Bruce Springsteen: Guitar Hero.
If anybody ever laughs when you say those words, make them listen to “The Wind and The Rain” and collect your apology.
As you can tell from the recording, “The Wind and The Rain” dates back a ways–more than a half-century. That performance was from Steel Mill’s Monmouth College gig on April 24, 1970, and the lyrics date back farther still.
Remember that 1968 Notebook we’ve taken several dips into over the past four years? Well, tucked into the final pages of it were these early lyrics.
There’s another set of early lyrics in existence for “The Wind and The Rain,” too:
A careful read of either version will reveal lyrics that never made it to the stage:
Clouded sky it’s been that way since you’ve been gone
I’ve served my punishment for doing you wrong
So why does the feeling keep hanging on
The wind + rain is my only song
Countless days now my skin has wrinkled up
Yet I haven’t had enough
The years have made me far too tough
For the wind + rain is all I love
But honestly, for all that workshopping, the final verses aren’t much to write home about either. “The Wind and The Rain” is an intensely bitter post-breakup song with a central storm metaphor that didn’t really require a lot of imagination to craft a song around. (Lifting the song title from Shakespeare, however, required a little bit of chutzpah.)
The wind and rain slashing at my window pane
Lightning’s flashing, looks like the sky’s gone insane
And it seems like you have lied again
And now I’m left with the wind and rain
Oh shattered truth, jagged memories of you
You know it’s hard, them dreams that just can’t come true
How long has it been since I’ve known you
Now the wind and the rain is my only truth
Summertime, summertime, that was when you were mine
And now that’s left so far behind
Can’t you see what you’ve done to my mind
Now the wind and the rain’s forever mine
Then time shorn it up
The years have made me far too tough
You know where I start and I go, I got drowned
Now the wind and the rain is my only love
Wintertime
Memories of when you were mine
Let ’em shine
Golden moments lost in time
Now I hear the grandfather chime
Wind and rain’s forever mine
Now the wind and the rain slashing at my window pane
Seems like you have lied again
By now I guess that it’s just the same
And I am left with the wind and the rain
Hasn’t time shown you enough
The years have made me far too tough
But you know where I stood when the going got rough
The wind and rain is my only love
As is often the case with Bruce’s Steel Mill material, the lyrics are just a coatrack on which to hang an epic instrumental jam or three. And my oh my, these are epic jams.
From the four-minute intro to the nine-minute(!) mid-song break to the two minute finale (only about four minutes out of the twenty feature actual singing), Bruce is jaw-droppingly impressive on lead guitar. This twenty-year-old kid shreds with an intensity we’ve rarely seen from him since, and certainly at greater length than we’ve ever heard him commit to at one go.
And what’s most thrilling is that we can tell just by listening that Bruce knows exactly how good he is. Throughout his E Street career, even during his most impressive solos Bruce rarely shows off. In 1970, though, he was cocky as all hell, and that confidence electrifies his performance.
Bruce was a triple threat at the time, flooring ever-growing audiences with his frontman presence, guitar shredding, and rapidly maturing songwriting. Before long, Bruce would decide to focus on only two of those three.
But what if he’d chosen differently? Four months after that Monmouth performance, Bruce invited Robbin Thompson to join Steel Mill as the band’s new co-lead vocalist, for a brief time it seemed like Bruce might be content to earn his place in history with his instrument rather than his stage presence.
Imagine if Bruce had dedicated himself to the guitar with the same single-minded ferocity that would come to characterize his vocal performances. He was probably always deservedly destined for fame, but in some alternate universe, there’s probably a Bruce Springsteen who is rightfully considered one of the greatest guitar players of all time.
The Wind and The Rain
Never recorded
Never released
First performed: April 24, 1970 (West Long Branch, NJ)
Last performed: August 14, 1970 (Richmond, VA)
Looking for your favorite Bruce song? Check our full index here. New entries every week!
