Roll of the Dice: Long Walk Home

Because I write this blog on a long lead, this entry was written before the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. As I prep it for publication now, it’s impossible for me to listen to “Long Walk Home” and not hear it in a completely different context than Bruce could ever have imagined.

I gave thought to a last-minute re-write to make it more timely and relevant, but I ultimately decided against it. Like all great art, Bruce’s best songs transcend their original context and take on new meaning when their listeners need them to. But really, at its core, “Long Walk Home” has never been a song about politics but rather about civics–about measuring the distance between our values and our behavior and doing our best to close the gap.

Tragically, “Long Walk Home” is more relevant right now than it’s ever been before.

Here everybody has a neighbor, everybody has a friend
Everybody has a reason to begin again

We’re going to need to keep Bruce’s words in our hearts in the days ahead.

Here’s my original essay.

—

The date was Saturday, November 11, 2006, just four days after Election Day in the United States, and the Democrats had just taken complete control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years.

In intervening years, the country had drifted so far from its moral center that restoration seemed an overwhelming, almost impossible task–and the necessity and difficulty of that effort moved Bruce Springsteen to write a new song.

Bruce was on the road in Europe with the Sessions Band at the time, and he worked on the song from his hotel rooms in the evenings. On Friday night in London–an off night–Bruce took in Lucinda Williams’ show and joined her on stage. (That’s Bruce’s idea of an “off night,” I guess.) He was impressed by Lucinda’s willingness to perform so much new material in her set, so much so that he decided to debut his own work-in-progress composition the following night.

By way of introduction, he said simply: “It’s some return to some semblance of sanity in the States, but there was so much destruction done just to basic principles of democracy that not only is it broken, it needs to be fixed now.”

And then he played his new song, entitled at the time “Gonna Be a Long Walk Home.” To this day, there’s never been a better performance.

There are a few–and thankfully only a few–songs in Bruce’s catalog that don’t deserve to be judged on the basis of their studio recording.

I’m not talking about the songs that take on more power and life when performed on stage, because that’s true of almost every song he’s ever released.

I’m talking about the songs that are just terrible on album compared to their live (and in some cases, original) arrangements. “Real World” is probably the prime example of this–I find it unlistenable on Human Touch but adore it in its original 1990 and subsequent 2005 live arrangement.

“Long Walk Home” is a close second, and a bigger crime–because it’s one of the most potent, poignant, and powerful songs Bruce has ever written. In its officially released version from Magic, however, “Long Walk Home” comes across as assaultingly harsh, especially after the E Street Band enters in force after the first verse. The song suffers from the overproduction that plagues most of the album. Take a listen below and see what I mean.

I remember popping my copy of Magic in my CD player on release day and skipping straight to the track I was most excited to hear. I wasn’t lucky enough to be at that London show the year before, but I’d heard the bootleg and fallen immediately in love with “Long Walk Home.” I couldn’t wait to hear what the studio version would sound like.

Even now, as I re-listen to the official track to prepare for this essay, I can’t help but relive the crushing disappointment I felt when I first heard it.

That’s not to say “Long Walk Home” doesn’t work as a rocker–Bruce successfully translated it to the E Street stage during the Magic Tour with a much more pleasing sonic landscape than the album version. But in a rock arrangement, “Long Walk Home” trades its nostalgic poignancy for angry resistance. It works well, but it works different. The song transforms from an elegy to an anthem, and while I love me some Springsteen anthems, the original incarnation of “Long Walk Home” allows for quiet reflection and leads the listener to a moment of resolution.

So I’m exercising my blogger’s prerogative: for the rest of this essay, I’ll focus on the original version (and modern-day acoustic arrangement) rather than the official version of “Long Walk Home.”

In any version, though, “Long Walk Home” isn’t really about a journey–it’s about the moment of reckoning when we realize how far we’ve come. Are we still the country we think we are? Are we still the people we think we are? Do we even know each other anymore? And if not, are we willing to do the hard work required to get back to center–and do we even want to?

As with many of Bruce’s finest songs, he disguises and anthropomorphizes his civic commentary–at least at first. As the song opens, our narrator is reeling from the end of his marriage engagement:

Last night I stood at your doorstep trying to figure out what went wrong
You just slipped something into my palm, then you were gone
I could smell the same deep green of summer, above me the same night sky was glowing
In the distance I could see the town where I was born

His partner has left him, returning her engagement ring and disappearing into the night. Our narrator is stunned (he can’t even bring himself to look down to see what’s in his hand) and unprepared–everything looks the same as it’s always been–what could have possibly driven such a wedge between the couple?

Emotionally at sea, he wanders off into the night to think and process.

It’s gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me, gonna be a long walk home
A long walk home

That romantic split is a metaphor–the broken engagement represents the broken social contract between America and its citizens. We couldn’t see it happening close up in the moment, but little by little we strayed from our promise of fidelity to our principles. We’re not sure what went wrong and when, but we know we played our part. Now, that spirit that binds and defines our community is gone, and we’re left with its empty husk.

Our narrator wanders through town, passing all the familiar shops and landmarks. Bruce is careful to provide the names of the proprietors so that we understand just how connected our protagonist has always been to his community. And yet tonight, the people he’s known all of his life are suddenly distant and unfamiliar.

In town I passed Sal’s grocery, Joe’s barbershop on South Street
I looked in their faces, they were all rank strangers to me

This verse (if not the song itself) was inspired by The Stanley Brothers song, “Rank Stranger,” and Bruce’s lyrics are a direct homage.

As our narrator continues his trek, he notices that even the places that formed the heart of the town’s civic life are abandoned now. We get no indication of exactly when and why that happened, and we sense that he doesn’t either.

The Veteran’s Hall high upon the hill stood silent and alone
The diner was shuttered and boarded with a sign that just said “gone”

At this point, we’ve reach the emotional nadir of the song. We are alone and estranged from our community. We don’t know why, and we don’t know why we haven’t noticed it until now.

But now comes the song’s heart:

Here everybody has a neighbor, everybody has a friend
Everybody has a reason to begin again

With these two simple lines, Bruce reminds us that we always have it within our power to start again. And we always have reasons to do so: our family, our friends, our neighbors, our fellow citizens.

The point is so important that Bruce drops all pretense at parable–he’s not about to risk us missing the message:

My father said “Son, we’re lucky in this town, it’s a beautiful place to be born
It just wraps its arms around you, nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone
You know that flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t”

Has there ever been a better description of America in song? I think not. That last couplet ranks among the strongest lyrics that Bruce has ever written. In the years since he wrote it, they’ve proven to be not just a powerful reminder of our promise to each other but also a necessary one, in ways that Bruce probably could never imagine.

In the official version, these are the last lyrics we hear (other than the song’s coda reminding us to steel ourselves, because it’s going to take a lot more than just resolve to find ourselves again). But in the original version, there’s one more verse:

Now the water’s rising ’round the corner, there’s a fire burning out of control
There’s a hurricane on Main Street and I’ve got murder in my soul
Yeah well when the party’s over, when the cheering is all gone
Will you know me, will I know you, will I know you

We can speculate about why Bruce dropped it from the final version. Maybe it’s too specific (the rising water is a reference to Hurricane Katrina, still very fresh in the collective consciousness at the time), or maybe it’s too angry.

Most likely, it simply breaks the arc–“Long Walk Home” takes us on an emotional descent and then leads us back toward the light, leaving us on a note of hope. The additional verse leaves us in a much murkier place, and that’s probably not where Bruce wanted to end the song.

But I’ll always maintain that the last couplet–“when the party’s over, when the cheering is all gone–will you know me? Will I know you?”–ranks high among Bruce’s best unreleased lyrics. Without that verse, “Long Walk Home” is a more hopeful song, but a somewhat less powerful one.

—

For most fans, our introduction to Bruce’s live rock arrangement of “Long Walk Home” came before the Magic Tour even kicked off. Bruce and the E Street Band performed it at a televised, free, early-morning concert for the Today show in New York City’s Rockefeller Plaza.

Like many of Bruce’s best live songs, “Long Walk Home” grew in scope and power over the course of the tour. Fans quickly sensed and responded to the singalong opportunity before the coda, and by the end of the first American leg, so did Steve, who assumed the lead vocal for that part and traded off with Bruce for the coda.

A nightly mainstay on the Magic Tour, “Long Walk Home” outings have been relatively scarce over the eight years that followed. Late in the last tour, however, it made an impromptu comeback at a 9/11 anniversary-themed show–this time in an impromptu solo acoustic arrangement sparked by a creative fan request.

Bruce played it acoustic that night because the band hadn’t played it or prepared for it. But unsurprisingly, the arrangement turned out to be an extraordinarily powerful delivery vehicle for Bruce’s message.

He’s played it that way ever since–at pre-election rallies for Secretary Clinton, at a private White House concert for the Obama administration, in a one-off Australian performance, and (for much of its run) nightly and exquisitely in Springsteen on Broadway. 

Unfortunately, by the time Bruce recorded and filmed his Broadway show for official release, “Long Walk Home” had been dropped from the set. But if you weren’t lucky enough to catch it live during its run, I’ll leave you with it now. Enjoy.

Long Walk Home
Recorded: March-April 2007
Released: Magic (2007)
First performed: November 11, 2006 (London, England)
Last performed: November 18, 2020 (Colts Neck, NJ)

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