Roll of the Dice: Shackled and Drawn

What’s your favorite Springsteen song? Favorite tour? Favorite album? Favorite cover?

I get asked questions like those all the time by fellow fans. I’m never confident in my answers, though, because my preferences can change from day to day.

But there’s one question I’ve been able to answer unwaveringly since November 26, 2012:

What’s my favorite show opener?

Hands down: “Shackled and Drawn.”

“Shackled and Drawn” has been my favorite Wrecking Ball track from my very first listen, and it was a reliable nightly highlight for almost all of the eighteen shows I was fortunate enough to catch on the Wrecking Ball and High Hopes tours.

But when Bruce opened with it in Vancouver towards the end of the final North American leg… well, that was easily the best show opener I’ve ever seen in my seventy shows over the years.

I mean, come on: is there any more fitting way to kick off a Springsteen show than a work chant in the dark? Work songs are meant to coordinate labor for maximum power, and isn’t that what a concert is at its best? Check it out:

When those house lights went on, that audience was locked and primed for a long, communal evening.

And that stomp… “Shackled and Drawn” is all about the stomp. It’s about the satisfaction of honest work. It’s about a living well earned. It’s about righteous indignation tempered by pride and integrity (or maybe it’s the other way around). It’s one of the most sincere songs in Bruce’s catalog, and one of the most Springsteenian. 

And at the end of the song, when the E Street Band is arrayed across the stage in all their power and glory…. I’m sorry, but I defy anyone to name a more powerful and effective opening performance than that one.

It was such a perfect opener that for the life of me, I can’t figure out why he didn’t open with it every  night.

He didn’t, of course, but that doesn’t diminish my admiration for “Shackled and Drawn.” More than any song on Wrecking Ball, “Shackled and Drawn” epitomizes the spirit of the album, celebrating the working man, castigating those who would exploit his labors, but never, ever tipping over the line into sarcasm or cynicism.

“Shackled and Drawn” easily ranks among Bruce’s top five 21st century songs and top ten ever.

Let’s take a listen to the album track–itself a fascinating melange of vintage and modern styles. sounding for all the world like a cross between a carnival, a revival, and a shanty.

If we’re looking for a song that exemplifies Bruce’s reputation as a bard for the working man, we need look no farther than “Shackled and Drawn.”

There’s no color, no brightness in this song, only earth tones:

Gray morning light spits through the shade
Another day older, closer to the grave
Closer to the grave and come the dawn
I woke up this morning shackled and drawn

Shackled and drawn, shackled and drawn
Pick up the rock, son, carry it on
I’m trudging through the dark in a world gone wrong
I woke up this morning shackled and drawn

Based on the first verse and chorus alone, we might think that “Shackled and Drawn” is a song of resentment, of bitterness–the plaint of a worker stuck in a rut, shackled to a thankless job, never enjoying the fruits of his labor, and toiling endlessly toward his own demise.

But Bruce quickly disabuses us of that notion in the second verse:

I always loved the feel of sweat on my shirt
Stand back, son, and let a man work
Let a man work, is that so wrong
I woke up this morning shackled and drawn

Shackled and drawn, shackled and drawn
Pick up the rock, son, carry it on
What’s a poor boy to do in a world gone wrong
Woke up this morning shackled and drawn

Our protagonist is more sympathetic now, and neither bitter nor resentful–he just wants to take satisfaction in his own labor.

But he can’t even do that: in this recession era, our hero is denied even the opportunity to earn an honest living. He’s shackled and drawn, but not to a menial job–he’d be thankful for that. No, our narrator is shackled and drawn to debt, to poverty–unable to find a job despite his willingness to work the kind of job that most people strive to avoid.

As is often the case with Bruce’s best songs, the heart of “Shackled and Drawn” can be found in a single line: “Freedom, son, is a dirty shirt.”

Freedom, son, is a dirty shirt
The sun on my face and my shovel in the dirt
A shovel in the dirt keeps the devil gone
I woke up this morning shackled and drawn

Shackled and drawn, shackled and drawn
Pick up the rock, son, carry it on
What’s a poor boy to do but keep singing his song
I woke up this morning shackled and drawn

Good, honest, hard labor not only allows him to earn a living, it also keeps temptation at bay.  What kind of temptation? Well…

Gambling man rolls the dice, working man pays the bill
It’s still fat and easy up on banker’s hill
Up on banker’s hill the party’s going strong
Down here below we’re shackled and drawn

And here we arrive at the crux of the song: honest workers toil away at manual labor, the sheer effort of which keeps them on the straight and narrow. Meanwhile, the rich bankers shoulder no such burden. They speculate and deviate, and when they’re wrong, the cost is paid in livelihoods while the bankers party on.

There’s no song in Bruce’s catalog that more aptly captures the emotional impact of the collapse of the financial market as “Shackled and Drawn.”

Shackled and drawn, shackled and drawn
Pick up the rock, son, carry it on
Trudging through the dark in a world gone wrong
I woke up this morning shackled and drawn

Shackled and drawn, shackled and drawn
Pick up the rock, son, carry it on
What’s a poor boy to do but keep singing his song
I woke up this morning shackled and drawn

Oh, and we can’t let that “poor boy” reference pass us by for a third time without noting Bruce’s homage to The Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man.” Bruce cited “What can a poor boy do but sing in a rock and roll band” as one of the greatest lyrics of all time; it’s fitting that Bruce borrows it for his own call to revolution.

And make no mistake: “Shackled and Drawn” is as much a call to revolution (and as much an admission of its futility) as is “Street Fighting Man.”

As if to erase any doubt of that, Bruce ends the song with a spotlight on Cindy Mizelle, quoting Lyn Collins’ galvanizing “Me and My Baby Got Our Own Thing Going.”

Bruce’s lyrics quote the opening of Collins’ 1972 single–

I want everybody to stand up
I want everybody to stand up and be counted tonight
You know we got to pray together
I want you to stand up
I want everybody to stand up and be counted tonight

But Bruce trusts our familiarity with the original song in order for us to register the full import of Cindy’s vocals. At the heart of the original, Collins sings:

Gimme a man who can pay my dues
Cause I don’t wanna die

Sisters who work hard
To help their man, yeah
But the man need to do
Need to do what he can, hey

So when Cindy sings, “I want everybody to stand up and be counted tonight,” it’s a dash of salt in the narrator’s wounded pride. How can he help his family without the opportunity to do what he can?

But Cindy sings those lines with such passion that it’s also a plea to simply matter, an assertion that everyone is entitled to the privilege of earning their way in this life, and a call to action to claim this as a human right.

And if that doesn’t make “Shackled and Drawn” the epitome of one of Bruce’s lifelong themes, I don’t know what would.

Bonus: After performing “Shackled and Drawn” at almost every show from 2012 through 2014, Bruce retired it after the High Hopes Tour. In the last six years, Bruce has performed it only once–at Gothenburg in 2016.

Here’s that one-off performance, the last “Shackled and Drawn” to date.

Shackled and Drawn
Recorded: 2011
Released: Wrecking Ball (2012)
First performed: March 9, 2012 (New York City, NY)
Last performed: June 25, 2016 (Gothenburg, Sweden)

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