Roll of the Dice: Dry Lightning

“Dry Lightning” might be the first song Bruce ever wrote for Western Stars, even if his 2019 masterpiece album wasn’t even a gleam in his eye at the time.

It certainly strikes all the right thematic beats: western imagery, a protagonist unable to move forward, a gentle, wistfully romantic melody… just add an orchestral arrangement and “Dry Lightning” would have made a perfect addition to the Western Stars Tour that never was.

Bruce seems to have realized this at least subconsciously, because Western Stars actually features a sequel to “Dry Lightning.” But we’ll get to that later.

First, let’s take a listen to “Dry Lightning” together and take a close look inside.

As it stands, “Dry Lightning” is as close as we get to an E Street Band song on The Ghost of Tom Joad,  with bandmates Danny Federici, Garry Tallent, and Soozie Tyrell joining Bruce to bring this gorgeous track to life. (Gary Mallaber’s drums are the only non-E Street contributions).

Borrowing the melody from “Jersey Girl,” Bruce spins a tale of torrid romance turned dry and distant memory. We meet our narrator as he rises from a sleepless night (in a verse that contains distant echoes of the opening of “Western Stars“).

I threw my robe on in the morning, watched the ring on the stove turn to red
Stared hypnotized into a cup of coffee, pulled on my boots and made the bed
Screen door hangin’ off its hinges kept bangin’ me awake all night
As I look out the window, the only thing in sight
Is dry lightning on the horizon line
It’s just dry lightning and you on my mind

Bruce uses fine detail to communicate how deeply lost in memory is our narrator. He uncharacteristically abandons subtlety by using the word “hypnotized” (the verse would be just as powerful and work better metrically had he left that word out and let the imagery do the heavy lifting). but we can forgive that.

The banging screen door is a clever device, because a) we already suspect from the first two lines that our narrator is likely scapegoating the door for his insomnia, and b) it forces our minds to create and linger in the scene. We feel the time passing while the narrator’s mind quietly races.

The dry lightning is metaphor, of course. We often refer to sexual chemistry and passion as electric, and the notion of flashes of lightning and thunder without the release of rain… well, that’s pretty obvious.

Our narrator’s devotion/obsession is almost religious in its fervor:

I chased the heat of her blood like it was the holy grail
Descend beautiful spirit into the evening pale
Her Appaloosa’s kickin’ in the corral smelling rain
There’s a low thunder rolling across the mesquite plain
But there’s just dry lightning on the horizon line
It’s just dry lightning and you on my mind

The restless horse is more than just a colorful detail; its presence is the first and only way we learn that his past-tense affair was serious enough that they lived together (or at the very least, they spent enough time together for her to have her own horse in his corral). The fact that the horse is smelling rain is likely projection on the narrator’s part.

Although we’ve had reason to suspect as much all along, in the final verse Bruce suggests that the narrator’s relationship was rooted in its physicality.

I’d drive down to Alvarado street where she danced to make ends meet
I’d spend the night over my gin as she’d talk to her men
Well the piss-yellow sun comes bringin’ up the day
She said, “Ain’t nobody gonna give nobody what they really need anyway.”

Our narrator flashes back to the strip club where they met, she a dancer and he a patron. At the end of her shift, they go home together, but any trace of romance is expertly eradicated by Bruce’s “piss-yellow” description of the rising sun, a stark contrast to the song’s imagery up to this point.

In true Springsteenian fashion, the core message of the song can be found in a single line: Ain’t nobody gonna give nobody what they really need anyway,

By assigning it as a quote by the nameless love interest rather than simply stating it in the lyrics, Bruce accomplishes two things: first, he reveals a detached pragmatism on her part–she knows why her customers leave their wives for the evening to come see her, and she seems at peace with her role as momentary fantasy fulfillment. But she also gives away the game, telegraphing the doomed nature of their relationship–whatever these two individuals are missing in their lives, they aren’t enough to fill each other’s void.

We never learn what circumstances led to their dissolution, but it’s clear that the lovers never clicked as well out of bed as they did in it:

You get so sick of the fightin’, you lose your fear of the end
I can’t lose your memory, the sweet smell of your skin
It’s just dry lightning on the horizon line
It’s just dry lightning and you on my mind

There’s a point in toxic relationships where the fighting becomes so wearing on your well-being that even if you can’t bring yourself to end it, you at least realize you no longer fear the break-up. At that point, it’s just a matter of time.

Our narrator reached that point, and by sharing that detail we learn that he’s under no illusions about their compatibility. But knowing you don’t work with someone doesn’t mean you can shake your attraction to them, and this self-knowledge serves as his own private hell.

At this sad moment of realization, we take our leave. But we’ll meet our narrator again, further on up the road in “Chasin’ Wild Horses.”

“Dry Lightning” was a set list staple on the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, played at virtually every show. In my opinion, it never packed as much power performed solo as it does on the album, but here’s a video of Bruce performing it in 1996 so you can judge for yourself.

Bruce only performed “Dry Lightning” once more after the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour ended, as an audible (in place of the set-listed “Dead Man Walkin’“) on his 2005 solo acoustic tour.

That performance, too, pales beside the original album version. “Dry Lightning” is one of the few songs from The Ghost of Tom Joad that cry out for a full-band (or better yet, orchestral) arrangement.

I haven’t given up hope of hearing one someday.

Dry Lightning
Recorded: April-June 1995
Released: The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)
First performed: November 21, 1995 (New Brunswick, NJ)
Last performed: May 14, 2005 (Fairfax, VA)

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