Roll of the Dice: Meet Me in the City

For a song that sounds like it was written for the sole purpose of opening a Springsteen concert (which it did for almost all of Bruce’s 2016 River Tour’s American leg), “Meet Me in the City” hides surprising depth for those who pay close attention to its lyrics.

Take a listen and hear for yourself. (Hint: as with many of Bruce’s songs, the secret decoder ring is in the bridge.)

“Meet Me in the City” belongs to the collection of “hybrid” River outtakes, an amalgamation of a vintage 1979 backing track and backing vocals with a 2015 lead vocal. It works much better than some of the other outtakes included with The Ties That Bind: The River Collection though, in part because there aren’t any traces of Bruce’s 1979 vocals for contrast (see “The Brokenhearted” for a jarring example of a less successful patch job), and in part because of the meta nature of the song itself.

Still, I can’t help but suspect that the mix we hear in the clip above isn’t what we might have heard had “Meet Me in the City” actually made the original The River album. Take a listen to this 1979 E Street Band rehearsal session–you’ll hear a slightly slower and much brighter arrangement than on the record, thanks to Danny Federici’s prominent glockenspiel, which is buried in the mix in the studio version.

There are actually eight different rehearsal versions of “Meet Me in the City” from 1979 floating around if you know where to look for them (they go by either the names “In the City Tonight” or “Do You Want Me to Say Alright”), but none are complete and all have lyrical variations and bluffed segments.

I strongly suspect that Bruce never even finished writing the song back then, which is probably why he recorded a new vocal in 2015. Still, if you track down and listen to all of the rehearsal outtakes, you’ll hear pretty much all of the final lyrics somewhere in the song.

Except for the bridge, that is.

The bridge is a modern addition, I believe, and it’s an essential one. It transforms “Meet Me in the City” from a throwaway trifle into a summation of the songs that comprise The River and a snapshot of the artist at a crossroads. (I suspect that’s the real reason why Bruce used at as an overture to his full album performances.)

That’s why we’ll start our lyrical dissection with the bridge, rather than at the top of the song–because otherwise, the song makes very little sense. (Many’s the fan who’s scratched their heads trying to figure out why the song’s protagonist gets the death penalty for getting high.)

Everybody’s lost in romance
Do you feel the way I feel, oh-oh
I’m just searching, girl
For the blood, for the bone, for the muscle, for what’s real

For those familiar with the rehearsal versions, the bridge is the most immediately obvious surgical alteration. First, the bridge was originally doubled in length–there’s likely some skillful musical editing on display here. Second, Bruce’s modern lyrics bear little resemblance to the semi-bluffed ones we hear in the rehearsals. (Notice that the meter is a close but not quite snug fit for these lyrics–Bruce had to add an “oh-oh” to the second line in order to match the backing track.)

But take another moment to re-read those lines, because if we understand the bridge, we’ll understand the song.

At first read, that first line may seem out of place: everybody’s lost in romance. “Meet Me in the City” certainly doesn’t seem like a love song.

It’s not, of course. Bruce isn’t using “romance” in the colloquial sense here–he’s using it in the literary sense. We know this because he bookends the verse with “I’m just searching… for what’s real.” In other words, “Meet Me in the City” is about the contrast of romanticism with realism–as, in a way, is The River itself.

The River is a double album, but it’s also a dichotomous  one. Like “Meet Me in the City,” The River is an amalgam, one of style rather than chronology. The songs on The River are mostly romantic (see “Drive All Night,” “Cadillac Ranch,” and “I’m a Rocker“), but we see a few realistic ones as well (“Sherry Darling,” “Wreck on the Highway,” and the title track.)

The cleverness of “Meet Me in the City” lies in the fact that it is a romantic song about realism–or perhaps more accurately, it’s a song about a romantic who yearns to be a realist. But even that only captures the surface of the song. “Meet Me in the City” is also an artist’s internal dialogue, a songwriter’s message to his younger self across the years that span the creation of the song itself.

That’s a lot for a three-and-a-half-minute rock song to carry, isn’t it? Bear with me and I’ll explain. Let’s take it from the top, shall we?

Hey girl, I’m calling all stations, blowing down the wire tonight
I’m singing through these power lines, I’m running on time and feeling alright
Skipping over the currents in the air, reaching to see if you’re out there
Coming across your radio station, calling out nation to nation
If you can hear me then say alright
And if you can, meet me in the city tonight

This is a decidedly romantic opening verse–necessarily so, in order to set us up for the realism that follows. It also sounds like a perfect pop song verse, which is not an accident.

(Note: I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to note the lyrical and metaphorical similarity to Bruce’s 2007 single, “Radio Nowhere“–another meta commentary on popular music.

I was trying to find my way home
But all I heard was a drone
Bouncing off a satellite
Crushing the last lone American night

This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?

Both songs feature a protagonist who appears to be reaching out to a love interest, They aren’t, of course–the “you” in both songs represent something else entirely. But like I said, we’ll get to that.)

Let’s move on to the part of the song that confuses many fans:

I was busted for feeling no pain
Charged with doing things I can’t explain
Picked up for parole violation
Locked with the boys in the subway station
Handcuffed on the killing floor
Transmitting from behind these jailhouse doors

In the first verse, the narrator is a disembodied voice riding the airwaves. In the second, we find out where he’s transmitting from. Apparently, he’s had a run-in with the law, and it’s not his first time. It seems he has been arrested at least for public intoxication and probably for drug use–and for whatever disruptive or perhaps violent acts he committed while under the influence.

Not only is our protagonist in prison, it also appears he’s on death row, which makes us wonder if this is a “Johnny 99” scenario. But perhaps all is not quite what it seems, because if taken literally, the final four lines of the second verse are an awfully strange segue:

If you’re sick, if you’re tired, if you’re bored
Then check the line, check the time, check the action, check the score
Come and get me if I ain’t right
But if I am, meet me in the city tonight

It’s odd that a locked-up lover would be reaching out telepathically with such a mundane message. But remember: here comes the bridge.

Everybody’s lost in romance
Do you feel the way I feel, oh-oh
I’m just searching, girl
For the blood, for the bone, for the muscle, for what’s real

And now the song snaps into focus, as the voice of an artist–or perhaps the artist–emerges. The meta message of “Meet Me in the City” is a sly commentary on romanticism and the rise of realism–both in the world around us and the worlds within Bruce’s music.

Filled with florid imagery and clever metaphor, laced with idealism and earnestness, romantic literature and music began to turn off nineteenth century artists and produced as a reaction a movement of art, literature, and music centered on ordinary people in ordinary circumstances–depicted in plain language and with outcomes that aren’t always neat and tidy. In other words, a whole lot like the evolution of Bruce’s songwriting at the time.

Bruce’s first three albums were deeply, almost archetypically romantic. Only with “Factory” on Darkness on the Edge of Town did Bruce’s songwriting verge into realism. The River features a few more experiments with realism, but it wasn’t until his sixth album, Nebraska, that Bruce fully embraced the form.

The bridge of “Meet Me in the City” sounds like the voice of the artist in 1979, growing bored with romantic songwriting and groping his way toward a more realistic catalog.

As for the protagonist character–I suspect his circumstances are highly metaphorical self-flagellation. He’s a musician doing what’s easy instead of what’s hard, doing what feels good instead of pushing himself to grow as an artist. The boys he’s locked with are his band, and his prison is self-imposed.

It’s not as if he hasn’t tried to escape–

I was busted for feeling no pain
Charged with doing things I can’t explain
Picked up for parole violation
Locked with the boys in the subway station
I pushed my way through the heart of the crowd
I shoved my way through the heart of the crowd
Past the sign saying this is not allowed
To where someone’s standing straight and shouting out loud

–but his audience demands more of the same. There’s a reason it’s called popular music.

Although Bruce uses the pop device of a nameless “girl” addressee, it’s likely that he’s really addressing himself–either as a contemporaneous internal dialogue or as counsel and advice from his older and wiser self. Either way, the call to action is clear: if you can’t find inspiration in an idealized world, look to the world you live in instead:

Handcuffed to the jailhouse door
Transmitting from the gallows floor
And if you’re sick, if you’re tired, if you’re bored
Check the line, check the time, check the action, check the score

If you can holler, then say alright (alright)
If you can holler, then say alright (alright)
If you can holler, then say alright (alright)
If you can holler, then say alright (alright)
If you can holler, then say alright (alright)
And if you can, meet me in the city tonight

That plea–meet me in the city tonight–can be read several ways: an artist inviting his audience to follow him to a new, more realistic form of songwriting; a more experienced songwriter encouraging his younger self to meet him in the middle, where their styles can converge; or of course, as the feel-good refrain of the pop song “Meet Me in the City” dresses as.

You can decide for yourself, because we’ll likely never know. Bruce didn’t talk much about “Meet Me in the City” when he released it and played it regularly, so we don’t know for sure whether Bruce honored or even remembered in 2015 what he’d originally intended to say with the song in 1979.

But we do know this: Bruce doesn’t do anything by accident.

That new bridge contrasting romanticism with realism is significant and its meaning apparent. How much was Bruce consciously thinking about the evolution of his songwriting when he wrote the song? In 1979, probably not at all–the rehearsal versions of “Meet Me in the City” sound like pop songs through and through.

In 2015, though–well, as he once confessed about the inspiration of a different song, if he wasn’t consciously thinking about it when finishing songs 35 years after he started them, I’m betting he was almost certainly feeling it.

As I wrote at the top, Bruce aptly and symbolically prefaced almost every full-album performance of The River in 2016 with “Meet Me in the City.” In fact, out of the 41 times he’s played the song live, only two were not attached to a full album performance. One of those was a mid-tour River show in Milan; the other was the live debut of the song on Saturday Night Live in the holiday season of 2015.

When Bruce and the E Street Band kicked off their 2016 version of the River Tour a month later, “Meet Me in the City” was the perfect choice for a show opener–not just because of its meaning but because of its trappings: at a superficial listen, the “meet me in the city tonight” refrain sounded like a typically Springsteen invitation and convocation (it even echoed Bruce’s “meeting in the town tonight” opening bit from the Reunion Tour). “I pushed my way to the heart of the crowd” sounded like a promise.

But when the band traveled to Europe and abandoned the full-album concept, “Meet Me in the City” dropped by the wayside as well. Without the album it symbolized as context, Bruce seemed to feel that “Meet Me in the City” functioned only on one level, and not the important one.

Will we hear from “Meet Me in the City” again? That remains to be seen–but if we do, I’m betting the album it represents will shortly follow.

Meet Me in the City
Recorded: June 14, 1979 (backing track), 2015 (vocals)
Released: The River: Outtakes (2015)
First performed: December 19, 2015 (New York City, NY)
Last performed: July 28, 2016 (Oslo, Norway)

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