Roll of the Dice: Seeds

Will the real “Seeds” please stand up?

“Seeds” is an original Springsteen song that Bruce has played live almost two hundred times, and yet it’s never seen an official studio release (although live versions can be found on Live 1975-85 and London Calling: Live in Hyde Park), no bootlegged outtake has ever escaped (at least to my knowledge), and rarely is Bruce asked about it let alone does he discuss it.

“Seeds” is such an overlooked song, in fact, that even the recent Hiatt and Margotin/Guesdin books that purport to address “all the songs” omit mention of it.

All of this wouldn’t be so maddening if the song wasn’t so chameleon-ish. We’ve heard it in so many different arrangements that we can’t help but wonder if the reason Bruce never released it is that he’s never found a studio arrangement he’s comfortable memorializing. Unless Bruce releases his original 1983 studio recording from the Born in the U.S.A. sessions in that long-promised sequel to Tracks, we may never know how Bruce originally envisioned it.

And that’s too bad, because “Seeds” is one very powerful song, and certainly one of Bruce’s angriest.

Let’s start our discussion by listening to the version we’re most familiar with: Bruce’s 1985 performance from Live 1975-85, not even three months after Bruce debuted the song in London.

Truth be told, this is my least favorite arrangement of “Seeds.” While I love Bruce’s raw and righteous vocal and the guitar riff that underpins it, the heavy synths instantly date the song whenever I hear it (the horns added in the ’88 tour didn’t help much).

But at the time, this original live arrangement of “Seeds” suited the song well.

Originally recorded titled (and recorded) under the name “Gone, Gone, Gone” (very likely a hat-tip to The Everly Brothers song by the same name, which features a similar “movin’ on”/”gone gone gone” lyrical pairing as well as a riff that bears a distant resemblance), “Seeds” is a song that points the way to The Ghost of Tom Joad even more than the songs on Nebraska do.

Our point of view character is an unemployed worker, lured from his home up north (probably working in the steel mills or coal mines) by the promise of plentiful and secure work in Texas. He heads south with nothing to his name other than his family, only to find that by the time he gets there, the price of oil had dropped and the jobs along with it. With no work to do and no place to go, he and his family find themselves homeless in Houston.

Well a great black river a man had found
So he put all his money in a hole in the ground
Sent a big steel arm driving down down down
Now I live on the streets of Houston town

Packed up my wife and kids when winter came along
And I headed down south with just spit and a song
But they said, “Sorry son it’s gone gone gone,
Yeah it’s all gone… all work is gone”

The scene on the streets is grim. The homeless huddle by the railroad tracks or in tents by the highway. Our narrator’s family sleeps in the only thing they have to their name: their car. His kids are sick–perhaps seriously so–from exposure to the elements, but they have nowhere else to go. And even the parking lot is no longer an option when a passing patrolman forces them to go somewhere, anywhere else.

There’s men hunkered down by the railroad tracks
The Elkhorn Special blowing my hair back
Tents pitched on the highway in the dirty moonlight
And I don’t know where I’m gonna sleep tonight

Parked in the lumberyard freezing our asses off
Kids in the back seat got a graveyard cough
I’m sleeping up in front with my wife
Billy club tapping on the windshield in the middle of the night
He says, “Move along son, move along”

(Note, by the way, the tracks/back paring that Bruce would use again a decade later in “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” The imagery in “Seeds” rhymes with “The Ghost of Tom Joad” even more than the words do.)

At this point, a limousine passes by (presumably carrying an oil executive, whose employment is secure), adding insult to injury.

Big limousine, long shiny and black
You don’t look ahead, you don’t look back

The bigwig doesn’t even acknowledge the presence of his former workers now out on the street. Presumably the exec is rich enough to forget their names, a notion that Bruce would make more explicit in another song on The Ghost of Tom Joad.

But Bruce’s next lines are a callback to one of his most popular contemporary songs. Like the narrator of “Born in the U.S.A.,” our hero in “Seeds” feels like a dog who’s been beat too much and has hit the ground too many times. These next lines are among Bruce’s angriest and most bitter:

How many times can you get up after you’ve been hit
Well I swear if I could spare the spit
I’d lay one on your shiny chrome
And send you on your way back home

If you’re gonna leave your town where the north wind blow
To come on down where the sweet soda river flow
You better think twice on it, Jack
You’re better off buying a shotgun straight off a rack

Seething with frustration and regret, our hero wishes he could spit on the passing limousine (or possibly the bald head of its passenger, so clever is the metaphor), but we know what he really wants is just to be seen and acknowledged for the economic injustice that’s been done him.

And for anyone else tempted to make the migration south, he offers sobering advice: you’re better off just buying a gun and ending it slowly instead of drawn out. Because as Bruce points out in a final verse that reveals the reason for the song’s title (but is too poetic for such an angry arrangement), all the jobs  have scattered to the wind like dandelion seeds, the workers now rootless in more than one sense.

The only thing you’re gonna find here, friend
The seeds blowing up the highway in the south wind
Moving on, moving on
Now it’s gone gone gone

Bruce played “Seeds” so regularly during the last leg of the Born in the U.S.A. Tour that fans quickly accepted the song as if it had been in Bruce’s catalog all along. So it wasn’t surprising that Bruce would continue playing it long after the tour ended.

What was surprising was the form it took in its next appearance. After the marathon Born in the U.S.A. Tour ended, Bruce took 1986 off. He did make a few public appearances, though, including at an acoustic benefit show for Neil and Pegi Young’s Bridge School benefit show.

It would have been shocking enough to hear “Seeds” played acoustically after such a fierce electric debut, but Bruce did more than just play it acoustically–he completely transformed it, pairing the lyrics with the music from another unreleased contemporary outtake, “Rockaway the Days.”

Paired with such a gentle melody and accompanied only by Nils and Danny (on accordion!), the fire and fury of Bruce’s lyrics might have been lost had Bruce not managed to summon a fierce vocal during the second half of the song. (It’s one of my favorite moments of the show.)

But it raises the question among fans: was this the arrangement originally meant for “Seeds,” a new arrangement, or was this just a one-off? Turns out it was a one-off, because “Seeds” immediately returned to its original live arrangement for the Tunnel of Love Tour.

But when “Seeds” came out again for regular outings on World Tour 1993, it had morphed yet again. Once again acoustic, and now solo, Bruce debuted arrangement #3:

And that still wasn’t all. On Bruce’s solo acoustic tour in support of The Ghost of Tom Joad, “Seeds” made a solitary appearance. (That fact still boggles my mind. Talk about a perfect fit for a tour set list.)

This arrangement was arguably the strongest one yet. Certainly, it was the bluesiest, trading in some of the song’s anger for simmering resentment and defeatism.

Like his Bridge School arrangement, though, this was just another one-off. When “Seeds” returned to Bruce’s set lists on a regular basis (more than a decade later, on the recession-era Working on a Dream Tour), he’d returned to the original ’85 arrangement.

That arrangement has stuck ever since. “Seeds” has continued to make appearances (but only a few) on every E Street Band Tour since, including serving as an audibled show opener in (where else?) Houston town, thanks to an inspired last-minute suggestion by Tom Morello as the band took the stage.

(In the spirit of transparency, I include this video primarily because you can see me so clearly for so much of it starting with Bruce’s solo around the 3:50 mark. It was my best position ever in the pit.)

Given the state of the economy, however, and its likely prolonged recovery, I suspect “Seeds” may once again become a set list staple when Bruce tours once again.

Seeds
Recorded: May 25, 1983
Never released (Live version released on Live 1975-85)
First performed: July 3, 1985 (London, England)
Last performed: June 5, 2016 (London, England)

Looking for your favorite Bruce song? Check our full index. New entries every week!