Roll of the Dice: Johnny 99

“The [Nebraska] songs had a lot of detail, so that when the band started to wail away into it, the characters got lost. Like ‘Johnny 99,’ I thought, ‘oh, that’d be great if we could do a rock version.’ But when you did that, the song disappeared.” –Bruce Springsteen, Hot Press, November 2, 1984

This is a story of a song that disappeared.

On vinyl, it remains one of Bruce Springsteen’s finest songwriting achievements; on stage, it evolved into a fun but forgettable trifle.

I speak of “Johnny 99,” of course.

On the eve of summer in 1980, Ford Motor Company closed its auto plant in Mahwah, New Jersey, putting 4,000 local auto workers out of a job and adding them to a list of casualties that would soon accelerate in the Reagan economy.

As American workers came to grips with the notion that lifelong secure employment might be a thing of the past, so did American society begin to wrestle with the notion that it bore some responsibility for the actions of the disempowered and disenfranchised.

“Johnny 99” is notable for many reasons, but among them is its significance as arguably the first in a long line of Springsteen songs centered on an anti-hero.

Anti-heroes are difficult to create, because they require the writer to invest sympathetic qualities into characters whose behavior is otherwise unsympathetic. It takes a skilled writer or director to bring an anti-hero to life in novel or film; to do it in a three-and-a-half minute song takes a songwriter at the top of their craft.

In 1981, Bruce Springsteen was at the top of his craft. Off the road following his most successful tour yet, Bruce retreated to his New Jersey home and began writing. Among the songs that emerged was a collection of austere songs, some deeply introspective, others darkly alienated, and almost all influenced at least in part by Bruce’s growing fascination with early American folk music.

I pause here to offer a hat tip to Brian Hiatt, who astutely attributes the origins of “Johnny 99” to the great Jimmie Rodgers recording of “99 Years Blues” in 1932.

Both the yodelesque howl that introduces “Johnny 99” as well as a shared sentence handed down with levity make the homage all but certain. From Rodgers’ recording:

When the judge read the verdict it nearly knocked me down
Said boy you got two six’s they’re all upside down

Still, while there’s certainly a hat-tip to “99 Years Blues,” I’d argue that Bruce was likely equally influenced by a different, earlier Rodgers song: “Blue Yodel No. 9.”

Long recognized as one of the seminal songs that shaped rock and roll, “Blue Yodel No. 9” was almost certainly a song that Bruce discovered early on in his exploration of country and folk music, and there’s a clear musical and metrical similarity between it and “Johnny 99.” Take a listen:

The two songs also share a point-of-view character run in by local law enforcement.

Standing on the corner, I didn’t mean no harm
Along come the police, he took me by the arm
It was down in Memphis, corner of Beale and Main
He says “big boy, you’ll have to tell me your name”

Whatever the influence (with Bruce, his influences are always too many to enumerate anyway), Bruce had a clear story in mind from the beginning.

“Johnny 99” is the story of Ralph, a down-and-out, laid-off Mahwah autoworker forced into a life of petty crime in order to survive. At the outset of the song, Ralph’s robbery attempt goes south, probably in large part due to Ralph’s intoxicated state. Judgment impaired, Ralph shoots the store’s night clerk, flees to a local blue-collar night club, and causes a liquor-fueled scene until an off-duty cop picks him up and runs him in.

All of this exposition comes in the song’s first eight lines, a remarkable feat of narrative economy.

Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late that month
Ralph went out looking for a job but he couldn’t find none
He came home too drunk from mixing Tanqueray and wine
He got a gun, shot a night clerk, now they call him Johnny 99

Down in the part of town where when you hit a red light you don’t stop
Johnny’s waving his gun around and threatening to blow his top
When an off-duty cop snuck up on him from behind
Out in front of the Club Tip Top they slapped the cuffs on Johnny 99

While he would pare and hone the story before committing the final version to tape, Bruce originally provided more backstory for the crime itself, before undoubtedly realizing that the song needs to rely more on the circumstances that led to the crime more than on the deed itself.

In the outtake below, we learn that Ralph wasn’t even trying to rob the store of its entire stash–he only demanded what he needed: two hundred dollars. We also learn that Ralph acted in what he perceived to be self-defense.

It’s only two hundred dollars, that was all I was asking for
Judge, just two hundred dollars, and I’d’ve been on my way out the door
He reached ‘neath the counter and I saw something shiny in his hand
He spewed blood like a fountain and I dropped my gun and I ran

Although the excised verse would have made Ralph more sympathetic, it also would have been a cheat: in order for us to truly come to terms with the impact of economic inequality on American society, the crime needed to be unforgivable. In the final version of the song, Johnny owns his actions–there are no extenuating circumstances to be found.

Before we move on, there’s one piece of detail to which our attention must be called: the police officer who arrested Ralph was off duty. That’s a significant detail–Bruce’s details are almost always significant–because it establishes that no one at the Tip Top club actually called the police. The officer was likely a club patron, and while his arrest of Ralph might have been in the interest of public safety, it also represents an act of betrayal from a fellow working-class joe. That almost certainly rubbed salt in Ralph’s wound.

Our story continues with Ralph’s trial:

Well the city supplied a public defender but the judge was Mean John Brown
He came into the courtroom and stared poor Johnny down
Well the evidence is clear, gonna let the sentence son fit the crime
Prison for 98 and a year and we’ll call it even, Johnny 99

Here, at the song’s mid-point, we learn whence the song’s title derives–from John Brown, the sarcastic judge who labels Ralph “Johnny 99,” depriving Ralph of the dignity of his name and forever associating him with his crime instead.

(Fun fact: Bob Marley shot a sheriff named John Brown in his 1973 classic. Is Ralph’s judge an homage or a coincidence? Just one of the 500 or so questions I’d ask Bruce if I ever get the chance to interview him.)

An uproar ensues at the reading of the sentence, as Ralph’s family (his mom and his girlfriend, although in an early outtake, Ralph’s dad stands in for the girl) realizes they’re about to say goodbye to him forever.

A fistfight broke out in the courtroom, they had to drag Johnny’s girl away
His mama stood up and shouted, “Judge, don’t take my boy this way”
Well son you got any statement you’d like to make
Before the bailiff comes to forever take you away

This is another juncture at which Bruce tightened the song. In the outtake above, the judge taunts Ralph at this point:

‘Cause from here on after we can only hear you buddy when you shout
You’re going deep down deep in some hole and you ain’t ever gonna come back out

…and in a second early outtake below, the judge also answers Ralph’s mother’s plea:

“Well I’m sorry Ma’am but the law must be satisfied
At your son’s murdering hands an honest man died”

As the song enters into its third act, Ralph gets his climactic courtroom monologue, and here is where Bruce’s social commentary cuts most sharply.

Now judge, judge, I got debts no honest man could pay
The bank was holding my mortgage, they taking my house away
Now I ain’t saying that makes me an innocent man
But it was more and all this that put that gun in my hand

Well your honor, I do believe I’d be better off dead
And if you can take a man’s life for the thoughts that’s in his head
Then won’t you sit back in that chair and think it over, Judge, one more time
And let ’em shave off my hair and put me on that execution line

That first line is the key to the whole song: I got debts no honest man could pay.

In other words: I had no choice, your honor. If I lose my home, I lose my life. If I can’t earn a living honestly–and believe me, I’ve tried–dishonesty is my only choice.

It’s a devastating line, so much so that Bruce would use it in another song on the same album.

Ralph owns his crime, but he uses his moment to address the court (a metaphorical stand-in for society at large) and serve notice: you played a part in this, too.

The final verse makes it clear that Ralph truly does feel guilt over his actions. He’s consumed by it, in fact–unable to cope with the knowledge that he took a life. (In the outtake above, the final line is “’cause I shot that poor boy, I shot him judge, and I ran.”)

Ralph begs the judge to sentence him to death, and although we never hear the judge’s response, we already know that Ralph’s plea is in vain. He’ll likely spend the rest of his life in prison. Bruce couldn’t have known it when he wrote “Johnny 99,”  but over the years ahead, the American prison system would swell near to bursting as growing social and economic inequality exacted its relentless toll on the country.

As with many of Bruce’s songs, “Johnny 99” would grow in relevance–sadly–with each passing year.

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Bruce released “Johnny 99” as a solo recording on his Nebraska album in 1982. But because Bruce didn’t tour behind Nebraska, “Johnny 99” didn’t make its concert debut until the first show of the Born in the U.S.A. Tour. Perhaps by way of apology for not touring to support his previous album, Bruce featured a Nebraska mini-set nightly, and the very first song he played from that album was “Johnny 99.”

Bruce played “Johnny 99” regularly throughout the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, and Bruce thought highly enough of it to include a 1985 performance on Live 1975-85 when that box set was issued in 1986.

Following the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, however, “Johnny 99” disappeared for over a decade before it was heard from again–probably because the song wouldn’t have fit thematically with his tours in the intervening years.

It took the austere Ghost of Tom Joad Tour to bring “Johnny 99” out again, but once revived it made dozens of appearances between 1996 and 1997.

But when “Johnny 99” made its next concert appearance, something changed.

Bruce had already been inching his way toward more uptempo arrangements, as that Paris clip above illustrates. But when Bruce reintroduced it at the end of the Rising Tour, he did what he once dismissed as a bad idea: he transformed it into a rock arrangement, albeit a heavily country-tinged one.

The following year brought a brief tour under the Vote for Change banner, and “Johnny 99” was a natural choice for the set list. Once again, Bruce chose an uptempo arrangement, this time going all in on fiddle, accordion, and upright bass.

Bruce continued playing the rock version of “Johnny 99,” but it seemed like the song disappeared bit by bit with each increasingly raucous appearance.

The great irony of this is that as the years passed, “Johnny 99” only increased in relevance. At the height of the 2008-09 financial crisis, what song from Bruce’s back catalog could be more fitting?

But by that time, “Johnny 99” had evolved so far beyond its original trappings that it was almost unrecognizable. To this day, I don’t understand why Bruce encouraged the “woo-woo” train whistle audience response that started on the Working on a Dream Tour.

Now don’t get me wrong: those arrangements are undeniably fun. My personal favorite is the short-lived funkified arrangement from the 2006 Seeger Sessions Tour. I wouldn’t have believe funk-folk could be a thing until I witnessed it.

But I vividly remember seeing the E Street Band perform their rock arrangement of “Johnny 99” in Cleveland on the Vote for Change Tour and thinking in the moment, this is wrong. It just felt wrong.

I may be in the minority. I suspect I am.

But when I watch the final few minutes of one of Bruce’s most recent performances of “Johnny 99,” just three years ago, I can’t help but wonder whether Bruce’s lyrics still resonate with his audiences the way they did in 1984.

Bruce shows no sign of reverting back to his original arrangement of “Johnny 99.” He and the band clearly enjoy their modern arrangements too much to go back. And I’m sure that the next time I hear them play it, I’ll be right there with the woo-woos myself. (Update 1/2/2024: I was.)

But in the back of my mind, I’ll be thinking about poor Ralph, locked away and forgotten.

Johnny 99
Recorded: January 3, 1982
Released: Nebraska (1982), The Essential Bruce Springsteen (2003)
First performed: June 29, 1984 (St. Paul, MN)
Last performed: August 30, 2023 (East Rutherford, NJ)

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