If “State Trooper” and “Pink Cadillac” had a love child, it would have been “Chain Lightning.”
Actually, it’s probably the other way around, since “Chain Lightning” came first.
But if you listen to the track above, in addition to the prominent “State Trooper” guitar line, and the obvious “Pink Cadillac” bass and percussion, you can also hear the likely influence of Henry Mancini’s 1959 instrumental, “Peter Gunn.”
(It’s odd to think there might be a through line from “Peter Gunn” to Nebraska, but Bruce Springsteen is such a musical sponge that one can taste all sorts of individual ingredients in his recipes.)
In any event, while Bruce and the E Street Band recorded “Chain Lightning” in the studio during the River sessions, fans wouldn’t get to hear the track until it was released on The River: Outtakes as part of Bruce’s 2015 box set.
The track came as a bit of a surprise to hardcore fans, however, because a very different rehearsal bootleg had been circulating for years. It’s clear that Bruce changed the arrangement quite a bit between this rehearsal and the final studio take, The earlier version is a faster, fiercer, almost punk arrangement. Take a listen:
That rehearsal appears to have been an outlier. If we trace the origins of “Chain Lightning” back to Bruce’s earliest home demo recordings of it (almost a full year earlier than the studio track), we hear an acoustic arrangement that’s very close to the official band one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1WkLfVVbeghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbgcliyaheAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssz0v6OXUZk
The official studio version is a perfect fit for Bruce’s lyrics: the E Street Band rumbles and thunders, just like the first line of the song, but they never lose their cool restraint.
Well there’s a rumble in the park, there’s a thunder in the dark
The night’s so quiet, it’s chain lightning
Beneath a street light, there’s two boys bopping in the night
They have something in ’em called chain lightning
Though you never hear a sound, there’s a fire underground
Rambling through the town, you can’t keep it from coming down
Lovers walking through the mist, Romeo he steal a kiss
Caught up in the moment of chain lightning
“Chain Lightning” is about the unbridled but undirected passion of youth, the feeling of power and vitality without any place to channel it. Such energy has to be released, else it flashes and strikes unpredictably.
Accordingly, nothing happens in “Chain Lightning,” just the constant threat and search of something. There’s a fascinating mid-song callback to one of Bruce’s classic songs that has to be intentional, because it’s a perfectly placed reference:
Now I don’t know about romance, baby, the latest dance
Everybody’s getting up, doing it, chain lightning
All along the strand baby down in Jungleland
Everybody’s caught up in chain lightning
“Jungleland” is a full-on thunderstorm, the release of pent-up tension. Its namecheck here is a meta drive-by, the perfect way of illustrating the narrator’s frustration in a way that only Springsteen fans could appreciate. No one’s taking a stand tonight. There’s no opera, no ballet, no rendezvous–just an ominous sense of foreboding.
Ever hear the sound of a fire underground
Rumbling through the town, the big cold is coming down
Sitting at the light, I’m a rider in the night
Streaking light to light for chain lightning
I ain’t into style, baby, I ain’t into fashion
I just got a passion for chain lightning
Sitting at the light, I’m a rider in the night
Streaking light to light for chain lightning
It’s hard to know exactly how to place “Chain Lightning” in Bruce’s catalog. It’s clearly a song he was committed to for quite some time–he worked on it for almost a full year. But it feels more like a bridge between albums–a Darkness theme paired with a River backing track–rather than in keeping with either one, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons Bruce discarded it.
Still, “Chain Lightning” practically begs for an E Street Band outing. We haven’t had one yet, but who knows what the future may hold.
Chain Lightning
Recorded: February 17, 1980
Released: The River: Outtakes (2015)
Never performed
Looking for your favorite Bruce song? Check our full index. New entries every week!
