Roll of the Dice: Harry’s Place

“That was my take on the Bush years.  That would have perhaps originated from Magic, because that was the record where I was writing about the last days of the Bush years. I had that piece, and it was another one of those things where it was that or something else.”  –Bruce Springsteen, Rolling Stone, January 9, 2014

It was something else.

How do you break down a song when the songwriter is an unreliable source?

I guess we just take our best shot at it.

Here’s what “Harry’s Place” is not about: the Bush years. (Unless it’s based on Hatchet Harry’s political blog that shares it’s name with the song. But that would be one heck of a stretch.) Or organized crime. Or prostitution. Or religion. Or a bar.

Bruce is rarely on-the-nose and seldom arcane.

I’m pretty certain “Harry’s Place” is about addiction. Take a listen:

“Harry’s Place” is the self-built private hell where the addict dwells, and Harry is the metaphorical monkey on his back.

And the song is a confession.

The narrator of “Harry’s Place” is that voice inside the addict’s head, struggling to break through his self-denial with brutally frank language and a squalid backing track.

Downtown hipsters drinking up the drug line
Down in the kitchen working in the coal mine
Got a special sin, mister, you can’t quite confess
Messy little problem, maybe baby need a new dress
Razorback diamond you shine too hard
Need a hammer help you handle little trouble in your backyard
(Bring it on down to Harry’s Place)

When you’re an addict, your addiction runs your life. You don’t make the rules anymore. You’re the servant, not the master. And everything you own, every dollar you possess, every person in your life is–if Addiction has anything to say about it–in service as well.

When Harry speaks it’s Harry’s streets, in Harry’s house it’s Harry’s rules
You don’t wanna be around, brother, when Harry schools
It’s Harry’s car, Harry’s wife, Harry’s dogs run Harry’s town
Your blood and money spit-shines Harry’s crown
You don’t fuck with Harry’s money, you don’t fuck Harry’s girls
These are the rules, this is the world
(When you bring it on down to Harry’s Place)

You can tell yourself that it’s medicinal. That it’s healthy to channel your frustrations and weaknesses into a single harmless outlet. That you can quit any time. But you know better.

You need a little shot of something to improve your health
A taste of that one little weakness you allow yourself
You’re looking for the key of that box you locked yourself in
Just step up to the line and be one of Harry’s friends

You can’t leave “Harry’s Place,” even though you know it’s a place no one in their right mind would ever want to spend time. And the fact that you may not be there alone is small (if any) comfort. So you give in to it. You surrender to the darkness, venturing yet another flight down to where it’s darker, so you can’t see the squalor. But you know you’re in it.

Shithole on the corner, no light, no sign
Nobody on the street ‘cept the deaf, dumb, and blind
Mayor Conner’s on the couch, Father McGowan’s at the bar
Chief Horton’s at the door checking who the fuck you are

Seesaw Bobby dressed in drag and Mr. Nice
Carry me into the back room and dim the lights
My arms strapped to the table, a thousand angels spinning up the room
A voice whispers in my ear, “We do what we must do”
(When we bring it on down to Harry’s Place)

The coda is as chilling as any Bruce has ever written:

Nobody knows his number, nobody knows his name
If he didn’t exist, it’d all go on just the same
(Bring it on down to Harry’s Place)

Addiction transcends substance. It’s not the drug that’s the demon–it’s the lure, the promise of escape from the life you can’t face.

That’s who Harry is.

So why did Bruce claim “Harry’s Place” was about the Bush administration?

As near as I can figure, it’s because he recorded the song during the Magic sessions, and Magic itself was largely a commentary on the Bush years. It’s an honest mistake (but one that sent a lot of authors and reviewers scampering down the rabbit hole after him, doing their best to analyze the song and contort and force the metaphor).

But really, who can fault him? If I’d written as many songs as Bruce Springsteen had by that point in his life, I’m quite certain I would have forgotten the details of a heck of a lot more than just one of them.

In reality, “Harry’s Place” goes back a lot further than 2007. In fact, we have video of Bruce reciting the lyrics on Nightline in the summer of 2002, tagging it as one of only two recorded outtakes from The Rising–and those lyrics are identical to the version he would release on High Hopes twelve years later.

Ted Koppel gets props on three counts here: first for having the nerve to badger Bruce into opening up his notebook; second for prompting him to reveal an unrecorded song; and third, for almost immediately zeroing in on what the song is about.

Now, yes, I realize that Bruce says “I was just thinking… local kingpin stuff, and the rest of the song goes on from there.”

But I don’t buy it–at least not for the final song. Perhaps it was true at the time of that Koppel interview.

The lyrics in the video above are at just high enough resolution for us to discern that later verses differ from the High Hopes version, but not enough for us to actually make them out. So I suppose it’s quite possible that the song did indeed start out as “local kingpin” stuff, but I can’t listen to the entirety of the released song and conclude it’s about anything other than addiction.

Bruce also describes “Harry’s Place” as an exercise in recapturing the spirit of his second album, and there are certainly echoes of that writing present (for example, the return of colorfully named characters like Seesaw Bobby). But “Harry’s Place” has more in common with “Lost in the Flood” from his first album than anything on his second.

So how do we make sense of all this? As near as I can tell, this is the story:

Sometime in 2001–probably prior to 9/11–Bruce came up with “Harry’s Place” during a style exercise.

When it came time to write and record The Rising, the lyrics were still hanging around his empty notebook. He recorded it (Bruce said an interview that “it initially started out as just me on the piano”) but didn’t feel strongly enough about it to include it. So he shelved it, but continued to work on the song after The Rising was released, polishing it into its final, pointed lyrical form.

Then came the Bush years, and a spate of songs that would become Magic, and although Bruce recorded “Harry’s Place” with the band during those sessions (which explains Clarence’s wonderfully sinister sax solo), it ultimately didn’t fit the theme of that album either.

(For what it’s worth, Bruce suggested as much during a Rolling Stone interview, after the interviewer gently corrected him for the quote that opens this essay.)

“Oh, so if I had those in my book, maybe that must have been for The Rising. I had those lyrics at that time. It’s not uncommon for lyrics to sit in a notebook for a very long time sometimes. I might not know what to do with them, and then suddenly it’s there. So that song was a classic one that had a long gestation. I think, lyrically, I had it way back then. Musically, it’s from somewhere in the mid-zeros, and then we recorded a lot of things freshly on it recently. It’s not an uncommon progression for some of my music.”

So into the vault it went again, until Bruce returned to it during the High Hopes sessions, taking the Magic-era outtake recorded with Brendan O’Brien, overlaying a violent new guitar contribution from Tom Morello, and massaging it into final form with Ron Aniello.

Only by this time, Bruce had completely forgotten what he’d written about in the first place–which isn’t surprising, given that his volunteered information seems to be more in response to interviewer prodding than genuine recollection.

Since Bruce has never performed “Harry’s Place” in concert, we don’t have any on-stage commentary  to shed additional light on it. So we’re forced to decide for ourselves what Bruce was really writing about in “Harry’s Place.”

I’ve shared my own take with you here, but ultimately your guess is as good as mine.

And apparently as good as Bruce’s.

Harry’s Place
Recorded: 2007 and 2014
Released: High Hopes (2014)
Never performed

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