For every song that escapes, another never even makes it out of the notebook.
Today we take another trip back into young Bruce Springsteen’s songwriting notebook. While today’s entry is undated, lyrically it seems in keeping with Bruce’s post Steel Mill but pre-label days, so let’s peg it to the early 1970s.
The song appears to have multiple titles: at the top of the page is “Daddy Long Legs / Baby Son,” and just below it is “Phantom Love (Just 16).”
Only the “phantom love” phrase appears in the lyrics themselves, though, so let’s assume that the “daddy long legs/baby son” is an orphan.
“Phantom Love (Just 16)” is a bit tough to analyze, because it seems very much like a work in progress. There are no chord notations to give us a sense of its musicality, but the lack of obvious meter or external rhyme scheme suggests that it was probably a slower song (if a song at all).
Bruce also seems to be having trouble with the first verse, scratching out phrases, overwriting and adding parentheticals to a point that makes it almost impossible to determine what he intended as the final product:
Phantom love I will chase in exile down St. Christopher
Without armor or audience (fancy studs) till your beast lover (lover men) turn child
In search of a softer quieter lie
She moves in a ballerina suit tight and quick
I’m steppin’ in buckle boots slick and sharp
What we can make out appears to be the beginning of a would-be romance between lovers from different worlds. The second verse is clearer and more confident, though. The phrase “softer, quieter lie” appears to be a recurring theme, a nice notion for a pair that seem to want to be in love but can’t quite manage to get there.
Chase the little hood down through the fire wood
And we’ll walk together once again in search of that softer quieter lie
And I’ll really believe that I want you
And you’ll really believe you need me
Did I tell you, Bobby, I got me a phantom love
That’s all we get. As far as we know, “Phantom Love (Just 16)” never evolved into anything more; not a single phrase appears elsewhere in Bruce’s catalog.
We’ll chalk this one up to a songwriter’s experiment, one of what must be countless hidden away in the pages of Bruce’s decades of notebooks.
Phantom Love (Just 16)
Never recorded
Never released
Never performed
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“Phantom Love (Just 16)” (date uncertain): “What we can make out appears to be the beginning of a would-be romance between lovers from different worlds.” (KR) Sounds a lot like Bruce’s 15-year old pining comments mentioned in From My Home to Yours (Vol. 10), “Now, in the shadows always lurked a major problem to our paradise. You see, she was solidly middle class: perfect plaid skirt, blouse with the Peter Pan collar, white socks, long blond tresses. I was a denizen from the far side of nowhere, where blacks intermingled with whites, where a man never left his house in a suit unless he was going to church or in trouble.” Two examples of a young lover’s remorse. Thanks for finding and including this “Roll”, Ken.
It does! Good catch—because I write these on such a long lead, that radio show hadn’t even aired at the time. 🙂 I’ll have to go back and revise… thanks!