Roll of the Dice: The Rising

It started as an elegy.

It became a celebration.

Ultimately, it grew into an anthem.

And along the way, it reintroduced the world to one of the 20th century’s greatest songwriters and made it clear he’d hold that rank in the 21st century, too.

It was a song that brought together all of its author’s greatest themes: life and death, love and loss, duty and destiny, defiance and surrender, the ties that bind and spirits in the night. All cloaked in religious imagery and delivered as an instantly and almost intravenously irresistible rocker.

He even had the audacity to anchor it with a riff played on the cello.

The arrival of “The Rising” in the summer of 2002 firmly re-established Bruce Springsteen as a force of cultural relevance and reflection in a world that had begun relegating him to bygone status.

Its origin is famous, almost apocryphal. Even a casual fan could likely tell you how a passing driver caught Bruce’s attention on the afternoon of September 11, 2001 with a plea bordering on a summons: “Bruce, we need you!”

In reality, “The Rising” was one of the last songs Bruce wrote and recorded for his 9/11 response album, the result of scratching one last itch that wouldn’t go away when he thought he was otherwise finished writing.

He’d already written “Into the Fire,” the story of a 9/11 first responder’s last heroic deeds, but Bruce wasn’t ready to let the character go. He wrote “The Rising” to give voice to his hero’s last moments. In fact, the rising literally refers to the moment of death, the moment when one soul ascends to heaven.

“The Rising” has been so thoroughly discussed by so many that it’s almost pointless for me to do my customary line-by-line analysis. Bruce already did that himself during his VH-1 Storytellers appearance in 2005.

But we can’t properly appreciate “The Rising” without admiring the superb artistry with which it’s constructed, so let’s take a run at it anyway.

Part of the power of “The Rising” is its immediacy: the story begins in the literal heat of the moment, and Bruce’s vocal begins without any introduction or exposition.

Can’t see nothing in front of me
Can’t see nothing coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can’t feel nothing but this chain that binds me

On Storytellers, Bruce describes the opening verse as set in the netherworld, and the song certainly functions on that level: not quite ready to rise, unable to let go of the earthly realm until we get to bid a proper goodbye to it.

But it’s also set on Earth: our hero is in the tower, on the stairs, unable to see anything but darkness, unable to feel anything but the hose he clings to like a chain.

There’s even a third level: time. In his final moments, he knows not what lies ahead, and his past no longer matters, save for the unbreakable bond he feels to his wife.

“The Rising” somehow continues to operate on all three levels throughout the entire song.

Lost track of how far I’ve gone
How far I’ve gone, how high I’ve climbed
On my back’s a sixty pound stone
On my shoulder half mile of line

Climbing flight after flight of stairs through endless smoke carrying the tools of his trade; rising heaven-ward with the burden of his life and tether to his love; navigating an entire life only to reach this one, final moment.

Until this point, the backing track swirls around us disorientingly like smoke or a dream, but now as the chorus enters, the music clarifies, commands, and compels us forward:

Come on up for the rising
Come on up lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

Is this God inviting us to enter the afterlife? Is it our hero, saving one last soul in his final moments? Is it a plea for his love to hear his telepathic call and connect with him one last time?

The chorus of “The Rising” is all these things and more.

With our protagonist’s dilemma now clearly in view, we retrace his last day.

Left the house this morning
Bells ringing filled the air
I was wearing the cross of my calling
On wheels of fire I come rolling down here

Notable here (and throughout) is the continual stream of imagery and metaphor simultaneously secular and sacred: the fire alarms are also church bells; the cross is the symbol of both fireman and martyr; “wheels of fire” refers to both fire engine and heavenly throne.

A wordless “li li” refrain refuses to let us go; as Bruce explained on Storytellers, it exhorts us to stand and sing with him, to not abandon this man to die alone. Because as we enter the bridge, we are in his personal apocalypse, surrounded by helpless humans dying in fire all around him, their eyes reflecting the flames even as their bodies char.

There’s spirits above and behind me
Faces gone black, eyes burning bright
May their precious blood bind me
Lord as I stand before your fiery light

The flames have taken him now. We have arrived at The Rising itself, and our hero is granted one last vision of his wife and family, one final time-out-of-time moment of communion.

I see you Mary in the garden
In the garden of a thousand sighs
There’s holy pictures of our children
Dancing in a sky filled with light
May I feel your arms around me
May I feel your blood mix with mine
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancing on the end of my line 

And now we rise.

We rise, and we shed our earthly ties, casting off one by one the emotions, experiences, hardships and richness that make up a life.

Sky of blackness and sorrow 
Sky of love, sky of tears 
Sky of glory and sadness 
Sky of mercy, sky of fear 
Sky of memory and shadow 
Your burning wind fills my arms tonight 
Sky of longing and emptiness 
Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life

Finally, we reach the gates to the afterlife, where a final chorus both greets us and leaves us.

Come on up for the rising
Come on up lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

“The Rising” is both literally and figuratively one of Bruce’s darkest songs. It deals with loss, and death and dying in one of the most horrific ways imaginable.

And yet.

We cannot listen to “The Rising” without feeling something deeply rousing, exhilarating, and celebratory as well. Certainly, part of this is due to Bruce’s anthemic backing track, his tried-and-true trick of marrying a melody that belies his lyrics.

But it’s more than that. “The Rising” may have a backdrop of death, but it is at heart a story of duty, of purpose, and of fulfilling one’s calling. Our hero is acutely aware of his situation, but though he takes final stock of a life well-lived, he shows no regret or bitterness.

He has a job to do, and he does it one last time, saving who he can in an ultimate act of selflessness. And here we realize the fourth and final layer of meaning in this incredible song: Our hero rises to the moment.

And that is the secret of “The Rising,” the reason this song resonates so powerfully with listeners even if they don’t fully understand why: “The Rising” is about the deep satisfaction of doing what we know is right, no matter the cost. It’s about answering the call, meeting the moment, and the sureness of knowing that every moment we’ve lived was in service of this moment.

It’s why President Obama asked Bruce to perform “The Rising” at his first inauguration, in an arrangement that laid bare the gospel that had always been hidden beneath its rock veneer.

It’s why President-Elect Biden’s campaign commissioned a new video for “The Rising” during the 2020 presidential election campaign.

(To those who dismiss the 2020 video as a campaign ad: watch it again. If you can’t recognize how absolutely perfect this video is for Bruce’s song, really pay attention to the lyrics. Whoever created this video for “The Rising”–with its parade of ordinary acts of personal heroism–viscerally understands this song. It may be one of Bruce’s finest official videos ever.)

In the eighteen years since its release, “The Rising” has become one of Bruce’s most beloved songs, and one of his most frequently performed.

In fact, there are only eight songs in Bruce’s catalog that he has performed more times than “The Rising,” all of which are at least eighteen years older than it.

In fact, if we only consider Bruce’s 21st-century performances, “The Rising” sits at the very top of the list, unrivaled even by “Born to Run” for the honor of most-played–a fitting distinction for the song that announced Bruce’s relevance and vitality for decades to come.

Which makes selecting live performances to feature a task both easy and daunting–even narrowed to official releases, there’s an embarrassment of riches from which to choose. From Bruce’s contemporary Rising Tour performance in Barcelona…

…to the aforementioned Storytellers performance…

…Hyde Park in 2009…

…and of course, its anchor appearance in Springsteen on Broadway, where it communicated Bruce’s sense of duty and calling without any introductory narrative (the only song in the show for which that’s the case).

In all, Bruce has performed “The Rising” an astonishing 864 times to date, a number that will almost certainly be rendered out-of-date soon after publication.

It’s way too early to tell which of Bruce’s songs will still be sung by others long after the artist himself his sung his last, but “The Rising” will almost certainly be among them.

In craft, content, performance, and artistry, it stands incontrovertibly as one of Bruce Springsteen’s very best songs.

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Bonus: The 2020 official video for “The Rising” wasn’t the first video for the song (although it’s certainly the most viewed). Back in 2003, a video for “The Rising” aired once–and only once–on an Australian television show called Rage. As far as I know, it was never aired before or since, but it’s floated around collector’s circles and YouTube for years. It’s not a great video (which may be why it’s never been seen or even acknowledged since), but as a curiosity, it’s worth a watch.

The Rising
Recorded: February-March 2002
Released: The Rising (2002), The Essential Bruce Springsteen (2003), Chapter and Verse (2016)
First performed: July 25, 2002 (Asbury Park, NJ)
Last performed: September 3, 2023 (East Rutherford, NJ)

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