Roll of the Dice: Rendezvous

If there was at all a benefit to the long period between Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town when Bruce was legally barred from recording new material, it’s that it gave him a chance to road test some new material before taking it into the studio.

“Rendezvous,” for instance–Bruce recorded it in the autumn of 1977, but he debuted it in concert more than a year before that. The song benefited from its 45 live performances before Bruce and the band committed it to tape.

What’s particularly intriguing about “Rendezvous,” though, is that Bruce continued tweaking it even after recording it.

From its very first outing, “Rendezvous” sounds like it was written to be performed live.

With Max Weinberg’s pounding intro, Danny Federici’s glockenspiel (for my money, the hallmark of the E Street Band sound even more than Clarence’s sax), a killer hook, and soaring vocals that you can’t help but sing along with, “Rendezvous” is as perfect a pop song as Bruce has ever written, almost certainly destined for hit single status.

So of course he couldn’t release it.

By the time Bruce was allowed back in the studio, his songwriting had taken a darker turn, and his next album would reflect more mature and somber themes. Trifles like “Rendezvous” were relegated to the vault; the E Street studio recording wouldn’t be released for more than three decades after it was recorded, on Bruce’s 2010 pop-album-that-might-have been-but-never-was, The Promise.

Astute listeners with the patience to listen to dozens of bootlegs know that Bruce tinkered with the lyrics to “Rendezvous” over a two-and-a-half-year period before he shelved the song.

Curiously, though, the studio version features its own unique lyrics–it seems Bruce worked on “Rendezvous” during the touring break in which he recorded it, but when he brought it back on the Darkness Tour, he reverted to the original lyrics. That makes the studio version a lyrical curiosity, and it’s the weaker for it:

I had a dream our love would last forever
I had a dream last night, she had a dream too
She’ll be there tonight
If I’m down then she’ll make me feel right
Ooh, rendezvous

Bruce’s studio lyrics inexplicably break the song’s second-person connection that makes it so powerful in concert. (Pop songs are stronger when sung to the object of one’s affection rather than about them.)

Both before and after recording “Rendezvous” in the studio, Bruce began the song with:

I had a dream our love would last forever
I had a dream, tonight my dream comes true
And if you’ll hold me tight
We’ll be riders, girl, on the night
Ooh, I want a rendezvous

…a much stronger verse.

Bruce goes third-person in the third verse, too:

Because I had a dream our love would last forever
I had a dream, tonight she had a dream too
So come on hold me tight
We’ll be riders, girl, on the night
Ooohh, rendezvous

On stage, Bruce sang “I had a dream, tonight my dream comes true.” Why Bruce felt compelled to make these changes is a mystery we’ll likely never have an answer for.

Those aren’t the only lyrical tweaks Bruce made. If you listened carefully to the debut performance above, you probably noticed a different bridge as well:

I got a feeling that we’ll be forever
Because I know that we should be together

Before long, Bruce would re-write it as:

You deserve so much more than this, girl
Well, I’m riding on the power and living on the promise in your last kiss

By the end of the Darkness Tour, “Rendezvous” had lyrically gelled, but I’d wager most fans hadn’t even noticed its evolution. To analyze the lyrics to “Rendezvous” is to miss the point of the song–the only lyrics that really matter are those soaring “ooohs” and “rendezvous” (which must rank among the top ten most fun words to sing).

Because it enjoyed so many outings between 1976 and 1978, “Rendezvous” was bound to escape into the wild on concert bootlegs, and the song quickly became an enduring fan favorite despite its disappearance for almost two decades following the River Tour.

When Bruce released his four-disc career compendium of outtakes in 1998, it was a given that “Rendezvous” belonged on Tracks. However, Bruce chose not to release the studio version, opting instead for its final (at the time, at least) live performance from Uniondale on New Years Eve, 1980.

To my knowledge, Bruce has never commented on why he chose the live version over the studio version, but it was clearly the right choice. I’d like to think he recognized that the studio version had inferior lyrics, but even if he didn’t–the 1980 performance is bright, tight, and just uptempo enough to elevate “Rendezvous” to a true rocker.

Once it was officially released (twice–it made the cut for 18 Tracks as well), “Rendezvous” was one of the first and most frequently performed Tracks  tracks on the Reunion Tour. Bruce performed “Rendezvous” with the E Street Band almost two dozen times in 1999 and 2000, right up to the very last stand of the tour.

It’s made cameo appearances in every E Street Band tour since, right up through the very last one.

I don’t expect Bruce to break that streak. As oxymoronic as it sounds, “Rendezvous” is a dependable rarity bound to appear once more when the E Street Band takes to the road again.

Bonus #1: Long before Bruce released his studio version of “Rendezvous,” a studio outtake recorded a few months earlier managed to escape as a bootleg. That outtake was one of the very first songs recorded during the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions (it may, in fact, hail from the very first day), and you can hear it below. Despite some early audio dropouts, it’s a great recording in a much more guitar-driven arrangement than we’re used to hearing.

Bonus #2: Bruce knew “Rendezvous” wasn’t going to find a home on one of his albums, but he seemed determined to find some adoptive parents for it. Bruce first donated the song to Greg Kihn, who released his cover in 1979, followed by Gary U.S. Bonds, who covered it on his On the Line album in 1982.

But he also tried giving “Rendezvous” to The Knack in 1978, offering the band a choice between that song and “Don’t Look Back.” They chose the latter, so we never got to hear what The Knack might have done with “Rendezvous.” However: someone actually recorded Bruce teaching The Knack how to play “Rendezvous” before the band ultimately decided to pass on it, and that recording escaped as well. It’s a fun listen and a glimpse at what an acoustic arrangement of “Rendezvous” might have sounded like.

Rendezvous
Recorded: September 29, 1977
Released: The Promise (2010)
First performed: August 1, 1976 (Red Bank, NJ)
Last performed: November 16, 2019 (Asbury Park, NJ)

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