Bruce often confesses to discomfort with writing love songs in his early years, claiming to have hidden them away either metaphorically (by burying the theme so deeply in a song that you have to pay attention to find it) or by literally squirreling the song away in a vault, never to see the light of day.
“Two Hearts in True Waltz Time” is one of my favorite examples on both counts.
Recorded in the studio in the summer of 1972, “Two Hearts in True Waltz Time” features Bruce on guitar accompanied by Garry Tallent (or maybe Richard Davis?) on bass, and it was seriously considered for inclusion on Bruce’s first album as late as that August.
Obviously, it was dropped before Greetings From Asbury Park was released. That’s too bad, because “Two Hearts in True Waltz Time” is absolutely mesmerizing.
Let’s take a listen.
“Two Hearts in True Waltz Time” takes its title from a 1930 German film/operetta, or perhaps the 1934 British remake. It’s hard to imagine Bruce being familiar with either film in 1972, but somehow that phrase got lodged in his mind and intrigued him enough to base a song around it.
If the song’s melody sounds familiar, that’s probably because it’s very similar to “Lost in the Flood” — and since both songs were recorded the same week (possibly even the same day), that may be a big reason why one of them had to be left off the album. (Interestingly, at one point they were slated to be back-to-back on the album.)
As for the lyrics, on the surface they are very much in keeping with Bruce’s Greetings-era writing, full of internal rhymes, surreal imagery, and inventive metaphor.
But upon a careful listen, we realize that this song is unlike any and all of the ones that did make it onto the album. It’s a gritty street romance of the kind we wouldn’t see until “Incident on 57th Street” the following year, although we won’t realize that until the end of the song. In fact, “Two Hearts in True Waltz Time” sounds for all the world like Bruce started out with “Lost in the Flood” in mind but ended up reaching for “Incident.”
In the first verse, Bruce introduces us to our focal character, a nameless New York streetwalker who haunts the entrances to the city:
Sundown finds her running, but the night pushes her deep within the tunnel
She camouflages herself in DayGlo paint and sings her love songs through a funnel
She clings to the walls like a cat who calls the shots for life and for death
Wearing nothing but the make-up that she uses to try and cover up for herself
But she can’t hide her sword, she gives no terms for surrender
She’s living the third World War
Although I usually like to analyze a song as it unfolds for us, it’s worth pausing here for a moment to discuss the central premise of the song. Every mention or discussion that I’ve seen about “Two Hearts in True Waltz Time” in print or on-line describes it as the story of an affair between a police officer and a married woman.
I believe this is a mis-reading of the song.
I certainly acknowledge that many songs in Bruce’s catalog lend themselves to multiple layers of interpretation, but I believe and argue that “Two Hearts in True Waltz Time” is pretty straightforward if we take heed of all of the context Bruce provides.
To wit: that first verse clearly describes a prostitute. Bruce provides not one but three references to hanging out in one of the tunnels that leads into the city–the first a literal reference, the second a metaphor (a funnel), and the third a simile (clinging to the walls of the tunnel like a cat). There are also references to her garish make-up and scanty clothing, and the fact that she works at night. I don’t believe there’s much room here for any other interpretation.
Let’s continue, as Bruce places our troubled focal character deep enough within the tunnel to cross the state line, hopping from trick to trick and staying one step ahead of the police. In a particularly neat literary reference, Bruce compares her to Little Orphan Annie, simultaneously presenting her as young, orphaned, and pimped out.
Now the tunnel police, they steadily increase the search for where she hides her kids
Yeah, she swings on a vine across the state line, they measured the length of her skid
She never goes back to do something she didn’t or undo something she did
Her smoke streams from the street and the night is complete with a long and fiery belch
Well, she’s just another Orphan Annie hung up pushing for a mademoiselle
(Interestingly, in a solo demo of the song from a month earlier, Bruce sings that last line a bit differently–she’s still another Orphan Annie, but also a Raquel Welch. In the month between solo demo and studio recordings, Bruce seems to have opted for a more artfully extended Annie comparison at the expense of the rhyme.)
In the third verse, the police finally catch up to our Orphan Annie–or at least one officer does, and their encounter is primal and carnal. I’ll let these lyrics speak for themselves–your imagination can provide all the interpretation required:
And she rides like Caesar, brandishing a whip on the hood of his squad car
As the siren wails, she silently sails leaving cat prints in the tar
Now this next couplet is the source of what I argue is the popular misunderstanding of this song:
Oh, she breaks with the dawn and by morning she’s gone leaving nothing but another night
She returns to her home like a dog returns for a bone, another unsatisfied wife
I’m fairly certain that even the most deservedly well-regarded of Springsteen scholars zero in on that “another unsatisfied wife” reference and characterize the entire song through that lens.
Here’s why I believe that’s a mistake: Besides all of the preceding context, Bruce spends the entire song writing in carefully crafted metaphor. There’s no reason to think he’d suddenly abandon that here. So I argue that he hasn’t–if you read or listen to that last line again, it’s clear that Bruce is indeed speaking in metaphor. When the morning comes, the streetwalker leaves the cop and returns home like a dog returns for a bone, like an unsatisfied wife who snuck out for an affair. Granted, the appositive makes it difficult to determine whether to take that phrase as literal or metaphorical, but that’s why it’s important to place it in the context of the entire song.
The final verse shifts our focus from the lady to the officer. Pay careful attention to how Bruce constructs this verse:
And in his little booth secure from the truth, he wants her more than he’s got the guts to say
But as she needs to be real, he needs to conceal the realness of his place
So he sings a little song and in a chiffon sarong she performs a black ballet in space
But she’s just another flop with a fancy name, he’s just another cop with a pretty face
I absolutely love how in the same verse–even in the same line at times–he continues the use of metaphor when describing her, but completely discards it in favor of spare, literal language when describing him. That’s a fantastic literary device, subtly showing us–even as he explains it in the second line of the verse–that the cop is living a fantasy, while the object of his desire doesn’t even have the luxury of fantasy.
And yet–we’re led to believe by the final lines that there is clearly a connection between these two, and that this is not their first encounter. And probably not their last either.
The cop will continue to conceal the realness of not just his place, but also hers–both literally (where he finds her in the tunnel) and metaphorically (their incompatible social standings).
The final metaphor–the title phrase–is achingly perfect, as anyone who has ever waltzed knows:
So together they commit the ballroom crime as two hearts in true waltz time
The waltz is a dance in which two partners must hold each other firmly and closely, spinning and whirling around each other as the force of their spinning threatens at all times to separate them. The only way to resist the force that separates is to lock eyes with one’s partner at all times.
It’s one of Bruce’s finest final lines–certainly the best among his early songs. It requires no analysis and speaks for itself, so we’ll end our dissection here.
Bruce has never performed “Two Hearts in True Waltz Time” in concert. We can only hope that someday he will.
Two Hearts in True Waltz Time
Recorded: May 3, 1972 and June 27-29, 1972
Never released
Never performed
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