Roll of the Dice: For You

“…I fell in obsession with a lovely surfer girl, a drug-taking, hell-raising wild child who played by nobody’s rules. She was a perfect antidote to the control freak in me and opened up my hunger for every blond perfect thing I never had. She was so alive, funny and broken, I couldn’t resist her. She stirred up my Catholic-school-bred messianic complex, then did the bone-and-heart-crushing dance over it that it deserved. She’d been around a little, California and back, knew a few grade-B-level rock stars, brought them down to ‘discover’ my band, then slept with them. I got a handshake and a ‘you guys are great’ T-shirt out of the deal.”  –Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run (2016)

Have you ever been in love with the wrong person?

I mean someone completely and toxically wrong for you?

Someone for whom the very things that excite you, ignite you, and take your breath away… are also the things that suck your life away. Steal your soul away.

A drama magnet, maybe. Or a narcissist. Maybe someone trapped by the weight of their own baggage.

Someone who fascinates you, exhilarates you… but who you know will ultimately take you down with them when they go down. And they will go down.

If you’ve ever been in love with someone like that, then “For You” is for you.

“For You” is from Bruce Springsteen, who wrote the song while recovering from a toxic relationship in the winter of 1971-72. Bruce wrote about it in his autobiography, and in Western Stars, he revealed: “I had a gal in New Jersey who broke my heart, ripped it to shreds, trampled on it, and sent it to me C.O.D. in a paper bag. So I was out of there on the first ride west, no looking back.”

But he looked back.

Unable to make a new life for himself in California, Bruce returned home to New Jersey in early 1972 and set in motion the events that would lead to a recording contract and his first studio album.

On Valentine’s Day (ironically), he auditioned for future manager Mike Appel with a handful of songs he’d written during his west coast heartbreak, the last and most affecting of which was “For You.”

Bruce has always been circumspect when discussing both the girl and the events that inspired the song, claiming to have written impressionistically but admittedly autobiographically–in equal measure, I suspect.

Princess cards she sends me with her regards
Barroom eyes shine vacancy, to see her you gotta look hard
Wounded deep in battle, I stand stuffed like some soldier undaunted
To her Cheshire smile I’ll stand on file, she’s all I ever wanted
Oh but you let your blue walls get in the way of these facts
Honey get your carpetbaggers off my back
You wouldn’t even give me time to cover my tracks
You said, “Here’s your mirror and your ball and jacks”
But they’re not what I came for, and I’m sure you see that too

I came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency
I came for you, for you, I came for you, but your life was one long emergency
And your cloud line urges me, oh, and my electric surges free

“For You” is really for her. Bruce writes in intimate detail, interweaving fragments of memory with no attempt to explain them. That’s okay. We don’t need to understand what princess cards are, or the significance of her blue walls. (I suspect they’re metaphorical, although Bruce once confessed on stage while introducing the song, “I was breaking up with this girlfriend and I went away for a week and I came back and she’d painted all the walls to my room black… actually she’d painted ’em all blue.”) We might assume she’s British from the Union Jack, even though it sounds like she lives in New York now.

But those are details that matter to him, not to us.

What resonates with us are her vacant barroom eyes and mischievous smile. We’ve known people like this–people who self-medicate to unreachable places, perhaps with alcohol, maybe with cloud lines of cocaine. People whose thirst for adventure masks a fear of being alone with their own thoughts.

We think we’re up to the challenge of loving these people, but we’re not. Nicked at first, then pierced and sliced, we’re cut by the blades they turn on themselves. We think we can take it, and we can… until we can’t.

Bruce is at that point in “For You.”

The “grade-B-level” carpetbaggers with whom she cheated were the last straw, he thinks. Until he finds her overdosed in her apartment. And in his panic, and in her distance, he draws close.

Because this is the moment that matters. He is willing to forgive everything that came before if only she will come back to herself, if not also to him. If she’ll only fill that vacancy behind her eyes and let him in, too.

And in this moment he is haunted by the fear that she may die because he was not there.

He was always there for her, but she didn’t need him then and pushed him away. And so he left, leaving her alone to face her own demons. In that moment of darkness and crisis, she was alone. But her life was always a crisis.

He apologizes for the strength it took to leave, mistaking it for weakness. He marvels at her vivacity and spirit, mistaking them for strength and resilience. And he begs her to stay with him so he can be her savior and redeem himself–his love can be her oxygen.

Oh crawl into my ambulance, your pulse is getting weak
Oh reveal yourself all now to me girl while you’ve got the strength to speak
‘Cause they’re waiting for you at Bellevue with their oxygen masks
But I could give it all to you now if only you could ask
Whoa and don’t call for your surgeon, even he says it’s too late
It’s not your lungs this time, it’s your heart that holds your fate
Don’t give me my money, honey, I don’t want it back
You and your pony face and your union jack
We’ll take your local joker and teach him how to act
I swear I was never that way even when I really cracked
Didn’t you think I knew that you were born with the power of a locomotive
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound
And your Chelsea suicide with no apparent motive
You could laugh and cry in a single sound

Fans and critics alike debate the literalness of this verse. Did his girlfriend literally try to take her own life? Or was it an accidental overdose? Or is Bruce simply writing in metaphor, her ebbing life a proxy for their fading love?

I tend to believe in Door #2, but as to whether Bruce draws from his true life or his emotional one I cannot say. But regardless of whether he sings literally or figuratively, it’s a disservice to dismiss this verse–as many do–as overly histrionic. Those who do have never walked in the narrator’s shoes. We can tell Bruce has: “You can laugh and cry in a single sound…” that’s a line that’s written by someone who knows.

On both vinyl and stage, the bridge is always the emotional peak of “For You.” It’s the moment where Bruce loses himself in grief and memory, and to this day it’s impossible to hear him sing it and not feel his anguish.

And your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds
Remember how I kept you waiting when it was my turn to be the god

We spend the remainder of the song with our narrator, lost in his reminiscence. The time they made love on the beach; her restlessness and wanderlust; the sight of her lifeless on the floor.

You were not quite half so proud when I found you broken on the beach
Oh remember how I poured salt on your tongue and hung just out of reach
And the band they played the homecoming theme as I caressed your cheek
Yeah that ragged jagged melody, she still clings to me like a leech
But that medal you wore on your chest always got in the way
Like a little girl with a trophy so soft to buy her way
We were both hitchhikers but you had your ears tuned to the roar
Of some metal-tempered engine on an alien distant shore
So you left to find a better reason than the one we were living for
And it’s not that nursery mouth I came back for
It’s not the way you’re stretched out on the floor
‘Cause I’ve broken all your windows and I’ve rammed through all your doors
And who am I to ask you to lick my sores
And you should know that’s true

I came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency
I came for you, for you, I came for you, your life was one long emergency
And your cloud line urges me, oh, and my electric surges free

This is the moment. Her life hangs in the balance; his love tries to tether her. The words spill and tumble in his desperation to say something, say anything  to keep her with him.

This is the moment, and it never resolves. We never find out what happens. “For You” ends not with a fade, but with a musical and lyrical cliffhanger that’s meant to leave us feeling uneasy and unsatisfied.

Because “For You” isn’t a love story. It’s not even a story at all. It’s an impressionistic painting of desperation and frustration, of love and guilt and anguish, of hopelessness and the inability to give up hope.

It’s not a song that resonates with everyone. But if you’ve been there, it resonates deeply.

Bruce recorded “For You” during the summer of 1972 with The Bruce Springsteen Band (minus Steve Van Zandt), in a loose, almost disheveled arrangement that serves to underscore the narrator’s frame of mind.

Still, in my opinion “For You” only truly comes to life when Bruce performs it alone at the piano. Bruce seemed to realize that early on: for most of its early performances, that’s exactly how the song was played, including this riveting rendition from Bruce’s Live at the Hammersmith Odeon, London ’75 release.

In recent years, the arrangement seems to be a toss-up depending on Bruce’s mood, but one way or another “For You” still manages to make a few appearances on every tour. My personal favorite was a solo performance in Hershey in 2014.

“For You” even turned up on the Seeger Sessions Tour, although I’m not convinced that was a wise decision. While most of Bruce’s song’s translated gracefully to the Sessions Band’s sound and style, “For You” sounded unwieldy and awkward.

That misstep aside, “For You” is one of Bruce’s oldest fan-favorites, and one almost guaranteed to make an appearance or three on any given tour. That’s not likely to change anytime soon; when Bruce finally gets back out on the road someday, we’re likely to hear him play “For You” for us.

For You
Recorded: June 27 – October 28, 1972
Released: Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)
First performed: February 14, 1972 (New York City, NY)
Last performed: September 5, 2016 (Virginia Beach, VA)

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