Roll of the Dice: The Window

Let’s take another dip into Bruce Springsteen’s “1968 Notebook,” a treasure trove of early compositions revealed for public viewing when it went up for auction in 2006.

While many of those prehistoric songs were incomplete and some were just wisps, today’s entry is a fully-formed but lost-to-history song (complete with chord notations) that Bruce is believed to have performed during a string of solo shows at the Off Broad Street Coffee House in Red Bank in the spring of 1968.

“The Window” was among the first four entries that Bruce transcribed in his notebook when he broke it in on April 26, 1968.

Because he entered all four on the same day, it’s very likely that all four had been written previously, which would explain their relative polish.

Like much of Bruce’s material at the time, “The Window” reveals a preoccupation with the Vietnam War, civil rights, and poverty, unsurprising themes given that the songwriter was at the tender age of eighteen in a year where all three social ills came to a head.

The titular window is a metaphor, representing the personal lens through which we see and interpret the world. Throughout the song, the narrator fights to preserve his window of truth while he is beset by politicians who tell him to trust their windows rather than his own.

Through a series of vignettes, Bruce rejects the petty pundits, redirecting the conversation to the evils of war, lynching, homelessness and hunger. He’ll only engage with those who bring empathy, love, and truth to the table, but as the song progresses, our narrator’s resolve begins to waver as he realizes that his faith won’t help him make sense of the world. He’s left to his own devices.

The sea is pounding at my window
Wants to baptize my mind
There’s a thousand politicians at my back door
Blinding me with their lies

Don’t tell me your problems my friend
I’ve heard them time and time and time and time again
Get on your plastic words and fly
If you don’t have the truth friend, then I don’t have the time

The earth is trembling beneath me
And I don’t know what’s to come
The foreign soldier fires his weapon
And a tear runs down the lonely ???

Don’t tell me your problems my friend
I’ve heard them time and time and time and time again
Get on your plastic words and fly
If you don’t have a heart friend, then I don’t have the time

I’ve traveled through the seasons so many times
The saddest sight that I could see
Was the youngest brother being hung
‘Neath the weeping willow tree

I’ve sat ‘neath that weeping willow tree
Trying to decide wrong from right
The ancient scriptures that lay beside me
Vanished with God into the night

The sea is pounding at my window
Should I let it in
There’s a hungry tramp at my back door
Can I turn my eyes from him

Don’t tell me your problems my friend
I’ve heard them time and time and time and time again
Get on your plastic words and fly
If you don’t have any love friend, then I don’t have the time

These are not Bruce’s strongest lyrics (“get on your plastic words and fly” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue), but remember: he was only eighteen at the time. He was already beginning to experiment with metaphor, and his liberal use of religious vocabulary and iconography was firmly established. This may be a very  early Bruce Springsteen song, but it does indeed read like a Bruce Springsteen song.

No recording exists of “The Window” (that I know of, at least), but if Bruce truly did perform it on stage that year, perhaps there’s someone out there who recalls hearing it (or even captured it on tape–as unlikely as that would be, there are even earlier recordings in circulation). If not, this is likely as close as we’ll come to hearing one of Bruce’s earliest original songs.

The Window
Never recorded
Never released
First performed: Unknown (but believed to be May 1968, Red Bank, NJ)
Last performed: Unknown (but believed to be May 1968, Red Bank, NJ)

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