“Whenever I’m paging through magazines and there’s like a compendium of your records… you know, “The Bruce to Buy” and “The Bruce Not to Buy”… [Human Touch] is always sort of star-challenged. And perhaps unfairly!” — Bruce Springsteen, August 10, 2005
Or perhaps not.
Despite a few standout tracks, there’s a reason Human Touch is a little light in the stars department.
It’s not the songs, though. Even the weakest track on the album has redeeming virtues, and two in particular (the title track and “Real World“) rank among the best in Springsteen’s catalog.
The problems lie in the arrangements and production, which render even gorgeous songs like “Real World” so clunky and dated that they sounded passé on the day they were released.
The sad thing is: it didn’t have to be that way.
Take, for example, “Soul Driver.” One of the earliest songs written and recorded for Human Touch, it seems to have started as a Springsteen-Bittan collaboration like “Real World” and “Roll of the Dice.” Unlike the other two songs, however, Bruce decided to write his own music for it. He debuted the finished song at his acoustic Christic Institute concerts in November 1990, almost a year-and-a-half before it saw official release.
As originally presented to the public, “Soul Driver” was an intimate, moody, devotional that married biblical metaphor with carnival imagery to moving effect.
Rode through forty nights of the gospels’ rain
Black sky pouring snakes, frogs and love in vain
You were down where the river grows wider
Baby let me be your soul driver
Well if something in the air feels a little unkind
Don’t worry darling, oh it’ll slip your mind
I’ll be your gypsy joker, your shotgun rider
Baby let me be your soul driver
As in much of his best work, Bruce’s narrator doesn’t pretend to know the future, and he carries no false confidence. He simply pledges to be a true companion, riding shotgun with his lover (we’ll let the titular metaphor contradiction pass without comment) through the Great Flood, the Egyptian plagues, and whatever life throws their way. In essence, “Soul Driver” is a wisened “Drive All Night” by a wizened songwriter.
As always, the heart of the song lies in the bridge:
Now no one knows which way love’s wheel turns
Will we hit it rich or crash and burn
Does fortune wait or just the black hand of fate
This love potion’s all we’ve got, one toast before it’s too late
Fortune or fate? Both are fickle. Love is the only constant–if you choose correctly and commit fully. Even if life’s road leads to ruin, at least you’ll have a companion for the drive.
If the angels are unkind or the season is dark
Or if in the end love just falls apart
Well then here’s to our destruction
Baby let me be your soul driver
“Soul Driver” ends on a sobering note: our narrator admits uncertainty even about whether their love will last. And that’s what makes the song so romantic: he pledges himself even though there’s no guarantee things will work out in his favor. That’s devotion.
It’s a gorgeous song, laced with love and tinged with danger–all of which shine through in that original 1990 performance. But when the rest of the world first heard “Soul Driver” fifteen months later, it sounded…. well, different.
On paper, there were plenty of reasons for high expectations. For one thing, the studio version of “Soul Driver” features the return of David Sancious, absent from Bruce’s catalog since “Born to Run.” For another, it features backing vocals from the legendary Sam Moore. With Randy Jackson on bass and Toto’s Jeff Pocaro on drums, “Soul Driver” promised quite a musical pedigree.
So what went wrong? Let’s chalk it up to a desire to experiment, to break away from the E Street Sound. It certainly succeeded in that regard. And it does have fine moments, particularly when Sancious and Springsteen trade solos for the first time in decades. However, the percussion alternates between plodding and skipping, neither of which works for the song, and those synths… I’m guessing the pan flute effect was meant to conjure an Orpheus and Eurydice vibe, but it falls short.
Reportedly, Bruce soured quickly on the arrangement once the album was released. When he performed it on stage months later, he stripped it back to something resembling an electric version of the original arrangement.
Although Bruce performed it all throughout 1992, by the time the tour resumed after the holiday break, “Soul Driver” vanished from the set list, returning only for a cameo appearance in England that spring.
In the years since, “Soul Driver” has appeared only once, when Bruce shocked his Portland fans by opening his 2005 acoustic show by performing it on the electric piano.
Like his very first performance fifteen years earlier, Bruce’s final (to date) and finest performance of “Soul Driver” was quiet, intimate, and personal–like a whisper into a lover’s ear. It’s a great argument for why some songs should stay simple and spare.
If only he’d realized that when recording the album.
Bonus: Here’s some terrific and rare footage of Bruce and his band rehearsing “Soul Driver” in an empty, dimly lit venue. It totally works.
Soul Driver
Recorded: January 1990
Released: Human Touch (1992)
First performed: November 17, 1990 (Los Angeles, CA)
Last performed: August 10, 2005 (Portland, OR)
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I can’t tell you why but when I think of his HT/LT “double album” this is the song that pops into my head as being my favourite. I have a similar affection for Clapton’s “Pretending” from around the same era despite both (allegedly) sharing the same shonky DNA.