Roll of the Dice: Loose Change

To the degree that “Loose Change” gets mentioned at all, it’s usually when a critic or a fan is asked to rattle off a list of Bruce’s darkest songs.

Do a search on it and you’ll find it labeled “dark,” “bleak,” “paranoid,” and “sad.” Telegraph ranks the lyrics of “Loose Change” among the top ten saddest lines Bruce has ever written; NME cites “Loose Change” as one of “The Five Most Depressing Springsteen Songs Ever.”

But I beg to differ.

With the benefit of hindsight (granted by Bruce’s openness about his depression in recent years), “Loose Change” strikes me not as depressing but rather depressive. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bruce wrote it either in the throes of a depressive episode or as an attempt to describe one. And to my ears at least, the song ends on a note of hopefulness.

“Loose Change” is a song that invites debate and challenges interpretation. The plot–such as it is–is spare, with deceptive detail that leads one to search for meaning and symbolism.

But there is none, apart from the title metaphor. “Loose Change” is an internal story, not an external one. Bruce’s narrator goes through life without experiencing it, a prisoner in his own head, his heart cut off from connection even when his body is experiencing it.

Let’s take a listen.

“Loose Change” is one of a collection of early 1990s songs that Bruce wrote on the bass guitar, and it’s arguably the one that works best. The lack of a melodic instrumental accompaniment helps to create the sense of isolation and alienation that pervades the song. Roy Bittan’s keyboards provide the only sense of color, and even then only from a muted distance–as if there’s a world out there within arm’s reach if only Bruce could will his arms to embrace it.

The song’s title also serves as its one-line refrain: “loose change in my pocket.” The loose change in question holds dual meaning, one literal and one metaphorical, and surprisingly it’s the literal sense that’s the more revealing and artful one.

Met her at a friendly little bar down along the coast
She said it was her birthday so we had us a nice little toast
Drove around for a while, smoked a few cigarettes
Took her back to my place, she slipped off her party dress
She sat for a while on the edge of the bed just talkin’
Loose change in my pocket

Throughout that first verse, Bruce uses a standard songwriting device–an eye for careful detail revolving around a romantic encounter–to lead us to believe we’re hearing a tale of seductive connection.

But then comes the refrain, and suddenly we’re taken out of the scene, our attention diverted away from the woman toward a seemingly meaningless detail.

The detail does have meaning, of course, but the brilliance of “Loose Change” is that the titular metaphor (a pocketful of loose coins of trivial value representing the narrator’s meaningless connections and encounters) doesn’t even matter–the song works devastatingly well even if the listener doesn’t recognize it. It could have been a toll receipt in his pocket or a pack of gum. The point is that rather than experience a moment of connection with another human being, our narrator is stuck inside his own head, taking in detail rather than experience.

Bruce pulls the same trick in the next verse, but this time hardcore Springsteen fans and scholars can hear some startlingly familiar echoes:

Pint of gin in my boot cuff, I’m drivin’ for a drink and a dance
Sittin’ on the next stool, miss, a little time on her hands
Yeah I knew she was trouble, but trouble sure was lookin’ fine
And when I pulled her close what I knew kinda slipped my mind
We lay in bed and watched the moon come up crawling
Loose change in my pocket

That bolded line might remind you of a similar line from a song Bruce would write a few years later. In “Highway 29,” Bruce would again present us with a character who loses his better judgment when he meets a femme fatale.

But even that song is a reworking of an earlier outtake called “Losin’ Kind” that Bruce wrote and recorded back in the Nebraska era. And that early song featured lines that bear shocking familiarity to the second verse of “Loose Change:”

Well we had a few drinks and we danced a while, I pulled her close, she didn’t mind
And what I knew kinda slipped my mind

It seems that Bruce played with this conceit–meaningless sexual encounters drawing his characters further and further away from familial and communal life toward society’s periphery–for quite some time, at least a decade and a half. (We can trace that throughline as far back as “Stolen Car.”)

There’s a fear that Bruce hints at through the fate of his characters–in both “Losin’ Kind” and “Highway 29,” the main character’s rootlessness leads to tragic circumstances, but he offers the narrator of “Loose Change” a chance. He’s far gone, but not completely gone–there’s a part of him that feels the need to connect to others, but that part is buried deep and he can’t bring it to the surface.

I pour another drink, wait for the night to get through
Stars are burning in that black void so far away and blue

Our point-of-view character sits at a literal crossroad now, his nomadic instincts at war with his yearning for connection. He’s paralyzed with indecision, unwilling to leave but unable to stay.

Now I’m sittin’ at a red light, I feel somethin’ tickin’ way down
The night’s moving like a slow train crawling through this shithole town
Got my bags packed in the back and I’m tryin’ to get going again
But red just goes to green and green goes red and then
Then all I hear’s the clock on the dash tick-tocking
Loose change in my pocket

Bruce refers to ticking twice in this final verse, conveying simultaneously a sense of time dragging and expiring. His narrator is suspended outside of time at the moment, but time is indeed passing, and the finite moments of his life are dwindling.

There’s an ominous foreboding here, especially to those of us familiar with the fate of Bruce’s “Losin’ Kind” and “Highway 29” characters–we suspect that if our “Loose Change” hero continues to run, that ticking clock will continue to count backwards until he ends up the same way as the others.

And here, finally, is where my reading of “Loose Ends” diverges from what I believe is the popular opinion: the fact that our hero feels that tug of war inside of him is to me a profoundly hopeful way to end the song.

The narrator’s destiny isn’t set yet. Bruce leaves it up to the listener to decide whether his character will set down roots or continue on the run, and this listener chooses the former path. To me, those last lines are deliberate–the narrator’s focus on the ticking clock (life passing him by) and the loose change in his pocket (his collection of meaningless human encounters) weighs on him. That last line repeats as the song fades, lending further weight to the notion that our hero will break his cycle.

Of course, I could easily argue the opposite outcome. If we interpret the final verse through the same literal lens we used for the first one, we’re left with a protagonist trapped in an endless cycle.

That’s the brilliance of “Loose Change.” It’s a subtly layered song that conveys far more than a casual listen reveals, and it’s perhaps the most artful and hopeful example of a theme Bruce seems to return to again and again.

Bruce has never performed “Loose Change” live, and he’s only rarely and sparingly discussed it. If we’re fortunate enough to get another solo tour someday, perhaps we stand a chance of hearing Bruce’s own insight into it.

Until then, we’re left to choose our own adventure.

Bonus: In March 2010, a lyrics sheet for “Loose Change” turned up in an on-line auction. Although typed, it features Bruce’s hand-written changes and corrections.

Loose Change
Recorded: January 31, 1991
Released: Tracks (1998)
Never Performed

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