{"id":15483,"date":"2020-01-18T05:10:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-18T13:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=15483"},"modified":"2024-01-02T11:29:14","modified_gmt":"2024-01-02T19:29:14","slug":"roll-of-the-dice-roll-of-the-dice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/2020\/01\/18\/roll-of-the-dice-roll-of-the-dice\/","title":{"rendered":"Roll of the Dice: Roll of the Dice"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Hit!<\/em> I wrote a hit last night!”\u00a0 –Bruce Springsteen to Roy Bittan, as told by Peter Ames Carlin\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, not really, as it turns out.<\/p>\n

Accounts vary as to the precise origin of “Roll of the Dice.” According to Peter Ames Carlin’s excellent biography, Roy Bittan recalls the inspiration stemming from a casual catch-up session between he and Bruce a few weeks after Bruce broke up the E Street Band. Roy demoed his new state-of-the-art synthesizer setup for Bruce and showed him how his rig could capture the classic E Street Band sound all on its own via an instrumental track he’d whipped up. Bruce was astounded at both the versatility of Roy’s setup and the track itself, and he insisted that Roy make him a tape of the track to take home with him.<\/p>\n

Bruce remembers it a bit differently:<\/p>\n

“Roy had some tracks that he’d play to me on occasion. 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.”\u00a0<\/em>(Rolling Stone, August 6 1992)<\/p>\n

Regardless, Roy’s riffing proved to be the key that unlocked the writer’s block that Bruce had been suffering from, and literally overnight, “Roll of the Dice” became the first song created for Bruce’s\u00a0Human Touch<\/em> album, and a few days later it became the first one recorded.<\/p>\n

This was December 1989, though, and it be more than another two years before the song would see the light of day.<\/p>\n