Roll of the Dice: Iceman

Ask anyone to name Bruce Springsteen’s most misunderstood song, and they’ll likely answer, “Born in the U.S.A.”

But if you ask me, I’ll tell you it’s “Iceman.”

“Iceman” is a relatively obscure track. Recorded in a single autumn day in 1977, “Iceman” is a dour-sounding track that’ll fool you into thinking it’s more pessimistic than it is. Or that it’s pessimistic at all.

Well-known Springsteen scholars call it “spooky” and “unsettling,” “chilling” and “mournful,” a song of “deep despair.” But with due respect to the scholars, “Iceman” is none of those things. At least not lyrically.

“Iceman” is essentially a slower, sparer “Badlands,” a song of defiance and persistence in the face of what would seem to anyone like insurmountable odds, a stacked deck, a rigged game of life. To those who listen carefully, “Iceman” is a song of resilience and even optimism.

Bruce actually telegraphs it in his opening verse with a lyric that would show up just weeks later in “Badlands,” which end up on the album in place of “Iceman.”

Sleepy town ain’t got the guts to budge
Baby, this emptiness has already been judged
I wanna go out tonight, I wanna find out what I got

It’s certainly understandable why most listeners come away feeling depressed after listening to “Iceman,” though. It’s ponderously paced, somberly sung, and even the title misleads (we’ll get to that in a bit).

“Iceman” is set in a town that’s seen better days. Our narrator may not be depressed, but the local economy certainly is. Those who could have already left. Those who remain are resigned to staying. With bones ripped from their backs, they lack the guts to reinvent themselves. Their town has been judged and found wanting.

Our narrator isn’t ready to surrender yet, though. He fights on, determined to if not escape than at least to make a stand. And he isn’t alone.

You’re a strange part of me, you’re a preacher’s girl
And I don’t want no piece of this mechanical world
Got my arms open wide and my blood is running hot

We’ll take the midnight road right to the devil’s door
And even the white angels of Eden with their flaming swords
Won’t be able to stop us from hitting town in this dirty old Ford

That second line above–and I don’t want no piece of this mechanical world–is key to understanding the song and its title. Keep that in mind for a little longer, but for now let’s focus on the rest of this passage. Because it’s impossible to read these lines and not come away struck by our narrator’s fierce determination to escape the deathtrap and suicide rap that is his hometown.

With his girl at his side, he’s heading for the edge of town, where he’ll be on that hill with all that he’s got. And yes I’m pulling liberally from the albums that “Iceman” bridges, because the song serves as connective tissue between them.

On Born to Run, Bruce’s heroes dream of escaping to a better life; on Darkness on the Edge of Town, they learn to make the best of the life they’ve been given. In “Iceman,” our lovers risk it all because they’ve got nothing to lose. As Bruce puts it:

Well it don’t take no nerve when you got nothing to guard
I got tombstones in my eyes and I’m running real hard
My baby was a lover and the world just blew her away

Once they tried to steal my heart, beat it right out of my head
But baby they didn’t know that I was born dead
I am the iceman, fighting for the right to live

Bruce’s characters have been beaten down by the world. Heck, they were born already beaten. When you feel like you were born into a life that never offered you a chance to really live, what exactly do you have to fear by chasing a dream?

And now we arrive at the key passage–the one that I believe is the main reason why this song is so misinterpreted: I am the iceman, fighting for the right to live.

Almost every account I’ve seen of “Iceman” attributes its title to its narrator’s emotional state, as if we are listening to a man so defeated and despondent that his heart has turned to ice. But our narrator has already told us that his blood runs hot, not cold. And besides, Bruce is too clever for such an on-the-nose metaphor.

Instead, Bruce is employing irony. Yes, iceman is a metaphor, but in this case Bruce is referring not to an emotional state but to an occupation.

Few of us today would remember that until the mid-twentieth century, a fair number of people made their living delivering ice via truck from house to house in the days before household refrigeration became commonplace. These men were called icemen. With the introduction of the kitchen refrigerator after World War II, icemen gradually became obsolete. Those who once considered the job one of the most secure professions available (after all, people will always need ice) found themselves struggling to survive in a world rapidly leaving them behind.

That’s what our narrator means when he says he wants no part of this mechanical world and that he’s fighting for the right to live. It’s not that he’s literally doing the job of an iceman, but he is caught up in the wave of automation that resulted in the loss of countless manufacturing jobs during the latter half of the twentieth century. His plight is the same as the ones that faced the icemen: what do you do when the only thing you’ve ever done for a living is no longer needed?

Bruce implies that our narrator lives in a town rocked by recession, but rather than allow himself to be mired in despair and torpor, our protagonist resolves to reinvent himself. He doesn’t have a plan yet, but he’s not going to let that stop him. As he defiantly declares during the song’s thrilling climax:

I say better than the glory roads of heaven, better off riding hellbound in the dirt
Better than the bright lines of the freeway, better than the shadows of your daddy’s church
Better than the waiting, baby better off is the search

In other words, he knows he isn’t going to find his answer in religion, and he’s not going to find it on the streets. And he certainly isn’t going to find it by sitting around and waiting for fortune to find him.

If you don’t know what you’re seeking, he tells us, then just start looking. If you don’t know where you’re going, then just start moving. He knows he’s better off searching for a better life than settling for his current one.

He may not be pulling out of there to win, but at least he’s pulling out of there to play.

“Iceman” is such an obscure track that even its author had forgotten it. “I didn’t even know it existed myself,” Bruce told Patrick Humphries in a 1999 interview for Record Collector, “until a guy named Bob Benjamin sent me a tape with three songs on it, and that was one of them… I’m like ‘Iceman,’ what’s that?”

Bruce liked the bootleg recording enough to clean it up and include it on Disc 1 of Tracks, but even then the song remained unplayed for years. He finally debuted it in a solo piano arrangement in 2005 on his Devils & Dust Tour in Philadelphia.

Following that solo debut, Bruce played it twice more with the E Street Band, once in 2014 in Charlotte, and then again in 2016 in Paris.

With only three performances ever, “Iceman” remains a rarity–too misunderstood to be fully appreciated and too stately-sounding to sustain the momentum of an E Street Band concert. It’s likely to remain one of Bruce’s most under-the-radar and underappreciated tracks.

Iceman
Recorded: October 27, 1977
Released: Tracks (1998)
First performed: May 17, 2005 (Philadelphia, PA)
Last performed: July 13, 2016 (Paris, France)

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