For at least a few months from the autumn of 1970 through the early weeks of 1971, if you caught Steel Mill in concert, you might have heard this original Springsteen song.
For the vast majority of us who didn’t… well, I’d venture to say that we didn’t miss out on much when it comes to “I Can’t Take It No More.”
Compared even to Bruce’s contemporaneous songwriting, “I Can’t Take It No More” lacks depth and subtlety. Like much of his early Steel Mill work, Bruce seems to have intended “I Can’t Take It No More” primarily as a guitar showcase.
If considered instrumentally, it’s a pretty decent hard rock song for a barely 21-year-old songwriter. The song simmers at a slow burn, building in intensity through the first jam break, until it finally explodes after the bridge.
Vocally, too, the “I Can’t Take It No More” features fine shared vocals from Bruce and Robbin Thompson (until Robbin’s shockingly ferocious lead drowns Bruce out just before the second instrumental break).
But lyrically, the song is essentially just a guy demanding more “respect” from his girl.
Or at least, that’s the generous interpretation. More likely, the narrator is projecting his own frustrations onto his girlfriend rather than facing them himself–and we get the sense she’s trying to tell him that, but he’s in no mood to hear it.
I can’t take it
Everything coming down on me
Gotta make a break for it, oh yeah
I can’t take it oh no more
You know I need my respect, woman I demand it
Now listen: You got the nerve to say I won’t go
I caught you so many times telling that same old lie
I can’t take it, no more
You’ve got the nerve to say I won’t go
Well honey I love you but I, but I told you so
I can’t take it no more, no more
Following the first instrumental break, the vocals build as we get to the heart of our narrator’s insecurity: he’s down, but his girl makes him feel like he’s already out, and if she hasn’t already walked away from him, it seems he feels she’s about to.
You know it’s always the same
Pulling tighter on the rein
You always make it very plain
That to count me as a loser
You count me as a loser
Before the end of the game
Ain’t it a shame
Guess I am the one to blame
Because that sweet talk’s mine, not hers, whoa whoa
That sweet talk, baby, oh yeah yeah
You’ve got the nerve to ask me why
I caught you so many times telling that same old lie
But just as the song reaches it’s climax, Bruce slips in a revealing couplet that tells us that our hero is more bark than bite.
I can’t take it, can’t take it no more
Guess I’m gonna fake it, no I just can’t take it
For all his “I can’t take it” protests, it seems that’s exactly what he’s going to do.
Not all of Bruce’s protagonists need be virtuous–if that were so, we’d be deprived of some of his best work. But we expect to be able to empathize if not sympathize, and “I Can’t Take It No More” fails on both counts.
I Can’t Take It No More
Never recorded
Never released
First performed: October 11, 1970 (Richmond, VA)
Last performed: January 18, 1971 (South Amboy, NJ)
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