Roll of the Dice: Janey Needs a Shooter

Updated 10/23/20: If you’d told me when I first published this essay that we’d seen an officially released, brand new recording of “Janey Needs a Shooter” within ninety days, I’d have thought you were nuts. And yet, here we are: Bruce’s new album, Letter to You, is available and includes–at long, long last–a fully realized version of “Janey Needs a Shooter,” and it is glorious.

My original essay follows. There’s no need to update the lyrical analysis (the differences are insignificant). and the recording speaks for itself. It’s every bit as wonderful as we could ever have hoped for.

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Today we take a look at an outtake from The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle that has never seen an official release but almost did thanks to a cover by Warren Zevon that wasn’t a cover at all.

It’s an unusual story that takes place over a full decade, so let’s dive in.

In the autumn of 1971, The Bruce Springsteen Band performed a song called “Talking About My Baby” during their show at Virginia Commonwealth University.

“Talking About My Baby” is a beautiful song that we’ll delve into in greater detail someday, but for now just take a listen, enjoy, and note the melody for comparison purposes.

We have no records to indicate if Bruce ever played “Talking About My Baby” other than that one time, but at least we know he didn’t forget about the song entirely. Bruce wrote a new song called “Janey Needs a Shooter” the following year and recorded it at 914 Sound Studios just weeks after the release of Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. in January 1973.

“Janey Needs a Shooter” lifts and adapts the melody from “Talking About My Baby”–we can hear the direct echoes in the opening couplet of each verse–but since “Janey” broods where “Talking” soars, Bruce tethered the melody to keep the mood serious.

As for the lyrics, “Janey Needs a Shooter” is one of the most graphically sexual songs in Bruce’s catalog. Bruce certainly hasn’t shied away from sexual metaphor in his career, but rarely has he been this overt. (Let’s keep in mind that Bruce was only 22-23 at the time he wrote “Janey.”)

Well Janey’s got a doctor who tears apart her insides
He investigates her and silently baits her every little sigh
Oh he probes with his fingers but he knows her heart only through his stethoscope
Oh his hands are so old and his instruments so cold
Janey turns him down like dope

That’s quite the opening verse. We’re introduced to Janey, of whom we know nothing other than that she’s the object of some intense sexual attention from a suitor who doesn’t seem to care very much about her for any other purpose.

Graphic imagery aside, these are actually exceptionally well-written lyrics that manage to convey depth, sadness, and some key detail through clever metaphor.

For example: “he knows her heart only through his stethoscope” is a terrific lyric that communicates the doctor’s clinical detachment from any sort of emotional connection; the doctor’s old hands and cold instruments tell us a lot about how Janey views him (or perhaps how the narrator views him–who is the narrator, anyway? We’ll soon find out.) , which makes us wonder what they’re doing together to begin with.

We needn’t wonder, though, because we won’t hear from the doctor again. In the second verse, we meet a new fellow: a proctor (clever rhyme, that), who seems to have an identical interest to the doctor.

And Janey’s got a proctor, from his marble pulpit he smiles
He provides consolation and an open invitation to confession at any time
Between the pages of his bible he holds from what Janey he hides
With her doors open wide she begs come inside
He’s too long been content to mess around with the handles on the outside

Again, Bruce is sly with his metaphor, but it’s clear what Janey’s doors and handles refer to. And again, Bruce writes a brilliant lyric to establish the proctor’s emotional distance: “between the pages of his bible he holds what from Janey he hides.” In other words, his heart belongs to God, not to Janey. (This proctor provides at least as much fodder for confession as he does absolution.)

We’re now two verses in, and still all we know is that Janey has at least two concurrent sexual partners. I’ve read takes suggesting that Janey is a prostitute; perhaps that’s so, but there’s nothing explicit in Bruce’s lyrics to establish that. I suspect that Janey is either a strong, sexually independent woman, an emotionally damaged one, or both–notions that would seem reinforced by the chorus, which finally introduces the narrator as a self-interested character:

And Janey needs a shooter
A shooter like this boy on her side
Janey needs a shooter
Someone who knows her style
And I know her style

Aha! Now the song comes into focus: our narrator views himself as Janey’s savior–able to please her both physically and emotionally. (In a way, Janey is a predecessor to Candy, a character we won’t meet for a few years yet.)

In fact, if we now go back and review the first two verses, it’s quite possible the cold, sterile characterization of Janey’s partners may be a refraction through the narrator’s lens rather than through Janey’s. Our heroine may be absolutely fine with her no-strings-attached liaisons, although the second half of the song seems to belie that interpretation.

Our story continues, as does Janey’s parade of suitors. Now we meet the mechanic, and things take a violent turn as our silent observer relinquishes both his silence and his passivity.

Janey loved a mechanic who owned a gas station down on Route 9
Well she took him to bed and I beat my head on his gas tanks and bled all over his tires
And then he smashed my car with his big tow bar. I got out and asked him why
He said “Cause with her it’s either you or me, and it’s gonna be me”
And I watched Janey silently stand by

It’s the shocking violence that draws our attention in this verse, but it’s the dialogue that’s important: it shows that the mechanic recognizes our narrator as a significant actor in Janey’s drama. The narrator isn’t merely observing Janey’s parade of partners, he’s a participant in it, and a significant one at that. He’s not happy about the competition, which isn’t surprising given the beatdown he received from Janey’s jealous mechanic.

Another actor enters, and now things really come into focus. One of the most impressive things about “Janey Needs a Shooter” is the way Bruce slowly, subtly, and meticulously parcels out just a little more information about Janey and the narrator with each verse…

Then she flopped with a cop who lived round the block
He’d come peek in my window every night
Janey’s skin would turn pale as the siren he’d wail
Outside my house all night long when he knew she was inside
She said his big gun was fun but Janey’s small, and sometimes he scared her
So I held her real close, she was more a saint than a ghost
And told her I so long had been prepared for her

The cop, like the mechanic, appears to be obsessed with Janey. He stalks her and makes his presence known to her via his siren.

But note that the narrator sings that the cop would “peek in my window every night,” “all night long when he knew she was inside.” It appears that Janey and the narrator have at least a semi-regular thing going on, and now we understand why he’s so tormented about the situation. (Janey’s thinly-veiled penis size reference probably doesn’t help the matter, though.)

Janey’s mortified by the cop’s visible and audible presence (who wouldn’t be?), and our narrator comforts her, or at least tries to.

The last couplet of the final verse holds the key line to the song :”she was more a saint than a ghost.”  Perhaps it’s wishful thinking on the part of the narrator, but he takes her ashen reaction to the cop’s presence not as fear or even shame but rather as rejection and resolve. Bruce seems to imply that  Janey needs more than casual sexual relationships, and she’s come to realize that perhaps our narrator is the one she’s looking for.

As the song concludes, our narrator vows to be her protector and defender–to stand by her, to give her what she needs, and not let her backslide.

And Janey needs a shooter
A shooter just like me on her side
Janey needs a shooter
Someone who won’t let her slide
And I can’t let her slide

Woah, I’m stayin’ here tonight, baby, and I won’t let you slide

We never find out what happens to our would-be lovers. “Janey Needs a Shooter” isn’t concerned with a happy ending but rather the moment when we decide we deserve one.

While I certainly wouldn’t have swapped it with any of the songs that did make it onto Bruce’s second album, “Janey Needs a Shooter” is an exceptional example of Bruce’s early songwriting that certainly would have held its own as an official release.

Bruce seemed to think so as well–at least for a while, because “Janey Needs a Shooter” was included in early track listings not just for his second album but for his third as well. (Session logs indicate that the E Street Band recorded a full-band arrangement in 1974.)

“Janey Needs a Shooter” did not make Born to Run, of course, and after missing two consecutive albums, that might have been the end of the story.

Enter Warren Zevon.

Zevon recalls first hearing about (but not actually hearing) “Janey Needs a Shooter” from Jon Landau during the time that Bruce was barred from recording new material in the studio due to his legal battle with former manager Mike Appel. That would place us sometime in 1976 or 1977.

Zevon was captivated by the title–since he hadn’t heard the actual song, he took it literally and imagined the shooter as an outlaw in romantic pursuit of the sheriff’s daughter. (He hadn’t even seen the song’s title–he misheard Landau and instead wrote a story about Jeannie instead of Janey.)

Time and again, he asked Bruce to hear the song; time and again, Bruce demurred—finally giving Zevon his blessing to write his own song using the same title just to shut down the discussion.

Zevon did just that–or at least he wrote a single verse:

I was born down by the river
Where the dirty river flows
And the cool wind cut through me
It cut right through my clothes
And the anger and the yearning
Like fever in my veins
Set the fire burning

Warren proudly played his work-in-progress for Bruce in 1979 during a break in the River sessions. Bruce reportedly liked what he heard and asked Zevon: where’s the rest of it?

Knowing that he had Bruce on the hook, Zevon reeled in his fish and the two of them ended up writing the remainder of the verses together, with Bruce generously donating his unused chorus.

The result was “Jeannie Needs a Shooter,” which leads off Side Two of Zevon’s 1980 album, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School.

Only after Bruce and Warren had finished writing the song did Bruce actually play his original outtake for Warren, who sheepishly realized he’d inferred an entirely different storyline for the titular character.

And we might think that would be the end of the story–but not quite.

Apparently, Zevon’s persistent pestering to hear Bruce’s original version put the song back on Bruce’s radar, because in May 1979, shortly before Zevon recorded his version, the E Street Band worked up a scorching full-band arrangement for “Janey Needs a Shooter,” placing it in contention for The River, a third album for which it was destined to fall short.

Still–that rehearsal take is incredible. Take a listen:

And now, finally, we’ve reached the end of the story–for now at least. Because if a full studio outtake from those ’79 sessions does exist, we can only hope for its inclusion on that long-rumored Tracks 2 box set.

Janey has waited in the wings for far too long to be denied some time in the sun.

Bonus: During his home demo recording sessions for The River (probably not long before the band rehearsal above), Bruce worked for a bit on “Janey Needs a Shooter.” Here are those outtakes below.

Janey Needs a Shooter
Recorded: January 29, 1973 (solo), November 2019 (band)
Released: Letter to You (2020)
Never performed

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