Roll of the Dice: Look Into My Window

Recordings of original Springsteen songs from The Castiles era are exceedingly rare.

If you think about it, though, it’s astonishing there are any at all.

Bruce joined his first band when he was fifteen years old; they disbanded a month or so before he turned nineteen. Who would have thought in the late 1960s that this high school band’s performances were worth preserving for posterity?

As it turns out, Father Fred Coleman did.

Coleman was an assistant priest at St. Peter’s Church in Freehold when he and another reverend opened The Left Foot, a teen club, next door to the church.

Coleman (who was “tossed out” of the clergy for being “too progressive,” he said in a 2004 New York Times interview) opened the club on the evening of September 16, 1967, with The Castiles as its very first headliners.

Father Coleman immediately realized that he was witnessing some serious talent and captured the band’s performance with a reel-to-reel tape deck and microphones. That recording survives today and is the earliest known recording of a Bruce Springsteen live performance. (See “Mr. Jones” from that show for the very first live performance of an original Springsteen song.)

Two weeks later, The Castiles returned to The Left Foot, and once again Father Coleman was ready. The set list that night was primarily comprised of covers, but there was a single (that we know of) Springsteen original.

Actually, “Look Into My Window” was co-written by Bruce and George Theiss, as several of the band’s earliest original songs were. It’s incomplete (there were several cuts on the tape), but there’s enough for us to get a solid sense of what Bruce and George were reaching for.

The lyrics are elementary–only a day after his seventeenth birthday, Bruce hadn’t yet begun to stretch himself.

Look into my window girl
You’re lookin’ at me
Cause to get my window girl
Tell me what you see

Look into my window
Tell me what I’m like
Look into my window
And don’t be afraid to try

As for the music, “Look Into My Window” is clearly Kinks-inspired. Two weeks prior, The Castiles had played a cover of “See My Friends,” and the similarities in the two songs’ Indian-influenced melodies is striking.

Although Bruce would quickly grow by leaps and bounds in both his lyrical skill and originality, he’d continue to wear his musical influences on his sleeve. We’re not aware of any other known performances of “Look Into My Window” (although again, documents from this period are rare), so we might consider this song just a stop along the early journey of a budding songwriter.

Look Into My Window
Never recorded
Never released
First performed: September 30, 1967 (Freehold, NJ)
Last performed: September 30, 1967 (Freehold, NJ)

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