Roll of the Dice: The Wrestler

“I’m grounding [“The Wrestler”] in something I’ve experienced myself: You can find your identity in the damage that’s been done to you. In your wounds, in your scars, in the places where you’ve been beat up. And you turn them into a medal. In my own life I’ve built a lot, but… I don’t kid myself.” — Bruce Springsteen to Mark Hagen, The Guardian, January 18, 2009

One week before The Guardian published that interview, Bruce stood on the stage at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles and accepted his Best Original Song Golden Globe Award for “The Wrestler.”

In his acceptance speech, he thanked his friend Mickey Rourke (who won the Best Actor award that night for his performance in The Wrestler) for handing him the opportunity, and he shared how the request came about:

[Mickey] asked me for some music. He told me a little bit about the character. He said, “some people invest themselves in their pain, and they turn away from love and the things that strengthen and nurture their lives. This was a guy who hadn’t figured that out.” I said, “well… I know a few of those guys…”

Bruce was a few of those guys. (Or as he’s apt to put it these days, those guys are passengers in the car with him.)

Maybe that direct experience is what enabled him to write such an extraordinary insightful song. Maybe it was just his innate empathy.

Whatever the reason, “The Wrestler” is one of the most beautiful songs in Bruce’s catalog, a jewel box of a song that deserved all the accolades it earned (including the Golden Globe and Broadcast Film Critics Association Award), and at least one it didn’t (shockingly, “The Wrestler” wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar that year).

There’s no story to “The Wrestler;” it’s simply a character sketch. To the degree that it’s “about” anything, “The Wrestler” is about resilience in the face of hopelessness.

Bruce introduces us to a character who knows his place in the world, aches to transcend it, but can’t let it go. He’s an aging wrestler, which means he’s an entertainer, and the way he entertains is through his physical pain. Pain is all he knows, and it infects and infuses his emotional life as well.

Have you ever seen a one-trick pony in the field so happy and free
If you’ve ever seen a one-trick pony then you’ve seen me
Have you ever seen a one-legged dog making his way down the street
If you’ve ever seen a one-legged dog then you’ve seen me

Then you’ve seen me, I come and stand at every door
Then you’ve seen me, I always leave with less than I had before
Then you’ve seen me, bet I can make you smile when the blood it hits the floor
Tell me friend can you ask for anything more
Tell me can you ask for anything more

The Wrestler has no other useful skills than to serve as a vessel for violence. It’s all he knows. He’s a one-trick pony, and he’s content with his trick. He’s emotionally stunted, and it impairs him like a one-legged dog. He’s playing a losing game against time and fame, always leaving each fight with less of both, regardless of the outcome.

Oh, but the smiles. The applause. The roar of the crowd. He has those, at least, and he clings to them.

The metaphors continue:

Have you ever seen a scarecrow filled with nothing but dust and weeds
If you’ve ever seen that scarecrow then you’ve seen me
Have you ever seen a one-armed man punching at nothing but the breeze
If you’ve ever seen a one-armed man then you’ve seen me

The Wrestler is empty, barren, and for all his physical strength, he is impotent.

But he suffers no delusions. As Bruce often does, he places the emotional heart of the song in the bridge:

These things that have comforted me I drive away
This place that is my home I cannot stay
My only faith’s in the broken bones and bruises I display

The Wrestler is self-aware enough to understand the consequences he’s brought upon himself. As Mickey explained to Bruce, he’s invested in pain and toxic to love. He’s alienated his loved ones and has no constancy in his life other than the predictable comfort he finds in his own scars. The pain is familiar, constant, and loyal–the closest thing he has to family.

These three lines elevate “The Wrestler” from a song of compassion to one of tragedy. It’s one thing to engage in self-destructive behavior without understanding why; it’s another to fully understand it and yet still be powerless to resist.

Bruce has often (in recent years, at least) described how analysis, pharmacology, and the love of his family helped him face his own demons and keep them in check. The Wrestler has access to none of those things.

The final couplet of the song (Bruce uses one of his favorite narrative devices–the dangling couplet that ends a song on an unresolved note) is a heartbreaking one:

Have you ever seen a one-legged man trying to dance his way free
If you’ve ever seen a one-legged man then you’ve seen me

The Wrestler knows he’s impaired. He knows he’s self-impaired, in fact. But he presses on anyway, searching for a way to transcend his damage, even as he continues to inflict it. Because it’s all he knows how to do.

Bruce’s lyrics deservedly command most of the listener’s attention, but “The Wrestler” is one of the songs in Bruce’s catalog where lyrics, music, and even video combine to create essential art.

Musically, this is a Springsteen solo project–Bruce plays every instrument on the track, including the piano.

Now, Bruce is no slouch on the piano, but he’s no professor, either. We can usually recognize Bruce’s relatively heavy hand on the keyboard, but “The Wrestler” is one song where Bruce shrewdly plays to his strengths: much of the power of the piano in this track comes from individual notes strewn almost randomly throughout a misty keyboard introduction or delicately distributed underneath Bruce’s guitar in the main song. The effect is one of faint and distant but occasionally vivid memory, and it’s haunting.

As for the video, which Bruce made with Thom Zimny and Noah Hunter, it’s one of Bruce’s best. The camera brings us uncomfortably close to Bruce’s face, forcing us to see The Wrestler as a person rather than a caricature. Bruce delivers some devastating silent acting through his close-ups.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the video:

The accolades and awards for “The Wrestler” were still fresh when Bruce kicked off his Working on a Dream Tour two months later, and he understandably tried to find a home for the song in his set lists.

From late March through the early days of June, Bruce performed “The Wrestler” regularly, but the song never really fit thematically. (Although to be fair, that was a tour that struggled throughout to find its message.)

After a lone appearance on the tour’s European leg, “The Wrestler” disappeared, never to be seen again.

It’s too great a song to remain missing forever, though. “The Wrestler” fits with much of Bruce’s recent material, especially with Western Stars, an album wholly centered on characters looking back on a road they can’t get off. It’s a theme that seems particularly resonant to Bruce of late, so we can hope for a reprise someday soon.

The Wrestler
Recorded: 2008
Released: Working on a Dream (2009), The Essential Bruce Springsteen (2015)
First performed: March 23, 2009 (Asbury Park, NJ)
Last performed: June 4, 2009 (Stockholm, Sweden)

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