Steel Mill played its last gig in the early weeks of 1971.
Six months later (following a brief stint in the Sundance Blues Band), Bruce had formed his own eponymous band with Steel Mill holdovers Vini Lopez and Steve Van Zandt, and new members Garry Tallent and David Sancious.
Unsurprisingly, given the bluesy bent of the The Bruce Springsteen Band’s core musicians, Bruce shifted his songwriting and arrangements in a cooler direction from Steel Mill’s hard rock sound.
The transition wasn’t immediate, however, nor was it complete. Early Bruce Springsteen Band set lists still featured some Steel Mill standards, and even some of Bruce’s newer songs felt like they were written more for his old band than his new one.
Case in point: “Coming Home,” debuted by The Bruce Springsteen Band in the autumn of 1971, only a few months into their existence.
“Coming Home” hewed closely to the Steel Mill formula, light on lyrics, heavy on the jam. But oh, what a jam. The band may have been new, but the players were not–by 1971 the young future E Streeters were already playing with peak skill, confidence, and ferocity.
Take a listen to the first known performance of “Coming Home,” from the band’s Richmond appearance (Steel Mill had made something of a second home in Richmond, Virginia) on October 23, 1971, and marvel at Bruce’s fleet-fingered guitar solo.
“Coming Home” made a couple more appearances that winter (that we know about, at least–few of those early set lists are documented), but it’s the remarkable studio recording that demands our close attention.
Studio recording, you ask? Surprisingly, yes: while no “official” studio records from the Bruce Springsteen Band era were ever issued, the band frequently rehearsed at Tinker West’s rehearsal room/studio/surfboard factory, and on at least one occasion, Tinker recorded and preserved the band’s sessions.
Only eight songs from those sessions circulate, but they are wonderfully clear documents of that brief but vibrant period in Bruce’s musical evolution. (Longtime readers know how partial I am to the Bruce Springsteen Band era.)
One of the final songs recorded at the March 14, 1972 rehearsal session was “Coming Home,” tighter and more lyrically evolved than the band’s earlier live performances. The recording lacks some of the frenetic energy of the ’71 performances, but it more than makes up for it in clarity. Sancious, in particular, makes his presence known here much more so than in the earlier performances.
Bruce wrote “Coming Home” at a time when the nation and his generation were inescapably influenced by the ongoing conflict in Vietnam, but while most of Bruce’s earlier war songs dripped with pathos, rage, or cynicism, “Coming Home” is much more subtle in its commentary–a listener encountering it for the first time today might mistake it for a “Born to Be Wild“-style road song.
Bruce’s narrator in “Coming Home” lives on the poor side of town. Looking for a life of adventure, he falls sway to the army’s recruitment pitch, and before long they put a rifle in his hand and ship him off to a foreign land.
Well now, living ain’t easy on this side of the highway
Trying to get a hold on life
The thing that you want is to have your fun
First they show you the gun and then they show you the lie
Ah but things are gonna change
Things are changing every day
I’m just a lone boy on the highway
I’ll try to make my own
I’m just a lone boy on the highway
Oh God I feel so alone now
But I’m coming home
By this point in Bruce’s young musical career, his songwriting was mature and subtle enough to operate on two levels, as anti-war commentary and an open-road rocker. Bruce effortlessly switches context and geography from verse to chorus, flashing forward to the returned soldier, emotionally isolated by his experiences and yearning for a home he knows deep down he can’t ever truly return to.
I don’t wanna go back to Kansas
I don’t wanna go there no more
I don’t think I could stand it
First they show you the gun and then they show you the door
Ah but things are gonna change
Things are changing every day
Well I don’t wanna go back
I don’t think I can ever go back again
I don’t wanna go back
I won’t go back and ever see her face again
Mama I’m going home
I won’t talk about it
There’s only the hint of allusion to the life (and love?) he left behind–our narrator won’t let himself resume it, yet he’s unable to fully let go. That sense of alienation among battle-scarred veterans was only starting to become recognized, but Bruce already understood it enough to write about it at the age of 22.
During the final chorus, our narrator is still struggling, standing outside his former home but too fearful or ashamed to enter. Bruce sings (in a line not present in the earlier live recordings), “I’m just a boy trying to get one foot in the door. Mama, I’m coming home–get me.”
We never learn whether he makes it home, though–the song leaves our soldier with no place to run, nowhere to go.
While “Coming Home” never saw the light of day (officially), it wouldn’t be the last time Bruce would write about a returning Vietnam veteran.
But in 1972, that story was still burning ten years down the road.
Coming Home
Recorded: March 14, 1972
Never released
First performed: October 23, 1971 (Richmond, VA)
Last performed: February 25, 1972 (Richmond, VA)
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