Roll of the Dice: Real World

“This is a song I cut in the early ’90s. It was on Human Touch, but we didn’t quite get it right… I kind of screwed it up when I recorded it… It kind of got away from me…  didn’t get a good version of it, but it was a good song.”

 

— Bruce Springsteen, various on-stage confessions in 2005

Thank goodness he knows.

“Real World” used to drive me batty, because the album track is terrible (or at least, as he once characterized the entire Human Touch album, “star-challenged”).

Okay, maybe that’s too harsh an indictment. But for anyone at all familiar with the song from its debut performances at the Christic concerts a year and a half earlier, there’s just no comparison.

“Real World” is one of the most unabashedly romantic songs Bruce has ever written–vulnerable, redemptive, and full of promise, devotion, and commitment. It’s one of my favorite songs in his entire catalog… as long as I pretend the album track doesn’t exist.

That 1990 clip above showcases a more emotionally open Springsteen than audiences had ever been privileged to see, and it’s no wonder: he was still a very new parent at the time. The as-yet unmarried (not a judgment, just a relevant fact) Patti Scialfa and Bruce Springsteen welcomed their first child into the real world not even four months prior, and this was Bruce’s first public performance since.

In fact, the key to understanding “Real World” is to understand when it was written and recorded: in December 1989, when Patti would have been about eight weeks pregnant. That context casts the song in a very specific light.

Roy Bittan deserves just as much credit as Bruce’s wife and son for the inspiration, however.

Bruce was actually suffering from writer’s block at the time, and he’d laid off the E Street Band just a few weeks prior. Musically aimless and lyrically blocked (“Every time I sat down to write, I was just sort of rehashing Tunnel of Love, except not as good,” he told Rolling Stone in a 1992 interview), Springsteen recalled Bittan telling him about some tracks he’d composed.

“So I called him and said, ‘Come on over, maybe I’ll try to write to some of your tracks.’ So he had the music to ‘Roll of the Dice,’ and I came up with the idea for that, and I went home and wrote the song.”

That wasn’t the only song Roy gave to Bruce, though: if “Roll of the Dice” was the crack in the dam, “Real World” was the gusher. Bittan had been sitting on the track, and while we don’t know what his version sounded like, it’s not hard to imagine it similar to how Bruce performed it.

So what went wrong?

“It’s hard to say,” Bittan admitted in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview. “We were experimenting with computer recording. I had an early Pro Tools system in the studio that was incredibly archaic when you look back at it. He was searching for something new, whether it was in writing or recording. He wanted a new direction. The interesting thing is that it was the prototype, so to speak, for the recording method that he’s been using ever since. He uses a computer. He may cut some things live, but it goes into the computer. We work on it. We overdub with the computer. It’s been our method of recording ever since then. So, it really was the first time that our so-called modern technique of recording was used.”

Bruce was less technical when asked about it in the summer of 1992: “What I started to do were little writing exercises. I tried to write something that was soul oriented. Or I’d play around with existing pop structures. And that’s kind of how I did the Human Touch record. A lot of it is generic, in a certain sense.”

Both theories hold water when listening to the album track. It certainly sounds artificially assembled. Although it sports a thundering Randy Jackson bassline and a scorching Springsteen guitar solo, almost everything noteworthy gets submerged beneath an ocean of synthesizer. It’s a wall of sound, and not the good kind.

But we also hear the soul sound that Bruce was reaching for but never quite achieves. Sam Moore is criminally wasted here. Bruce scored a coup by enlisting Moore to provide backing vocals (he guested on “Soul Driver” and “Man’s Job” as well), but what should have been an electrifying soul-shouting duel of a coda sounds almost literally phoned in, thanks to a too-distant mix.

But enough of that. Let’s pretend that version doesn’t exist, okay? Let’s remember it the way he debuted it in 1990 and has played it live every time post-1993: warm, tender, and alone at the piano.

When Bruce first cut “Real World,” he was newly in love, about a year into his relationship with Patti and a year before they’d marry. “This is when I was feeling the love and showing the love,” he admitted from the stage in 2005. More importantly, their firstborn child was on the way, and Bruce was definitely feeling the love.

In fact, if we’re to be completely honest, even in its solo incarnation, it’s Bruce’s warm, vulnerable vocals that stand out more than his lyrics. Lyrically, “Real World” is a mess of metaphors. Let’s look at just the first verse:

Mister Trouble come walking this way
Year gone by feels like one long day but I’m alive
And I’m feeling all right
Well I run that hard road outta heartbreak city
Built a roadside carnival out of hurt and self-pity
It was all wrong, well now I’m moving on

In just that one verse, Bruce gives us anthropomorphized trouble, urbanized heartbreak, and a carnival of hurt. There’s still a shrine of fool’s gold, a river of doubt, a party dress of bravery, and tumbling dice (hey, it worked in “Roll of the Dice”) yet to come.

But if the verses are chock full of mixed metaphors, the chorus is simple and direct:

Ain’t no church bells ringing, ain’t no flags unfurled
Just me and you and the love we’re bringing into the real world
Into the real world

Some read these lines as a reference to Springsteen and Scialfa’s nuptial eschewal (surely a public wedding featuring the still-superstar Springsteen would have been treated as a noteworthy pop culture event), but that’s missing the buried lede: the love we’re bringing into the real world. That’s Evan James Springsteen he’s referring to.

There’s nothing like expectant parenthood for releasing one’s grip on the past, something Bruce admits to in the second verse.

I built a shrine in my heart it wasn’t pretty to see
Made out of fool’s gold, memory, and tears cried
Now I’m heading over the rise
I’m searching for one clear moment of love and truth
I still got a little faith but what I need is some proof tonight
I’m looking for it in your eyes

Dice aren’t the only metaphor in “Real World” that shows up in another Human Touch-era song. We’ll see “Over the Rise” again, too. But that’s not the noteworthy line in this verse. That honor belongs to: I still got a little faith but what I need is some proof tonight.

That line is almost certainly a callback to “Thunder Road” and the bravado and fearlessness of youth. Fifteen years on, there may still be some magic left in that night, but reserves of faith aren’t enough to sustain our world-weary hero.

There comes a time when we need proof of love to have proof of life, and that moment–the moment when two people realize they’re going to bring a new life into the real world–that moment creates a bond more unbreakable than any wedding ever could.

Ain’t no church bells ringing, ain’t no flags unfurled
Just me and you and the faith we’re bringing here into the real world
Here into the real world

Our narrator may be moving forward, but the bridge tells us there’s still a step back for every two steps up.

Well tonight well I just wanna shout
Feel my soul waist deep and sinking into this black river of doubt
And I, well I just wanna rise and walk along the riverside
When the morning comes baby I don’t wanna hide
I’ll stand right at your side with my arms open wide

The love and support of one’s partner may be potent vaccination against self-doubt, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be breakthrough infections–particularly if one has grappled with depression throughout one’s adult life. Sometimes the best medicine is simply a reason to keep moving through it. And maybe a little therapy:

Oh I wanna find some answers, I wanna ask for some help
I’m tired of running scared, baby now let’s get our bags packed
We’ll take it here to hell and heaven and back
And if love is hopeless, hopeless at best
Come on put on your party dress
It’s ours tonight, we’re going with the tumbling dice

If love is hopeless at best, put on your party dress. There’s no sure thing, Bruce is telling us, no guaranteed happy ending. If you wait for one before committing to it, you’re in for a long wait. So make the most of the opportunity, and revel in the gamble. That’s love, and it’s also parenthood.

(Side note: it’s a bit odd that Bruce chose “tumbling dice” as a song-ending metaphor. He’s too much the rock scholar to not have realized the parallel it draws to the popular Rolling Stones song by the same name. That song features a playboy narrator who can’t commit to any one woman, the exact opposite of the sentiment Bruce expresses here.)

Because most of the world didn’t have access to the Christic bootlegs in 1992, “Real World” never received the acclaim it deserved. In concert, Bruce tweaked the album arrangement by tailoring it to his new touring band, and the result was a more natural, freer-flowing rock and soul showpiece that serves as the last new song of the main set throughout World Tour 1992.

Other than a couple of 1993 cameos, however, “Real World” subsequently disappeared for more than a decade. When it finally did return in 2005, Bruce restored its original arrangement, confessing its superiority nightly.

He’s played it that way ever since, including its final outings in Cork in 2013, where he played it twice–once in the pre-show and once in the encore.

Bruce seems to have surrendered “Real World” to its original incarnation, a decision I suspect most fans wholeheartedly endorse. That may take it out of the set list running for all but solo acoustic tours (or the occasional solo number on a band tour), but it’s too personal and meaningful a song for it to be gone for good.

We may yet hear it again when Bruce steps back out into the real world.

Real World
Recorded: December 1989 – January 1990
Released: Human Touch (1992)
First performed: November 16, 1990 (Los Angeles, CA)
Last performed: July 18, 2013 (Cork, Ireland)

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