Even for a songwriter notorious for swapping and recycling parts between songs, “Candy’s Room” has a seriously gnarly evolutionary history.
We traced one branch of its DNA in my recent entry on “Candy’s Boy” (which itself shares DNA with “Drive All Night,” “Frankie,” and “Prove It All Night“).
Before we can tackle “Candy’s Room” properly, though, we have to visit its other parent song, and for that, we have to go all the way back to “Backstreets.” Not the album track, however. The story of Candy’s other parent begins on February 22, 1977 at Bruce’s show at the Milwaukee Auditorium.
By that time, “Backstreets” had grown into a late-set showstopper, with an ever-changing spoken-word interlude so impassioned that it would be easy to believe it was improvised or composed on the spot.
Perhaps parts of it were, but we also know through the benefit of hindsight, history, and bootlegs that Bruce was also trying and testing snippets of lyrics he’d been working on. “Drive All Night” had its genesis in “Backstreets,” for example.
On the night of February 22, however, Bruce was particularly–almost frighteningly–in the zone during “Backstreets,” and for the first time he included a lyric that would ultimately lead to “Candy’s Room,” even though the line itself never made it to the finished song. If you’re pressed for time, just skip to the nine-minute mark below and listen.
That final, memorable segment of the interlude begins with “I was just standing there waiting and wishing that God would send some angels to blow this whole town into the sea.”
Whether he came up with it on the spot or had been toying with it for a while, that line shortly appeared in the opening verse of a new song Bruce had been working on.
Not just a new song, mind you, but a fast song.
The instrumental track (featuring just piano, drums, and bass) above is the earliest appearance of the music that would someday serve as the backing track for “Candy’s Room,” but Bruce’s lyrics were nowhere near as far along (which may be why Bruce stuck with “The Fast Song” as a title for so long).
What’s clear, though, is that even if Bruce hadn’t yet hit upon the idea of transplanting his “Candy’s Boy” lyrics, “The Fast Song” had always been intended as semi-spoken word. In fact, Max Weinberg recalls basing his memorable hi-hat introduction on a Barry White song (most likely “Never Never Gonna Give You Up”), so much did Bruce’s early “Fast Song” vocals remind him of the famous R&B singer.
By early June, Bruce had lyrics for “The Fast Song” that were polished enough to start recording, and in this next track we can hear how Bruce’s “God’s Angels” (as the song is sometimes known) line developed into a full song.
This version of “The Fast Song” springs to vibrant life from the get-go thanks to the presence of the full E Street Band. Danny Federici’s glockenspiel brings the nameless love interest to life, the only brightness in this otherwise dark song. Bruce’s screaming guitar solo is clearly meant as an homage to The Yardbirds’ “Heart Full of Soul,” which Bruce recalls “playing the hell out of many a night” in his early days.
Musically, “The Fast Song” is a tour de force, somehow sounding both punk and classic at the same time. Lyrically, though, Bruce was still searching.
We can hear the desperation at the heart of “Candy’s Room” in this early iteration, but Bruce’s narrator is too obsessed with his own self-torture for the song to work. We don’t even know there’s a romantic interest until the second verse, and we don’t learn a thing about her until the third.
The night rushes into the door
Kids running across the floor, hmm
I wish God’s angels would tear this town down and blow it into the sea
Man that’s alright with me, I don’t care anymore
She, she who is everything
And the fear tonight she brings, she’s got everything
And I got caught wasting my life so bad
Just looking for the facts
Sometimes I feel like I’m walking dazed
The blood rushing in my veins, I can hear it flow
She lives in a world of dreams-come-true
But she don’t know like I do, not like I do
I was nothing over and over again
Counting the nights roll in without her
She needs her clothes and diamond rings
She got men who bring her anything she wants, but they don’t see
That what she wants is me
Oh and I want her so, I’ll never let her go
Me, walking into the room, I count the nights ???
Without her, without her, without her
That fourth verse, though… now, we’re cooking. Other than the “blood rushing” line in the second verse, the final verse is the only original lyric from “The Fast Song” to remain relatively intact and land safely on the final track.
But that’s a thread we’ll pick up another day, when we (finally!) bring the pieces together and take a deep listen to “Candy’s Room.”
Bonus: The early take of “The Fast Song” is too muddy to listen to more than once, but it’s worth that lone listen just to admire Bruce’s guitar solo that wouldn’t make it to the final version.
The Fast Song
Recorded: June-September, 1977
Never released
Never performed
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