Roll of the Dice: Family Song

A quarter-century before “Freehold,” and almost a half-century before Bruce’s revealing autobiography and Broadway show, there was “Family Song.”

“Family Song” sheds rare light into a brief period of Bruce’s life that’s glossed over not only by biographers but by Bruce himself in his own book: the winter of 1971-72, when Bruce fled New Jersey for the warmer climes of California and his parents’ new home in San Mateo.

For years, the circumstances that inspired Bruce’s flight were unclear, but in his 2016 autobiography Born to Run, Bruce directly addressed them.

Earlier that year, Bruce “fell in obsession” with a surfer girl, “a drug-taking, hell-raising wild child who played by nobody’s rules.” This was the girlfriend Bruce referred to in Springsteen on Broadway, the one who recruited agents to discover Bruce’s band and then slept with them.

When Surfer Girl’s roommate ratted her out to Bruce, he took up with the roommate and formed a temporary family unit with her and her daughter. Unsurprisingly, their unorthodox living and loving circumstances proved too much for the relatively straight-edge Springsteen, and he bolted as far away from New Jersey as he could get.

California wasn’t meant to be for Bruce, though. As he put it in the film version of Western Stars:

“I had a gal in New Jersey who broke my heart, ripped it to shreds, trampled on it, and sent it to me COD in a paper bag. So I was out of there on the first ride west, no looking back. I was going to build a new life in California, three thousand miles away from the pain. But it didn’t take long before my luck ran out and my money ran out. And it just wasn’t gonna happen.”

So he returned to where “I was who I was, a son of New Jersey, gunslinger, bar band king, small-town local hero, big fish in a little pond and breadwinner.”

But something happened in California that winter. Not only was the weather warmer than in New Jersey, his reunion with his parents after their family’s long separation seem to have thawed his resentment toward them as well.

With a heart on the mend from his recent romance, Bruce was ready to open up about his feelings toward his parents–at least in song–and the result was the simultaneously heart-breaking, heart-healing, and beautifully raw “Family Song.”

It’s impossible for a Springsteen fan to listen to the range of raw emotion–the hurt and yearning and love and compassion–on display in Bruce’s unreleased 1972 outtake without aching in empathy for the 22-year-old songwriter, because we know that “Family Song” is one hundred percent autobiographical.

There’s only a small window in our lives when we can write a song like “Family Song” — during that brief period when we’re just old enough to understand and love our parents as the full imperfect human beings that they are, but still young enough to remember the hurt and confusion we felt when we demanded perfection from them and resented them for not living up to our expectations.

Bruce was very much in that window.

Well, you know how when you’re young, there’s such a distance between you and your family?
You just can’t see things from the same point of view
Papa wants a lawyer and mama, she wants an author
And all you want is for them to want you

For long-time fans, that first verse hits with the power of a sledgehammer, because we’re familiar with the tale. Years later, well after he’d made it big, Bruce would tell a mid-song story during “Growin’ Up” in which he’d jokingly recount how his father would constantly encourage him to be a lawyer, how his mom would entreat him to become an author, how both just wanted him to “make something of himself.” On stage in front of a roaring, adoring crowd, Bruce would address them (once or twice in person) and tell them they’d just have to settle for a rock and roll star.

Bruce would chuckle when telling that story in 1978, but in 1972’s “Family Song,” there was no humor in it.

In the second verse, we have the first signs of a thaw. It happens off-camera, so to speak, but Bruce has made it clear that he and his parents were able to make the breakthroughs in California that they never could in New Jersey.

Well, I saw a lot of bad signs and we had some real bad times back on the east coast
And I guess you could say it took California to bring us close
There was a lot of hard living and some stone cold women on the east coast
And I saw my papa turn away when I needed him the most

The hard living, the stone cold women… well, we now know who that refers to.

Perhaps the gentler environment of California opened Bruce’s heart, or maybe it was Bruce’s emotional state that made him appreciate the west coast. Either way, Bruce anointed his new and temporary home as his savior.

Oh, and California, she’s an angel, oh so heavenly dressed
And the Pacific she’s a woman, the Lord must have loved her best
I got a California rainbow to come to give them thunder clouds a rest
Oh, and the mountain is my friend now, she put me to her test

In the next verse, we learn that not only have Bruce and his family drawn closer, Bruce is also now able to understand and begin to forgive his father. Still, a little bit of resentment seeps through, as well as a foreshadow of a song that Bruce will write twenty-five years later.

Well, you know every father has dreams and schemes for his own kid
And dreaming, it ain’t been declared no capital crime
But I just hope when I grow up and have my own kids
I’ll love ’em all I can and let ’em make their own minds

That last couplet rings with familiarity–it’s strikingly similar to a verse Bruce wrote in 1996 for “Long Time Comin’.”

Well now down below and pulling on my shirt
Yeah I got some kids of my own
Well if I had one wish in this god forsaken world, kids
It’d be that your mistakes would be your own

But it’s the final verses that drip with forgiveness, compassion, and love:

Now, you know how a mother can hold a son through understanding
And my father he once held me close by crying
And my mama’s love, it don’t ever leave me standing
And papa’s love just leaves me smiling

Oh, and my mama she’s a rainbow, you oughta see her on Sunday when she’s dressed
And my papa he’s a good man, he gives me and mama his best
My mama she’s a rainbow come to give them thunder clouds a rest
And my family is my friend now, California put us through her test

I’m not ashamed to admit that I tear up when I listen to “Family Song.” Bruce takes us on quite the emotional five-minute journey, but at least it ends on a warm, satisfying note.

“Family Song” leaves a lot unanswered though: what exactly happened between the Springsteens during those short weeks together in the winter of 1971-72? Bruce doesn’t address it here, and he hasn’t discussed it since. That’s a personal choice he’s completely entitled to, but at least as far as “Family Song” goes, it’s also the right artistic choice.

“Family Song” isn’t about the process of reconciliation, it’s about the result.

Bonus: Here’s a second, earlier version of “Family Song,” considerably slower and less poignant than the later version above. Both were recorded in March 1972 (after Bruce had returned home from California) at Mike Appel’s office in New York City.

Family Song
Recorded: March 1972
Never released
Never performed

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