For a song with so little substance, “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)” sure takes on a lot of forms.
The latter is probably due to the former: lyrically, “You Can Look” is one step short of a novelty song, so it lends itself to recasting and rearranging. Pretty much any arrangement is fair game, as long as it’s fun.
So for today’s roll of the dice, we’ll forego our usual lyrical deep dive (“You Can Look” isn’t particularly deep, anyway) and instead trace the evolution of this River-era classic.
Bruce started tinkering with “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)” at home in early 1979. In this earliest known demo recording, both the melody and lyrics are familiar enough to be recognizable, but both are far from their final form. The rhythm is more reggae than rock, and many of the lyrics are bluffed. (I love that the “Hey you! Get out of the car!” shout from the live arrangement is there from the beginning, even though it didn’t make the album.)
In this second home demo, the song is clearly much farther along. The lyrics are incomplete but polished, and while the arrangement is still distinctly reggae-influenced, it’s much tighter than the first version.
By the spring, Bruce abandoned the reggae arrangement and cast about for something better suited to the song. Not long after recording those home demos, Bruce recorded a new song with the band in the studio, “Held Up Without a Gun.”
Although “Held Up Without a Gun” is clearly a strong track (and was at one point shortlisted for The River), Bruce thought its melody might be just what he needed for his “You Can Look” lyrics. With a bit of modification, he grafted the two together. Take a listen to these home demos from May 1979.
Clearly, Bruce was on to something. Well, maybe it wasn’t so clear–because while Bruce felt confident enough about “You Can Look” to take it into the studio with the band, what came out of that August 1979 recording session was not the familiar arrangement we know from the album and that Bruce had been working on at home.
Bruce wouldn’t release this August 1979 version for more than 36 years, when it was featured on the single-album version of The River that accompanied the 2015 box set, The Ties That Bind: The River Collection. But even though most fans hadn’t heard this version before (it circulated on bootlegs if you knew where to look), long-time fans might still have recognized it:
That’s because this rockabilly version (which I personally think is superior to the official “Held Up” version) had already been performed live in concerts dozens of times.
The rockabilly “You Can Look” was a nightly staple on the Tunnel of Love Express Tour. In fact, it was a veritable production number that one must see to fully appreciate.
The rockabilly version of “You Can Look” was so perfectly suited for the Tunnel of Love Tour that most fans probably thought Bruce created the arrangement for exactly that purpose. (I certainly did for a long time… it would be many years before I would discover it on a bootleg of lost studio outtakes.)
Bruce actually debuted that arrangement even earlier, though. In the autumn of 1986, Bruce joined a stellar line-up of artists for a benefit concert staged by Neil Young for the Bridge School.
It was Bruce’s first public concert since the end of the mammoth, marathon Born in the U.S.A. Tour, and the first song he performed to open his set was one no one could possibly have seen coming: not just Bruce’s first-ever live performance of the rockabilly version of “You Can Look,” but an a capella version at that.
Truthfully, it’s an awkward performance. You can tell that Bruce had his staged Tunnel of Love Tour version in mind more than a year earlier, and it’s probably a good thing that he cut it short.
Anyway, I digress. It was the “Held Up” version of “You Can Look” that won the day and made it onto The River, of course, clocking at exactly twice the length of “Held Up Without a Gun” and still barely more than two and a half minutes.
Yesterday I went shopping, buddy, down to the mall
Looking for something pretty I could hang on my wall
I knocked over a lamp, before it hit the floor I caught it
A salesman turned around, said, “Boy, you break that thing you bought it”
You can look but you better not touch, boy
You can look but you better not touch
Mess around and you’ll end up in dutch, boy
You can look but you better not, no you better not, no you better not touch
Well I came home from work and I switched on Channel 5
There was a pretty little girly looking straight into my eyes
Well I watched as she wiggled back and forth across the screen
She didn’t get me excited, she just made me feel mean
Well I called up Dirty Annie on the telephone
I took her out to the drive-in just to get her alone
I found a lover’s rendezvous, the music low, set to park
I heard a tapping on the window and a voice in the dark
You can look but you better not touch, boy
You can look, better not touch
Mess around and you’ll end up in dutch, boy
You can look but you better not, no you better not…
I’ve always felt the album version moves at too breakneck a pace. “You Can Look” is a clever song, but the verses fly by so quickly that it’s comedic potential (especially in the Dirty Annie verse) is never fully realized.
Bruce seemed to realize that early on. Here’s the first-ever live performance of “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)” early in the River Tour at Richfield, Ohio. The band has a little trouble getting started, but once they do, they tear right through.
But less than a month later, Bruce had already expanded the arrangement, allowing the song to breathe a bit in an improv-friendly coda that would feature much mugging over the years to come.
“You Can Look” was a staple of both River Tours and the Tunnel of Love Tour. It’s been a bit harder to catch outside of those, but it’s never been uncommon enough to call it a true rarity. The real unpredictability with “You Can Look” lies in predicting what arrangement Bruce will come up with next.
It works when played solo on acoustic guitar and harmonica, as in this 1997 performance:
…and it works as a solo piano number–or even dueling pianos, when Bruce threw down with Bruce Hornsby in 2005. (Hornsby won.)
But my favorite arrangement was the most unexpected one of all: on the Seeger Sessions Tour in 2006, Bruce unveiled a zydeco version that’s completely irresistible.
(Bruce, if you’re reading: we really need another Sessions Band Tour.)
“You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)” is too malleable with too much ham potential to ever fully disappear from Springsteen’s set lists.
You can bet “You Can Look” will be around for a long time to come.
You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
Recorded: August 24-25 1979 (rockabilly version), February 17-23, 1980 (album version)
Released: The River (1980, album version), The River: Single Album (2015, rockabilly version)
First performed: October 7, 1980 (Richfield, OH)
Last performed: February 18, 2017 (Hunter Valley, Australia)
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