Roll of the Dice: Rocky Ground

“Rocky Ground” may be wrapped in gospel trappings, but its themes are as Springsteenian as anything on Darkness on the Edge of Town.

A fusion of hymn and hip-hop, with a military cadence and mournful melody, “Rocky Ground” was received by fans and critics in 2012 somewhere on the spectrum of novel experiment to bold departure. Today, it stands as one of Bruce’s best twenty-first century compositions, increasingly resonant with each passing year.

Critics tend to classify it as a recession-era protest song, with biblical references and imagery meant to reflect God’s judgment on economic disparity, and galvanizing calls to keep the faith through hardship. (The title and refrain reference Mark 4:5, “Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil.”) However, I’d argue that reflects too easy a read.

While Wrecking Ball is certainly an album of protest and resistance, “Rocky Ground” is something different: a song of persistence—even in the face of hopelessness.

That’s not evident at the start, however. The first words we hear over an ominous opening tone are “I’m a soldier!”, reportedly sampled from a 1942 recording of “I’m a Soldier in the Army of the Lord.”

(Your ears will have to be better than mine to pick the sample out from that dated and distant recording, but you can hear the line more clearly in this better-known version by The Soul Stirrers.)

The next voice we hear still isn’t Springsteen’s, but rather his frequent collaborator Michelle Moore, who provides backing vocals on six of Bruce’s studio albums and at more than 200 of his concerts.

We’ve been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground

Accompanied by a martial drumbeat supplied by either Bruce or Ron Aniello (both are credited drummers for this track; Max Weinberg is nowhere to be found), the first thirty seconds or so of “Rocky Ground” are completely in keeping with its album-mates.

But then Bruce enters with gentle, almost plaintive vocals against a tender guitar line, and we instantly recognize that this is a song of neither resentment or despair, but of acceptance and persistence.

Rise up shepherd, rise up
Your flock has roamed far from the hills
The stars have faded, the sky is still
The angels are shouting “Glory hallelujah”

Forty days and nights of rain have washed this land
Jesus said the money changers in this temple will not stand
Find your flock, get them to higher ground
The floodwater’s rising, we’re Canaan bound

The first verse begins with what sounds like a call to arms, one that Bruce has issued before: Rise up!

Here, however, it’s a warning rather than a command. Throughout the song, the shepherd symbolizes the parent, and the flock reflects the family. “Rocky Ground” is about the challenge of raising a family in a world without a safety net, where societal welfare takes a backseat to corporate profiteering, capitalism trumps community, and systemic inequality makes safe and secure child-rearing a lonely and uphill undertaking.

Bruce’s vocals warn the shepherd: Get up. Do you know where you children are? Make sure you do, and that they’re on the right path, because judgment is coming. It’s a cold, hard world out there, and it cannot stand.  

Tend to your flock or they will stray
We’ll be called for our service come judgment day
Before we cross that river wide
The blood on our hands will come back on us twice

They need you, Bruce tells the shepherd. Your kids need you, and they need your guidance. The good they do will be rewarded; the bad will be revisited.

Rise up shepherd, rise up
Your flock has roamed far from the hills
Stars have faded, the sky is still
Sun’s in the heavens and a new day’s rising

A new day is rising. Those sound like words of hope, but they’re not.

Until this point, “Rocky Ground” urges faith and action, but in Moore’s spoken-word bridge (some call it a rap, but I’m not sure it fits the definition), faith falls away along with biblical metaphor. Elegance gives way to prosaicness, and a street-level cadence grounds us in harsh reality.

You use your muscle and your mind and you pray your best
That your best is good enough, the Lord will do the rest
You raise your children and you teach them to walk straight and sure
You pray that hard times, hard times come no more
You try to sleep, you toss and turn, the bottom’s dropping out
Where you once had faith now there’s only doubt
You pray for guidance, only silence now meets your prayers
The morning breaks, you awake but no one’s there

A new day is rising. There’s no hope here in those words; they’re nothing but an alarm clock.

Change isn’t coming, the shepherd tells herself. Today isn’t Judgment Day, and tomorrow won’t be, either. Hard times are going to keep on coming.

But this is the world you live in. It’s the world you brought your children into. And it’s your job to lead them through it.

Rise up.

The song’s final minutes introduce the Victorious Gospel choir (who also appear on “Land of Hope and Dreams“), joining Moore on her “we’ve been traveling over rocky ground” chorus, while Bruce continues to encourage, “there’s a new day coming.” The choir transforms the struggles of “Rocky Ground” from personal to communal, as the “I’m a soldier” sample returns to inform us that the battle is nowhere close to being won.

In the end, “Rocky Ground” is the dance between faith and reality. We need the former to get through the latter, even though the latter does its best to disprove the former on the daily. It’s a stunningly powerful and compassionate work of art that doesn’t get anywhere near the recognition it deserves for its beauty and craft.

Bruce clearly has a fondness for it, though, because he not only featured it regularly throughout the Wrecking Ball Tour, he often led off the encore set with it, wisely sharing the spotlight with Moore in a simpler, sparer, brass-centric arrangement.

Bruce also issued “Rocky Ground” as the second single from Wrecking Ball, in digital audio, video, and vinyl forms, even though other tracks had far more obvious commercial potential. (He did have it remixed and shortened, though–the resulting “modern  mix” is relatively unknown even to fans.)

Rolling Stone liked “Rocky Ground,” too. They named it the seventh best song (by anyone) of 2012.

Even so, “Rocky Ground” vanished after the Wrecking Ball Tour (save for a single encore at the very beginning of the High Hopes Tour), too pensive for the celebratory tour that followed. But in the years since the last full E Street Band outing, the world has traveled over some seriously rocky ground, and Bruce’s song seems more timely than ever.

Rocky Ground
Recorded: 2011
Released: Wrecking Ball (2012)
First performed: March 9, 2012 (New York City, NY)
Last performed: January 29, 2014 (Cape Town, South Africa)

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