Roll of the Dice: Further On (Up the Road)

Are there any words more polarizing at a concert than “We’re gonna play something brand new”?

There are people who come to hear their old favorites, and there are people who thrill to hearing a song they’ve never heard before even on an album.

If you’re in the latter camp those moments are few and far between, even for an artist as prolific as Bruce Springsteen. But if you were in the audience in Atlanta on the night of June 4, 2000, you felt like you’d won the lottery.

Bruce debuted not one but two songs that night that no one had ever heard before. The second of the two grabbed worldwide media attention due to its seemingly controversial lyrics (although anyone who listened closely realized there was nothing controversial about it at all). “American Skin (41 Shots)” went on to become one of Bruce’s most famous songs, and we’ll take a close look at it later this year.

But Bruce premiered another song that night, too–in fact he opened his show with it. And while it garnered almost no mention or attention in the press, “Further On (Up the Road)” signaled a turn in Bruce’s songwriting that wouldn’t be fully realized for a few years to come.

Written at the milestone age of fifty, “Further On (Up the Road)” is one of Bruce’s earliest attempts to come to terms with the second half of one’s life.

Read almost any review of the song, and you’ll find a critic struggling over whether to peg the song as fatalistic, political, or spiritual–if they don’t simply dodge its meaning altogether. That’s almost certainly at least in part due to its inclusion on The Rising, an album that centers on a themes of loss and resilience.

But “Further On (Up the Road)” is none of those things. It’s simply a song of recognition, of accepting that the road of life is a one-way street, and while it is long it is not without an end.

In fairness, though, this is not one of Bruce’s most accessible songs. It demands a close, attentive listen, especially if (as was the case at the time) you’re not accustomed to hearing Bruce sing about such themes.

 Where the road is dark and the seed is sowed
Where the gun is cocked and the bullet’s cold
Where the miles are marked in blood and gold
I’ll meet you further on up the road

Where the road is dark and seed is sowed–that’s the future. That place we can’t see now but that we know waits for us, along with the consequences of all of our decisions and actions.

Where the gun is cocked and the bullet’s cold–that’s the past. When is a bullet cold? Before it’s been fired. Our narrator is the gun, and the unfired bullet represents the effect and impact he will have on others as he lives his life.

Where the miles are marked in blood and gold–that’s the measure of a life. The harm we do, the richness we imbue. There’s no other meaningful measure.

And no matter where we are on that road, we are always moving forward, ever forward.

Got on my dead man’s suit and my smiling skull ring
My lucky graveyard boots and a song to sing
I got a song to sing to keep me out of the cold
And I’ll meet you further on up the road

That’s a great first couplet–so great that Bruce used it verbatim in “Maria’s Bed” as well. Our narrator is telling us he’s not afraid of death. He knows it’s out there waiting for him, and he’s ready for it whenever it comes. In the meantime, he’s got a life to live, a song to sing (a neat metaphor that works particularly well for those inclined to read a personal statement into Bruce’s lyrics). Because if you’re living, you’re not dying.

The chorus is where Bruce gets explicit, acknowledging the inevitability of death. But even here, listen carefully to what he sings:

Further on up the road
Further on up the road
Where the way is dark and the night is cold
One sunny morning we’ll rise I know
And I’ll meet you further on up the road

One day I will die, but death is not the end. We will rise and meet again, further up the road–in the afterlife, if you’re so inclined to believe, or in your dreams.

That chorus, by the way, is borrowed from Bobby “Blue” Bland’s 1957 song by a similar name, “Farther Up the Road.” It’s a completely different song lyrically, but if you listen to the refrain, you’ll hear a hook and groove too similar to be coincidence.

Let’s continue with our road trip:

Now I been out in the desert just doing my time
Searching through the dust looking for a sign
If there’s a light up ahead, well brother I don’t know
But I got this fever burning in my soul
So let’s take the good times as they go
And I’ll meet you further on up the road

The desert is metaphor as well: our search for meaning and purpose in a world that doesn’t readily serve either to us on a platter. But if our narrator lacks those things, he at least has the drive to live. To experience. To make the most of the limited time we’re given to travel on this road. So he’ll gladly embrace the joys that life provides in this moment, even as he moves ever forward to the next one.

Bruce ends with his refrain, his reminder that while the road is dark, there’s a sunny morning at the end of it where our loved ones await. It’s a notion that must have given Bruce great comfort as he reached the age where loved ones start to take unexpected off-ramps.

Exactly twenty years further up the road, Bruce revisited his theme. He was a lot closer to that sunny morning by then, with a lot more miles of blood and gold behind him. When he re-wrote “Further On (Up the Road)” as “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” he infused it with the kind of urgency and defiance that 70 brings but 50 can only hear off in the distance. But thankfully, even in his seventies, Bruce has miles to go, road to burn, and a song to sing.

Recognizing the miles as they pass helps us make the most of the ones that remain before us. So as we start this new year, may we all make the most of the miles we’ll travel together.

As Bruce says at the end of each tour and each chapter: see you up the road.

“Further On (Up the Road)” is musically dense. It rocks hard–so much so that it’s easy to miss the meaning in Bruce’s lyrics.

That’s a lot less likely with his 2006 Seeger Sessions arrangement, though. When Bruce recast it for that tour, he crafted an Irish-influenced melody that makes the song sound more contemplative and introspective. (It also provided a great vocal spotlight moment for Marc Anthony Thompson.)

But his most affecting performance of “Further On (Up the Road)” might well have been his last one to date: his acoustic show opener in Pittsburgh in 2014. Performed solo, there’s no missing the narrator’s loneliness increasing the further up the road he travels.

With his more sentimental “I’ll See You in My Dreams” rewrite now firmly established as a fan favorite, we’re a lot less likely to hear “Further On (Up the Road)” again any time soon.

But you never know… the road is long.

Further On (Up the Road)
Recorded: Early 2002
Released: The Rising (2002)
First performed: June 4, 2000 (Atlanta, GA)
Last performed: May 23, 2014 (Pittsburgh, PA)

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