I was sitting on that title for years and years. I actually had a book called Only Lovers Left Alive when I was in high school, because I read that the Rolling Stones had licensed that book to make a movie. This is early, like when the Stones first hit. I had the book for years and years. It probably just fell apart, it was a little paperback, and I always liked the title of it: Only Lovers Left Alive. So I fashioned a story.
— Joe Grushecky, July 2020
It’s a hell of a story.
Joe Grushecky’s milestone American Babylon album ends on a dark and dire note. Told from the point of view of a boy abandoned by his father, “Only Lovers Left Alive” is the gritty mirror image of Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart.” If you’ve ever wondered what it must have felt like to be the ones at home when Bruce’s character went out for a ride and never came back, look no further.
The absent father in “Only Lovers Left Alive” is laden with rock and roll imagery from his tattoo to his shoes, as if to caution the price that life on the road can exact. It doesn’t require a leap of imagination to picture the father as a musician, and his bike as a tour bus.
The father never returns, and looking for a place to belong, the son takes up with the tough crowd, skipping school, acting cool, and probably playing pool, too. While I’m sure the lyrical similarities to “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” are coincidental, they’re also satisfyingly and fittingly ironic. Like much of American Babylon, “Only Lovers Left Alive” is as grounded in realism as Bruce’s early work is rooted in romanticism.
The song ends on an unresolved note; we never do find out whether the son takes after his father. “Only Lovers Left Alive” lingers long after its last notes close out American Babylon, a fitting way to end an album that questions what happens when we lose our ability to tell right from wrong.
Joe and Bruce have never performed “Only Lovers Left Alive” in concert, but Bruce’s guitar can be heard on the studio track. Intriguingly, Joe told me in our American Babylon conversation last year that an alternate but unreleased version exists with a long guitar solo by Bruce. If we’re lucky, maybe that will see the light of day someday…
Update 10/29/21: That track has seen the light of day! Take a listen to this terrific demo (that term hardly seems to do it justice) of “Only Lovers Left Alive” with a terrific Springsteen guitar solo, from the brand-new 25th anniversary edition of American Babylon.
Only Lovers Left Alive
Recorded: July 1994
Released: American Babylon (1995)
Never performed
