Chris Jordan: “Any Other Way,” William Bell … Are you familiar with the version by a woman named Jackie Shane?
Bruce Springsteen: I’ve heard her name mentioned with that song. I don’t know if I’ve heard her version. I know a lot of people are familiar with her version of it. It’s supposed to be great.
Jackie Shane, it’s my understanding that she’s a trailblazer. She was born a man and Jackie was a trans performer.
I didn’t know that…
She was up through the ‘60s and based in Toronto. I think her story is especially significant after the Colorado incident here.
I want to check her version out.
Jackie Shane’s really good. It’s subdued, really good like that.
I was copying the William Bell version, basically.
—Asbury Park Press, November 23, 2022
Awwwwwkward!
We should cut Bruce some slack, though. Even someone with musical knowledge as encyclopedic as his can’t possibly know it all.
Still, I winced when I read this exchange because my thoughts immediately went to the place I’m sure Bruce’s went to after he checked out Jackie Shane’s version of “Any Other Way.”
Now kudos to Chris, because I wasn’t familiar with Shane or her version of the song either. But I do know the original well, and I immediately noticed the lyrical change Bruce made to William Bell’s 1962 single.
“Any Other Way” was only the second of literally dozens of singles that Bell recorded for Stax between 1961 and 1974. It was also one of his least successful, barely registering in the U.S. at a peak of #131, a disappointment after his modest debut hit with “You Don’t Miss Your Water.”
It’s a gorgeously clever song, though–wry, rueful, and wrenching lyrics juxtaposed against a classic R&B torch song instrumental and backing vocals. It’s that background that convinces us that Bell’s narrator is putting on a brave face for his off-screen “friend.” It takes a vocalist as skilled and nuanced as Bell to toe a line that keeps us engaged and wondering about the narrator’s true state of mind until he gives away the game in the final verse.
But there’s that line in the first verse. When the mutual friend wants to know what to tell Bell’s ex after their break-up, Bell sings: Tell her that I’m happy, Tell her that I’m gay.
In 1961, no one batted an eye. Gay was still an everyday synonym for happy, and while its alternative definition was also well-known, if you used the word in polite conversation, everyone assumed you meant it the way Bell did.
Then came Jackie Shane.
When Bell’s single debuted, Shane was living in Toronto and fronting local band The Motley Crew, but her journey until that point was a winding one.
Shane grew up in the Jim Crow South, realizing and embracing her identity as a trans woman from her early teens. She performed in long hair, makeup, and jewelry, and remarkably for the time, she was accepted and loved by her family and community.
Society didn’t have the nuanced understanding of and vocabulary for gender that we have today, however, so Shane tended to dodge direct questions about her gender when asked. Sometimes she referred to herself as gay (perhaps lacking a better term), so when she covered “Any Other Way,” there was no doubt among those who knew and knew of her that while she didn’t change a single lyric of Bell’s song, she was telling a very different story.
In Shane’s hands, “Any Other Way” was a song of empowerment and of embracing one’s authentic identity without a hint of apology or shame.
The song became a huge hit in Canada, where it peaked just one notch short of the top. It became a regional hit in the U.S. as well, including St. Louis and Washington, D.C. (but not the New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania tri-state area, so it’s understandable why Bruce wasn’t familiar with it).
Shane’s version also arguably out-Staxed Bell’s original, dialing up the horns and the emotion to produce what many consider to be the definitive version of the song.
Shane wasn’t the only artist to hear something more resonant in “Any Other Way” than Bell originally intended. I saw Melissa Etheridge perform her version (from her 2016 album, Memphis Rock and Soul). While she played it straight, she gave a wink while singing tell her that I’m gay that telegraphed her delight at playing a break-up anti-torch song that didn’t require a single change of pronoun.
And then there’s Bruce’s version.
It’s a great interpretation. Arrangement-wise, it soars and swings. It’s easily the most danceable of the bunch, if that’s your aim. And Bruce’s vocals summon the false bravado of the song’s narrator even more convincingly (one could argue, and one would) than Bell.
Still, given that he made so few lyrical changes to the collection of songs on his 2022 album, Only the Strong Survive, it’s jolting to hear him sing: Tell her that I’m happy, tell her that I’m doing great.
I’m sure the change wasn’t made for any reason other than the simply dated nature of the original line. Bruce almost certainly didn’t want to take the listener out of the song even momentarily by encountering an outdated use of a term used so prevalently in a different context today.
What he obviously didn’t know (and what his interviewer did) is that Jackie Shane had co-opted, transformed, and claimed spiritual ownership of “Any Other Way.” Her version had become beloved in her adopted country and an anthem in the Canadian LGBTQ+ community, even serving as the title of a book celebrating Toronto’s queer culture. When a restored box set of her work won a Grammy shortly before her death in 2019, the singer and the song gained a new and still-growing audience.
Bruce’s edits kept the song truer to Bell’s original intent for modern ears than the original lyrics ever could have, but ironically he achieved what he probably set out not to do: jettison the listener out of the song by changing the meaning it had come to take on over time.
Any Other Way
Recorded: 2021
Released: Only the Strong Survive (2022)
Never performed
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