows feels like a reprise of “Tougher Than the Rest.”

Don’t get me wrong–I actually love that verse and the way that Bruce revives his trusty car metaphor as a way of reminding us just how long he’s been around (certainly more than a time or two). It’s just that the second half of “Human Touch” feels like a very different song from the first half, and the first half comes out the winner in the comparison.

As for the final choruses… well, they’re so direct and unadorned that I’m at a loss for anything to add:

You might need somethin’ to hold on to
When all the answers they don’t amount too much
Somebody that you could just talk to
And a little of that human touch

Baby in a world without pity
Do you think what I’m askin’s too much?
I just want to feel you in my arms
And share a little of that human touch

But hey now, that “hey now!” saves “Human Touch” from petering out unremarkably, Those final two minutes–easily the finest two minutes on the album.

Despite its imperfections, “Human Touch” served admirably as the lead-off (and only) single for its album, although it’s a little tricky to measure exactly how well: as a promotional gimmick, Bruce promoted his double album combo by releasing a lead-off single with two A-sides and no B-side. “Human Touch” shared the spotlight with “Better Days,” but if memory serves, “Human Touch” received the lion’s share of the radio play.

Regardless, the song peaked at #16 on the Billboard Hot 100, cracked the top ten in Canada, Sweden, Ireland and other countries, and captured the top of the chart in Italy and Spain (two of Bruce’s strongest of strongholds)

“Human Touch” received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Song and a VMA nomination for Best Male Video, but neither award was in the cards that year.

Still, “Human Touch” became a centerpiece of the 1992 and 1993 tours, and it’s the only track from that album to make reliable appearances in virtually every E Street Band tour ever since (a notable feat for a track that’s primarily associated with the E Street Diaspora).

You can be the judge of which band nailed it best. Here’s a snippet from the very first performance of “Human Touch,” more than a month before the launch of World Tour 1992:

…along with one of that band’s best performances, from MTV’s xxPlugged special.

Contrast that with the very first E Street Band performance of “Human Touch,” from late in the Reunion Tour:

Regardless of which way you lean, there’s no denying: by the time the High Hopes Tour came around, the E Street Band had enough “Human Touch” performances under their belt for it to feel like the song had been meant for them all along.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite performances of “Human Touch,” from Adelaide in 2014:

Human Touch
Recorded: Spring 1990
Released: Human Touch (1992) (edited versions appear on Greatest Hits and The Essential Bruce Springsteen as well)
First performed: May 6, 1992 (New York City, NY)
Last performed: April 28, 2023 (Barcelona, Spain)

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