Roll of the Dice: America Under Fire

What must it be like to return home to your country after years in service abroad, only to find your country-men and -women unrecognizable?

To find them meaner, madder, and so far removed from norms and reason that you feel completely estranged from them?

You’d probably feel bewildered. Betrayed. Bereft.

You’d probably feel a lot like the narrator of “America Under Fire,” written and performed by 20-year-old Bruce Springsteen with Steel Mill at the height of the Vietnam War.

With only three known performances (only one of which was recorded and circulates), “America Under Fire” is one of the rarer and more elusive early Springsteen originals. It exhibits the extraordinary degree of empathy young Bruce (who had never served) had already developed–empathy his narrator is in desperate search of.

Bruce’s returning soldier is a stranger in a strange land, trying to reconcile how so little and yet so much could have changed while he was gone.

America’s societal ills are worse then when he left, and for all his sacrifices overseas, his fellow citizens seem unaware and unappreciative, ignorant of both the cost and fragility of the freedoms they enjoy. They know things are moving in the wrong direction, but they’re unable or unwilling to acknowledge why.

It must be someone’s fault, though.

Conquered freak soldiers return from the war
And the stares of their countrymen look just as they did before
And the women whom they love have all turned into whores
And the band still can’t play any better than before

And I’m tired and I think I will remain
For America’s under fire, the sky’s turning grey

They step off the train and wonder who’s to blame
For all this madness and sorrow
The streets are filled with blind men, all viciously insane
You stand there and they hand you a cup and a cane

And I’m tired and I think I will remain
For America’s under fire, and the sky’s turning grey

And the bombs they go boom like a big red balloon in the evening sky
And the rockets they burst and shatter the earth, making the little girls cry
And the bells they are ringing and the children are singing, oh, but they don’t
know why
And the airplanes are strafing and the people are laughing
They know not what it is to cry

Mother and daddy, give them a kiss and shake his hand
Congratulations my son on becoming a man
And the generals can’t see the reason
There’s such a high percentage of treason
They’re quite sure that it must just be the season

And I’m tired and I think I will remain
For America’s under fire, and the sky’s turning grey

The band changes up the melody to a circus tune during the bridge, and the meaning couldn’t be more obvious. But just in case, Bruce appends an outro that blends the end of “America the Beautiful” with the theme song from “The Mickey Mouse Club.” (Bruce might have had a fully developed sense of empathy at age 20, but he still had room to grow when it came to subtlety.)

“America Under Fire” isn’t just anti-war; it’s a protest against a homeland gone astray from its values and ignorant of the consequences. The title carries a double meaning: America is under fire from within and without.

It’s not Bruce’s strongest song, even for the era, but it presages some of his best songs from later eras, like “Born in the U.S.A.”

And it feels appropriate after a day when the sky turned very, very grey.

I’m tired. But I think I will remain.

America Under Fire
Never recorded
Never released
First performed: January 13, 1970 (San Francisco, CA)
Last performed: April 18, 1970 (Toms River, NJ)

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