It was one of the songs Bruce played when he auditioned for Mike Appel.
It was one of the songs Bruce demoed with John Hammond the day after Appel introduced them.
Bruce recorded a solo acoustic version for Greetings for Asbury Park, N.J. (although it was obviously cut from the final album)…
…and he worked up a powerful, psychedelic full-band arrangement of it for The Bruce Springsteen Band in early 1972.
Obviously, “Cowboys of the Sea” is an Important Song, so when the dice turned this one up, I made sure to give each and every version a deep listen.
I gave Bruce’s lyrics extra-close inspection, and I mused and reflected on what themes, symbolism, and metaphor might be at work.
And after much consideration, I arrived at the conclusion that “Cowboys of the Sea” is about… undersea cowboys.
Seriously.
I mean, come on: we’re talking about a 21-year-old songwriter who grew up fascinated with westerns and now lived in a beach town. Undersea cowboys is high concept, folks!
Yes, there’s a concluding verse that touches on environmental and possibly class-conflict themes, but it arrives too late for me to consider it anything but an afterthought. This song is all about the undersea cowboys.
Well, they ride beneath the waves at twenty-thousand leagues
On stallions stitched to seaweed strands, so smiling, so smiling
They herd the fishes of the deep, they ride for you and me
They ranch the rich and the sunken soil at the bottom of the sea
And in the dead of night, alive in sleep I hear them calling me
Them deep sea desperadoes, them midnight maelstrom freaks, the cowboys of the sea
So on wings of sleep I pierce the deep and ride like a hurricane
In midnight still I paid my bill, I turned my back on the land
With the help of Old Paint, that seaweed nag, it’s just Jesse James and me
We ride the depths and we rob the banks with the cowboys of the sea
With a seaman’s grip on navigation and some fired, hired hands
Whoa, we set forth to confront the nation and lend a cowboy’s hand
We do the dolphin’s dance duet, my mermaid babe and me
Then I ride off into the blue sunset at the bottom of the sea
Whoa, and with the seaman’s grip on submarining and some aqualung outlaws
Our guns are made of solid dreaming and bullets of the cause
Whoa, and with hand held high to touch the sky a good Texas Ranger I’ll be
But sometimes I feel like a lone stranger ‘midst the cowboys of the sea
Oh, and man above he just can’t make love, he’s gotta rape his mother the sea
Because of his greed we’re a vanishing breed, we cowboys of the sea
With the cowboys of the sea
It’s easy to understand why Bruce was so taken with his song; it’s equally easy to understand why those around him did their best to distract him from it. The concept is clever, but the lyrics are clunky. (There a few neat internal rhymes, a device to which Bruce was quickly warming, but nothing as noteworthy or as artful as those he’d write shortly after.)
The song is stronger musically, but if the acoustic arrangement sounds familiar, that’s because it’s a prototype for what would eventually make the album as “Lost in the Flood.”
The full-band version is more noteworthy. It’s one of those Steel Mill holdover arrangements that feels ill-suited for The Bruce Springsteen Band (Sancious gets a workout, but not a challenge), and the unrivaled highlight of the track is Bruce’s’ blisteringly, jaw-droppingly fast mid-song guitar solo. It’s an instructive example for those who wonder how Bruce had earned his reputation as the fastest guitar-slinger on the Jersey Shore.
In the end, “Cowboys of the Sea” is little more than a footnote in Bruce’s recording history, but it’s a clever asterisk for a young songwriter honing his craft with what would prove to be a couple of his favorite themes.
Cowboys of the Sea
Recorded: April – July 1972
Never released
First performed: February 4, 1972 (Richmond, VA)
Last performed: February 25, 1972 (Richmond, VA)
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