Now where did this come from? And perhaps more importantly, where did it go?
“Angel’s Blues” seems to have spontaneously generated in the middle of the Wild & Innocent Tour and disappeared after its one and only performance.
We know it’s a Springsteen original, but listening to the clip below, it’s virtually impossible to determine how much of Bruce’s lyrics was scripted and how much was improvised.
All I know is it’s one hell of a rave-up. Combining the swing of “Kitty’s Back” (which it immediately followed in the set), a harmonica introduction that presages what Bruce would shortly do with “She’s the One,” a mean sax solo, and some of Bruce’s earliest lyrics about fast cars and fast women, “Angel’s Blues” was a show-stopper sandwiched in-between showstoppers. (A three-pack of “Kitty’s Back,” “Angel’s Blues,” and “Thundercrack“– wow.)
Take a listen to Bruce’s only known performance of “Angel’s Blues.”
Bruce’s lyrics seem very unfinished–he hadn’t quite mastered the car-as-sexual-metaphor thing yet, and his comparisons sound forced, almost bolted on:
Well she’s vicious as a razor resting on your main line
She’s brutal as an ace laid on the table at just the right time
She’s like a devil woman but she’s locked in overdrive
Her eyes are cold stone but she’s backed by a power-glide
She’s sweet, she’s educated, she knows about history, geometry… she’s so fine
And yet, “Angel’s Blues” still features some clever lyrical touches, like the way in which Bruce hints at Angel’s promiscuity in the second verse (the boys “call her God down on Lover’s Lane” — a subtle reference to something someone might say in the heat of passion).
Well now the boys down there say she swings the silver rod
Some kids call her Angel, all the boys call her God down on Lover’s Lane
Well now the kids down in Houston say she’s cold but dynamite
Ah they know that lady wears them blue jeans oh so tight
She gets in my car and the highway bursts to life
And way down on E Street that only happens once or twice
She’s sophisticated, she’s a… she’s a lady, you know what I mean? She’s so fine
Bruce’s narrator never takes himself too seriously–although he gets carried away with imagery and metaphor in every verse, Bruce always returns him to earth with a prosaic final line.
Something else worth noting: Bruce name checks E Street for the second time in song. (The first, of course, was “The E Street Shuffle,” released a few months prior.) That’s significant considering that at the time of this performance (March 10, 1974), Bruce’s band had not yet adopted the name E Street and wouldn’t for at least another month.
Oh she says, “I ain’t got the love, I ain’t got the time
Ain’t gonna give you no kiss, ain’t gonna hand you
All I want’s a ride, Sweet William, all I want’s a ride
When Bruce finally gets Angel into his car, the song rockets into the stratosphere on the back of Clarence’s furious sax solo and never looks back. For perhaps the first time, Bruce has his girl, a fast car, and an open road in the same place at the same time, and the band is barely able to contain the chemical reaction that ensues.
Oh baby, won’t you come
Don’t you wanna go for a ride
Oh get in my car and burn it up
Now switch on the radio and turn it up
And we’re gonna be burning down a straight road
I want some love and I got a truck load
That is, until the song seemingly runs out of gas–although that’s a trick, too, of course. But pay particular attention to it, because it paints a very familiar picture.
And so she gets in my car and I take her home. She lives on 1610 E Street. Steps out of the car and says, “see you”. Goes up the driveway, in the house, and she’s gone. But, but that can’t be the end of this story, right? The door… of course, you know, it… I’m sitting in the car that night by myself, and the door opens a little bit and, and, and in my… 1, 2… And uh, a leg comes out of the suitcase, she’s all packed, and she gonna come with me!
So familiar, in fact, that we can’t help but wonder if Angel’s dress waves or sways as she walks up the driveway and into her house.
It’s not that much of a stretch to speculate that “Thunder Road” might have started out as “Angel’s Blues.” We certainly know that in its earliest live incarnation (“Wings for Wheels” at the famous February 1974 Main Point show), Bruce sang to “Angelina” instead of Mary.
And those last lines… it almost sounds like “Thunder Road” picks up at the very moment “Angel’s Blues” ends. It’s almost as if Bruce is talking to himself when he says, “but that can’t be the end of this story, right?”
I’ll let you decide whether or not there’s some shared DNA between “Angel’s Blues” and “Thunder Road,” since we’re not likely to ever learn the answer from Bruce. But even if there is, there wasn’t always.
Earlier this year, a hand-written draft of Bruce’s “Angel’s Blues” lyrics surface in an auction, and what we can read in Bruce’s own handwriting bears little to no resemblance to what we hear in the clip above.
Conceptually, this 1973 version of “Angel’s Blues” seems similar to the 1974 version above, and metrically these older lyrics would seem to fit the melody (perhaps requiring some rushing at times, but Bruce was no stranger to that in those days).
But the imagery is completely different–and a lot less subtle. The lyrics are tough to follow at times (Bruce amended them as he wrote them), but include lines like:
She takes home lonely wild boys and strapped them to the floor
She wrote about their rushing touch like the hemi-powered iron muscle they wore
A broken-down electronette, she danced topless at night at Joyland
The joint was filled with leftover gods and surfers who come in just stoned on dope and tequila
What accounts for the distance between the handwritten lyrics and the bootleg ’74 recording? My best guess is that Bruce had a flash of inspiration and realized that a car might be just the metaphor he needed to romanticize Angel’s story.
The rest is pre-history.
Angel’s Blues
Never recorded
First performed: March 10, 1974 (Houston, TX)
Last performed: March 10, 1974 (Houston, TX)
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