Roll of the Dice: State Trooper

“I don’t know if it’s even really a song or not… it’s kinda weird.'”  –Bruce Springsteen, 1982

In 1981, Bruce Springsteen was listening to a lot of Suicide, the punk pairing of Alan Vega and Martin Rev.

Almost a quarter of a century later, Suicide would inspire “Dream Baby Dream,” one of Bruce’s most optimistic covers and one of only a handful Bruce ever recorded in the studio. But long before that, they inspired the most harrowing song in Bruce’s catalog, the spine-tingling, hair-raising “State Trooper.”

If Springsteen meant “State Trooper” as an homage to Suicide, however, even in the dark place that birthed Nebraska, Bruce couldn’t come close to matching the darkness of the song that inspired it.

Take a listen to Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop,” and you’ll hear the unmistakable similarities to “State Trooper,” from the basically identical melody to the primal whoops and screams of the tormented narrator. Just do yourself a favor and keep the lights on, because “Frankie Teardrop” is a much, much, much darker song than anything Bruce has ever written. In “State Trooper,” Bruce at least leaves the fate of the narrator up to our imagination. Vega does us no such favor.

For “State Trooper,” Bruce replaces the synth and drum machine of “Frankie Teardrop” with an incessant, monotonal acoustic guitar riff that evokes the aimless, seemingly endless stretches of open road between exits on the New Jersey Turnpike.

As for the lyrics, well, Bruce’s narrator might be grounded in a similar life as Frankie Teardrop, working a daily grind but moving backwards rather than forwards, until something just… snaps. Frankie ends up murdering first his infant child, then his wife, and finally himself. We don’t know exactly what lies in store for the “protagonist” of “State Trooper,” but even if we’re not familiar with its inspiration, we can tell that this story isn’t going to end well.

New Jersey Turnpike riding on a wet night
‘Neath the refinery’s glow out where the great black rivers flow
License, registration… I ain’t got none
But I got a clear conscience ’bout the things that I done
Mister State Trooper, please don’t stop me, please don’t stop me, please don’t stop me…

Right away, we know something’s wrong. At first, Bruce leads us to suspect that his character may be nothing more than a petty car thief, perhaps a down-on-his luck anti-hero who justifies his theft as something he needs to do to make ends meet (hence the clear conscience).

But it gradually dawns on us that the reason he’s hoping against hope not to meet a state trooper isn’t because of what he’s done… but about what he’s going to do.

Maybe you got a kid, maybe you got a pretty wife
The only thing that I got been bothering me my whole life
Mister State Trooper, please don’t stop me, please don’t you stop me, please don’t you stop me…

Bruce makes sure we know his narrator lacks the social connections that we know (because he’d much later explicitly confess to us) kept the songwriter himself from falling into the abyss.

(In one of Bruce’s lesser-known released songs, he’d someday write “In the days of despair you can grow hard, ’til you close your mind and empty your heart. If you find yourself staring in the abyss, hold tight to your loved ones and remember this: This shield will protect your secret heart; the sword will defend from what comes in the dark. Should you grow weary on the battlefield, do not despair: our love is real.” “This is Your Sword” is basically the antidote to “State Trooper.”)

As the song builds to its climax, the recording levels climb into the red zone. I’ve always wondered whether that was an intentional decision on Bruce’s part, and I’ve chosen to believe so–because the distortion that appears at this point builds throughout the remainder of the song, and it’s a perfect metaphor for the narrator’s rapidly decreasing clarity of thought.

In the wee, wee hours your mind gets hazy
Radio relay towers gonna lead me to my baby
The radio’s jammed up with talk show stations
It’s just talk, talk, talk, talk, till you lose your patience
Mister State Trooper, please don’t stop me

Notice in that last verse how each couplet now ends with an up-note rather than a down one: this is a man who is quickly losing his self-control, and we know that whatever is bringing him to his baby (and for the first time, as I write this with “Frankie Teardrop” in my recent memory, I’m suddenly unsure whether Bruce’s “baby” is figurative or literal), it isn’t good.

As he nears his fatal destination, Bruce’s night driver sends out one last plea for deliverance from his life:

Hey, somebody out there–listen to my last prayer:
Hi ho silver-o, deliver me from nowhere

…but we know that no such relief is coming, until he delivers it for and to himself.

(Bruce would use that last line (slightly transformed) in two other songs as well: “Open All Night” and “Living on the Edge of the World.” The concept of being trapped in one’s own life, one’s own head, must have been haunting him at the time.)

The primal whoops and screams that lead the song off into the endless night are as terrifying as anything Bruce has ever put down on record (although nowhere near as blood-curdling as Vega’s “Frankie Teardrop” vocals).

It’s impossible to understate the impact that “State Trooper” has on first listen, particularly if you’re lucky enough to hear it on vinyl or cassette. In its original form, “State Trooper” finished off Side One, and with nothing else immediately following to wipe it from the listener’s memory, “State Trooper” gets lodged in your brain, just waiting for enough darkness to pounce.

On an album full of dark dissertation, “State Trooper” is easily the most terrifying.

It’s also the album’s least-performed track, appearing on Bruce’s set list a mere three dozen times in the almost four decades since its release. Perhaps that’s because the song doesn’t translate well in a large arena–“State Trooper” works best when you feel alone in the night.

That didn’t keep Bruce from attempting to translate “State Trooper” to the E Street stage, however. In September 1984, on the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, Bruce introduced it early in the show, adding discordant synthesizer and a pounding drumbeat in an attempt at a full-band arrangement that underlined rather than overpowered the narrator’s fractured psyche.

In the clip below, Bruce’s arrangement almost succeeds, particularly in the last verse where Bruce’s reverbed vocals actually surpass his album performance.

Still, the synth-filled arrangement didn’t really suit the song, and Bruce seems to have realized it relatively quickly. “State Trooper” would disappear two months later after only eleven performances.

Bruce wouldn’t attempt it again with the E Street Band for more than twenty years, although he did work up a fascinating full-band arrangement on the Reunion Tour that never made it past soundcheck. I really like the “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”-esque first verse, but it loses me when the band kicks in before the final verse–it’s powerful, sure, but in the wrong sense.

Bruce would attempt that arrangement on stage only once, and not for another eight years, when he played it in Ottawa on the Magic Tour with Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Regine Chassagne.

In my mind, though, “State Trooper” only works when performed solo. Bruce seems to agree: other than the Arcade Fire one-off above, every one of Bruce’s 25 “State Trooper” performances since the Born in the U.S.A. Tour has been solo.

The definitive “State Trooper” performance came during Bruce’s 2005 Devils & Dust Tour. Bruce actually performed the song with three completely different vocal styles on that tour: the “regular” one that he’d used in the past, a somewhat higher-pitched second one, and finally a falsetto version that absolutely raised the hair on my arms when I heard Bruce perform it in Vancouver.

I’ll leave you with that masterful and nightmarish Vancouver performance, my all-time favorite version of “State Trooper.”

State Trooper
Recorded: December 17, 1981 – January 3, 1982
Released: Nebraska (1982)
First performed: September 8, 1984 (Hartford, CT)
Last performed: November 15, 2012 (Omaha, NE)

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