There was something in those stories of [Flannery O’Connor] that I felt captured a certain part of the American character that I was interested in writing about. They were a big, big revelation. She got to the heart of some part of meanness that she never spelled out, because if she spelled it out you wouldn’t be getting it. It was always at the core of every one of her stories–the way that she’d left that hole there, that hole that’s inside of everybody. –Bruce Springsteen to Will Percy, DoubleTake, Spring 1998
It’s easy to overlook a song like “A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh).”
It’s quiet, contemplative, and on first listen what stands out the most are the familiar Springsteenian tropes: the Michigan line, the meanness in this world, not waiting for Romeos or Casanovas. Heck, even Brian Hiatt forgot to include it in his The Stories Behind the Songs.
But “A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh)”–let’s just call it “Good Man” for readability–is a song that rewards a close listen. To borrow a phrase Bruce frequently employed to describe Western Stars, “Good Man” is a jewel box of a song.
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” takes its title from Flannery O’Connor’s short story of the same name, a tale of meanness if ever there was one. While the phrase “meanness in this world” doesn’t actually appear in the story, the Misfit antagonist memorably declares meanness to be life’s sole pleasure.
That statement likely crystalized O’Connor’s frequent theme in Bruce’s mind, and that notion–that there’s a meanness in this world that bores a hole in everyone like the Misfit does with the grandmother (apologies if that’s a spoiler)–wends its way throughout Bruce’s songwriting writing during the Nebraska period from which “Good Man” hails.
Bruce’s songs from that period typically focus on the tormented souls who wield that meanness (see “Nebraska” and “State Trooper“), but in “Good Man” he has us consider the ones on the receiving end, in this case the widow of a soldier felled in Vietnam.
But “Good Man” stands out for more than its unusual point-of-view character. For one thing, it’s performed in a gentle full-band arrangement (including, curiously, an uncredited player on the bongos–perhaps Clarence, who is otherwise unrepresented on this track), a rarity for Nebraska-esque subject matter. For another, it features a lovely vocal from Bruce, with some atypical trills and flourishes.
But most impressively, “Good Man” features some of Bruce’s subtlest, most artful, and most economical songwriting. The first verse alone is a marvel:
It’s cloudy out in Pittsburgh, it’s raining in Saigon
Snow’s fallin’ all across the Michigan line
Well she sits by the lights of her Christmas tree
With the radio softly on
Thinkin’ how a good man is so hard to find
Bruce never tells us directly that the unnamed widow is mourning a fallen soldier, but by the time we reach the song’s midpoint it’s crystal clear. With the benefit of that hindsight, let’s take note of the patient artistry with which Bruce parcels out his information.
In the very first line, Bruce establishes by implication that our heroine is a world away from her fallen love: she’s in Pittsburgh, he’s in Saigon. It’s cloudy in Pittsburgh, symbolizing the drear that now defines her life. By pairing that statement with the Saigon weather report, Bruce simultaneously 1) establishes the time period and background context for the song, 2) telegraphs that the soldier’s fate is worse than his widow’s, and 3) tells us that the widow is so deeply consumed by the fate of her love that she’s aware of the weather where his body likely resides.
That’s a heck of a lot of information to convey in a single line.
By the end of the first verse, we also know that it’s the Christmas season, a time of year when loved ones typically reunite, adding even more poignancy to the scene. The radio is on–but softly, because she’s not actively listening. The radio is simply background noise. That’s a small but symbolic detail that foreshadows where the song is headed.
Bruce ends the first verse with the introduction of the song’s title that also serves as its only semblance of a chorus.
“A good man is hard to find” may carry a double meaning: Bruce never outright tells us that the soldier is dead. It’s possible (likely, even) that he’s missing in action, which would underscore her fixation on the weather in Saigon and her inability to move on. In this case, the title works literally–she may be waiting in the vain hope that he will someday be found. But more likely, the title is figurative, and either way there’s a hole in her heart.
Well once she had a fella
Once she was somebody’s girl
And she gave all she had that one last time
Now there’s a little girl asleep in the back room
She’s gonna have to tell about the meanness in this world
And how a good man is so hard to find
The opening lines of the second verse that evoke another Springsteen trope: the “I had a job/I had a girl” construction that Bruce sometimes employs to set the scene. He uses this construction here but focuses both halves on the relationship, establishing just how central it was to his character.
“She gave all she had that one last time.” That line serves two purposes: first it conveys her enduring emotional commitment–he’s the one for her, and there won’t be another. Second, it implies a final act of lovemaking before his deployment, and by immediately introducing the little girl asleep in the backroom, Bruce hints that the soldier may never even have met his daughter–the little girl robbed of her father by a cruel world.
Again, just stunningly delicate yet devastating storytelling.
Well there’s pictures on the table by her bed
Him in his dress greens and her in her wedding white
She remembers how the world was the day he left
And now how that world is dead
And a good man is so hard to find
In the third verse, Bruce cements what we already suspect: the dress greens confirm the soldier’s active status even as the follow-up line suggests he was deployed shortly (if not immediately) after. And declaring that world to be dead may not be as definitive as declaring the soldier himself to be, but the point of the song is not the death of the soldier’s physical life but of his widow’s emotional life.
For the past two verses, we’ve been dwelling in the past. Now, Bruce brings us back to the present. Our point-of-view character is resigned but pragmatic:
She ain’t got no time now for Casanovas
Yeah those days are gone
She don’t want that anymore, she’s made up her mind
Just somebody to hold her as the night gets on
When a good man is so hard to find
The first line of that verse recalls Bruce’s earlier song “Point Blank,” which also features a disillusioned character. Our focal character harbors no illusions of ever finding another love who can measure up to her lost one. And it wouldn’t matter anyway–she doesn’t want to risk that kind of loss again. Companionship is enough for her now. As with the radio earlier in the song, she’s just looking for someone to fill the emptiness.
The last verse is as depressing as any final verse Bruce has ever written. Our hero climbs into bed at the end of a meaningless day, with only another empty one to look forward to. Why bother dreaming when she now understands how easily dreams can be swept away?
Well she shuts off the TV without a word
And into bed she climbs
Well she thinks how it was all so wasted
And how expendable their dreams all were
When a good man was so hard to find
Well, it’s cloudy out in Pittsburgh…
Bruce ends the song the way he began it, one last storytelling flourish that tells us that his character is trapped in an endless cycle, unable or unwilling to move forward.
“Good Man” is a quiet song, and despite its full-band studio arrangement, it’s a difficult song to translate to an arena–which is probably why Bruce has performed it only twice ever, both times acoustically.
The first was in memory of a fallen local police officer during his 2005 solo show in St. Paul.
Bruce’s second and last performance to date was probably inspired more by its location than by current events. At his 2010 appearance in Pittsburgh with Joe Grushecky to celebrate the 15th anniversary of American Babylon, Bruce opened the show with three acoustic songs, the first of which was “A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh).”
Both performances were serviceable, but neither captured the poignancy of the studio track–that’s a difficult trick to pull off with a festive crowd.
It isn’t hard to find a great performance of “Good Man”; we just have to look to the studio rather than the stage.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh)
Recorded: May 5-6, 1982
Released: Tracks (1998)
First performed: May 10, 2005 (St. Paul, MN)
Last performed: November 4, 2010 (Pittsburgh, PA)
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It’s like a haiku..as you say: so much in one line; 1st verse……gives pause this one..txs
The radio on low volume, doesn’t it suggest that she’s picked up the Saigon weather report there? Despite the volume being turned down and instead of going over there etc? It kind of underscores her hypersensual focus within her presence in that room, and her numbness towards all other matters, doesn’t it? At the same time as it connects her and divides her even stronger in relation to what’s outside and in contrast to that presence: the daughter next door (a reason for keeping the volume down), the overpowering but sordinating weather outside (for which the house and the ”good man” is her now bereaved shelter, and the silence of which still allows her to register the radio report), her fallen husband far away in a similarly unforgiving but more deafening weather, the holiday’s spirit of bringing families together and playing loud carols and making noises etc.).
It’s a kind of irresistible strike at the heart of all meaning. And will also be a perpetual reminder of what’s been lost.