Cover Me: It’s My Life

It must have been a shock to the audience the first time Bruce first covered “It’s My Life” in concert.

For much of the Born to Run Tour, Bruce had been in full-on romantic mode, barreling from “She’s the One” into “Born to Run” (at this point still a mid-set number) into “Pretty Flamingo.” Some nights he’d mix it up–maybe swap out “Pretty Flamingo” for “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” or a slow, mythic “The E Street Shuffle.” But the vibe was consistent: larger-than-life, larger-than-love, unbridled romanticism.

And then out of nowhere, on the night of December 12, 1975, Bruce pulled “It’s My Life” out of his hat. It was a complete audible–Max Weinberg recalled that the band had never even rehearsed it.

I’m not entirely certain how much I trust Max’s recollection, though. Listening to the muddy recording of that debut performance, while we can certainly hear the band’s tentativeness and it was clearly an audible, it’s hard for me to imagine that the arrangement itself was spontaneous.

Because the arrangement they “fell into” that night bears scant resemblance to the original song.

“It’s My Life” had been a hit for The Animals a decade earlier, peaking at #23 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and #7 in the U.K.) in 1965. A dark, ominous-sounding, bass-driven, class-conscious piece of rebellion, “It’s My Life” resonated with both rock artists and fans alike who had found themselves feeling increasingly apart from mainstream society.

The Animals debuted their new single on the television show Hullaballoo on October 11, 1965, eleven days before the release of the record. Check out that debut performance below.

If the original version was dark and ominous, though, Bruce’s version is a full-on thunderstorm of pent-up rage.

Within just a couple of weeks, the band had honed and refined their performance, and Bruce dialed up the drama, prefacing the performance with a moody, noir-ish introductory story that for the first time invited his fans into his family dysfunction.

Even now, decades later, knowing exactly what’s coming, I’m on edge as that first verse builds towards the song’s first explosive climax.

The brilliance in Bruce’s arrangement lies not just in that eruption but in the dormancy that immediately follows. It’s unnerving, and I imagine the unsettledness we feel is a lot like what Bruce felt as he tried to navigate around his father’s alcohol-fueled anger episodes.

It was a far cry from “Pretty Flamingo.”

Bruce continued to perform “It’s My Life” over the three years that followed–years that perhaps not coincidentally aligned with the lawsuit that kept Bruce from entering the recording studio while he fought for control over his own music.

By the time Bruce embarked on the Darkness Tour in mid-1978, he’d shed much of his romantic material (until the encores, at least), constructing a set of original songs in which “It’s My Life” seemed of a piece. Perhaps that’s why he dropped it by the autumn: the song had lost some of its power surrounded by similarly dark material.

After a final outing on October 1, 1978 that capped 88 performances of the song, Bruce retired “It’s My Life” for good (to date, at least). That means there isn’t much video footage of him performing it, especially in its earliest outings. But we do have one tantalizing minute of a 1976 vintage performance that gives us a better sense of the full power of Bruce’s performance, and I’ll leave you with that. It’s well worth watching.

It’s My Life
First performed: December 12, 1975 (Greenvale, NY)
Last performed: October 1, 1978 (Atlanta, GA)