“For a long time, if I loved you or if I felt a deep attachment to you, I’d hurt you if I could.” –Bruce Springsteen, Western Stars
It’s an iconic scene in movie history: the Reverend Harry Powell’s tale of Love vs. Hate in the 1955 film Night of the Hunter.
That notion of love and hate waging eternal war within us–symbolized by the tattooed words on the hands we use for both–imprinted itself on viewers and artists alike.
In 1989, Spike Lee paid homage to that scene in his cinema classic, Do the Right Thing.
(Do the Right Thing also features a direct and discomfiting Springsteen reference that I don’t feel comfortable sharing here for reasons obvious to anyone who’s seen the film. If you haven’t, you really should. But I digress.)
Powell’s speech imprinted itself on Bruce, too. In recent years, Bruce has talked openly about his own lifelong internal struggle–except for him, it wasn’t Hate that Love was warring with, it was Fear.
With love and attachment comes vulnerability to hurt and betrayal, and one of the most effective methods of self-protection is a preemptive strike–something Bruce admits he learned too well.
By the mid-eighties, Bruce was self-aware enough to recognize those tendencies within himself, and he began to confront his demons through his art.
And while Bruce is almost always coy and careful when asked whether his songs are autobiographical, it’s hard to imagine that “Cautious Man” is anything but. Even Bruce admitted (in Peter Ames Carlin’s outstanding 2012 biography, Bruce), “If there was some part of myself that I was trying to explain, for better or worse, that song describes a good amount of it.”
While it’s true that Bruce invented a character for “Cautious Man,” the similarities between Bill Horton and Bruce Springsteen are evident from the first verse.
Bill Horton was a cautious man of the road
He walked looking over his shoulder and remained faithful to its code
When something caught his eye he’d measure his need
And then very carefully he’d proceed
Bruce introduces Bill as if he were a soldier of fortune, but what else is a rock star but a man of the road? The life of a touring musician isn’t easily compatible with attachment, and so Bruce/Bill remained true to the code of the road. If something or someone caught his eye, he was careful to avoid prolonged entanglement.
It’s worth pausing here to note how carefully Bruce has arranged “Cautious Man.” Bruce begins singing immediately after the first guitar note, and for the first two lines his guitar is the only instrument we hear. As he sings about something catching his eye, however, Bruce introduces a mandolin (“Cautious Man” is a solo effort–Bruce plays every instrument) to represent Bill’s love interest. At first, the mandolin lingers between the lyrics, representing distraction rather than focus. But listen to how the mandolin intertwines with the guitar as Billy falls in love in the next verse.
Billy met a young girl in the early days of May
It was there in her arms he let his cautiousness slip away
In their lovers’ twilight as the evening sky grew dim
He’d lay back in her arms and laugh at what had happened to him
It’s not coincidence that Bruce introduces his character as “Bill” in the first verse only to refer to him as “Billy” thereafter. That’s a songwriter’s shorthand for illustrating the young girl’s immediate impact once he lets his guard down–his identity is now defined by the name she calls him, and although he laughs at it, he hardly recognizes himself.
On his right hand Billy tattooed the word love and on his left hand was the word fear
And in which hand he held his fate was never clear
Come Indian summer he took his young lover for his bride
With his own hands built her a great house down by the riverside
Here’s the introduction of that iconic movie imagery we discussed above. It’s not clear whether Bruce intends us to take that couplet literally or not. I’ve always considered it purely metaphorical. Either way, though, it’s symbolic of the main character trying to keep his self-destructive tendencies in check.
Did I forget to mention that Bruce wrote “Cautious Man” when he was not-that-long married to his first wife? As with much of Tunnel of Love, Bruce was clearly working through some issues through song.
There’s a brief musical interlude here, as Bruce introduces dreamy keyboards to convey the passage of idyllic time.
Now Billy was an honest man he wanted to do what was right
He worked hard to fill their lives with happy days and loving nights
Alone on his knees in the darkness for steadiness he’d pray
For he knew in a restless heart the seed of betrayal lay
Although they allowed the newlyweds a honeymoon phase, Billy’s demons have started to reassert themselves. He’s not meant for domesticity, and the road (and its temptations) call to him. He does his best to resist, but he knows it’s only a matter of time.
There’s a bridge here that evokes the final verse from “Wreck on the Highway,” but rather than taking comfort from the presence of his wife, Billy feels distant. The road calls to him.
One night Billy awoke from a terrible dream calling his wife’s name
She lay breathing beside him in a peaceful sleep, a thousand miles away
He got dressed in the moonlight and down to the highway he strode
When he got there he didn’t find nothing but road
Billy stands at the roadside for a long moment. He feels the urge to stray and knows that it’s a part of him, even if he doesn’t understand why. Tonight won’t be that night, though–for now, he returns to his wife, Love momentarily in control over Fear.
Billy felt a coldness rise up inside him that he couldn’t name
Just as the words tattooed ‘cross his knuckles he knew would always remain
At their bedside he brushed the hair from his wife’s face as the moon shone on her skin so white
Filling their room in the beauty of God’s fallen light
There’s a long fade on that last note, underscoring the unresolved ending. Perhaps it should feel like a happy ending, but it doesn’t.
For cautious men, there’s no ending, just a long road.
“Cautious Man” is more than a quiet song–it’s a delicate one. Bruce’s phrasing and instrumentation are intimate and very deliberate, which is likely why Bruce has so rarely performed it in concert.
In fact, “Cautious Man” only made a single stage appearance in the first seventeen years since its studio release. At his Bloomington stop on the Tunnel of Love Express Tour, Bruce premiered it following “Brilliant Disguise,” a sequence that hints at a likely reason why Bruce chose that night to debut it. (See my entry for “Boom Boom” for a much bigger hint.)
It would take another seventeen years for Bruce to play “Cautious Man” in public again. Early into his solo acoustic tour, Bruce shocked his Hollywood audience by resurrecting “Cautious Man” after its long absence, introducing it as a song about “brinksmanship,” which may be the closest he’s ever come to acknowledging its inspiration. He played it several more times during the tour, but only by way of a simple introduction as “one of my favorites.”
Here’s Bruce’s last performance of “Cautious Man” to date, in East Rutherford toward the tail end of the Devils & Dust Tour.
Cautious Man
Recorded: January-April 1987
Released: Tunnel of Love (1987)
First performed: May 10, 1988 (Bloomington, MN)
Last performed: November 17, 2005 (East Rutherford, NJ)
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