Roll of the Dice: Ain’t Got You

Billy Boy Arnold isn’t anywhere near as famous as his friend Elias McDaniel (who received his “Bo Diddley” stage name from Arnold in 1951 while they were busking on the street together), but the elder Chicago blues statesman and harp hero is certainly known to Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce clearly took a shine to Arnold’s 1955 hit, “I Ain’t Got You.”

Turning the blues formula on its head, “I Ain’t Got You” (first recorded and probably written by Jimmy Reed, but Arnold’s version was released first) is a seriocomic tale of the limits of commercial success. The song’s narrator has everything he could ever have asked for or dreamed of, but as The Beatles would later observe: money can’t buy you love.

A decade after Arnold and Reed released their versions, “I Ain’t Got You” was covered by both The Animals (who for some reason felt compelled to correct the grammar)…

…and The Yardbirds, featuring Eric Clapton.

Given Bruce’s fondness for both bands, it’s likely he first became aware of “I Ain’t Got You” through those cover recordings, which debuted within weeks of each other during the summer The Castiles played their very first shows.

But at some point Bruce traced the song to its original artist, because there are homages all over “Ain’t Got You,” the leadoff track to Bruce’s 1987 Tunnel of Love album.

Besides the obvious name similarity, the two songs also have the same lyrical theme (although Bruce updates and exaggerates the narrator’s Midas-like success) and share a very similar bridge melody.

But if that’s not enough to convince you of the intentional H/T, note the prominence of Arnold’s signature harmonica in the arrangement and the Bo Diddley beat to which Bruce sets the song. (Arnold’s story is inextricably linked with Diddley’s.)

But this isn’t a Cover Me entry, it’s a Roll of the Dice. “Ain’t Got You” may owe a lot to its blues progenitor, but it bears Bruce’s signature as well.

There’s a rueful irony at play in “Ain’t Got You,” although his fans didn’t know it at the time. Recorded in early 1987, it sure seemed like Bruce did have the girl. He’d been married for over a year, in fact. But by the time the album was released at the end of the year, rumors had surfaced of trouble in paradise, and critics wondered if “Ain’t Got You” hinted at a growing distance between Bruce and Julianne.

It did, of course, but only obliquely. With the benefit of time and hindsight (and the knowledge that Bruce and Patti were probably several months into their affair by the time Bruce recorded the song), it’s likely that “Ain’t Got You” is addressed to Bruce’s second wife, not his first.

I got the fortunes of heaven in diamonds and gold
I got all the bonds baby that the bank could hold
Well I got houses ‘cross the country honey end to end
And everybody buddy wants to be my friend
Well I got all the riches baby any man ever knew
But the only thing I ain’t got honey I ain’t got you

I got a house full of Rembrandt and priceless art
And all the little girls they wanna tear me apart
When I walk down the street people stop and stare
Well you’d think I might be thrilled but baby I don’t care
‘Cause I got more good luck honey than old King Farouk
But the only thing I ain’t got baby I ain’t got you

Bruce so distracts with his boasts of exaggerated riches (even in these immediately post-Born in the U.S.A. years Bruce wasn’t buying a string of houses or bedecking himself in bling) and unexaggerated fame that it’s easy to miss or dismiss his narrator’s longing. But the bridge should make it clear:

I got a big diamond watch sitting on my wrist
I try to tempt you baby but you just resist
I made a deal with the devil babe I won’t deny
Until I got you in my arms I can’t be satisfied

Let’s linger on that “deal with the devil” line a moment, because it may be the most significant line in the song. Superficially, it suggests that the narrator chose a life of fame at the cost of true love, and the song works just fine that way. But while Bruce would never then or now characterize his first wife as a devil, it’s easy to understand how someone who discovered their soulmate only after marrying someone else might view his marriage as an irrevocable and regrettable deal (especially someone as steeped in a Catholic upbringing as Bruce).

Bruce drives it home in the second half of the final verse, in lyrics as autobiographical as anything he’s ever written:

I got a pound of caviar sitting home on ice
I got a fancy foreign car that rides like paradise
I got a hundred pretty women knocking down my door
And folks wanna kiss me I ain’t even seen before
I been around the world and all across the seven seas
Been paid a king’s ransom for doing what comes naturally
But I’m still the biggest fool honey this world ever knew
‘Cause the only thing I ain’t got baby I ain’t got you

I’m still the biggest fool, honey. Those sound very much like the words of a man who thought he knew what love is before learning too late.

Even though it was the first new studio track from Bruce Springsteen since the mammoth success of Born in the U.S.A., it was easy to dismiss “Ain’t Got You” on first listen. Spare and tight (barely topping two minutes), it sounds more like an album closer than an opener. That’s very likely a contributing factor to its album placement: it allowed Bruce to immediately subvert his fans’ expectations and establish a very different kind of album than the one preceding.

“Ain’t Got You” is more significant than that, however. It introduces one of Bruce’s most thematic albums like an overture (which is ironic given its a capella first verse). In fact, had Bruce not recorded “Tunnel of Love” at the last minute, “Ain’t Got You” would have made a fine title track on its own, as every track on the album features characters unable to fully connect.

“Ain’t Got You” signaled a turn in Bruce’s songwriting toward more personal and introspective themes–a turn that Bruce would only steer into in years to come (despite well-intentioned protestations from his lifelong best friend, Steve Van Zandt, who considers the song to be the inciting incident in one of their only three fights ever).

During the 1988 Tunnel of Love Express Tour, Bruce leaned hard into the Bo Diddley beat, arranging “I Ain’t Got You” as a simmering medley seamlessly melded with (what else) “She’s the One.”

As powerful a pairing as that was, Bruce lopped off “Ain’t Got You” from the medley by the summer, replacing it with a true Bo Diddley song, “Who Do You Love?”

“Ain’t Got You” wasn’t seen again until 2005, when Bruce resurrected it for his solo acoustic tour, winkingly recasting it as an outlet for his otherwise humble public demeanor. (Catch the subtle lyric change in the last verse–it’s an improvement.)

It’s been sixteen years since we last heard from “Ain’t Got You” in a Springsteen set list, but Billy Boy Arnold is still alive and kicking–and as recently as 2019 was still performing his original hit, “I Ain’t Got You.”

Ain’t Got You
Recorded: January – April 1987
Released: Tunnel of Love (1987)
First performed: March 26, 1988 (Lexington, KY)
Last performed: November 19, 2005 (Hollywood, FL)

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