{"id":35847,"date":"1983-01-05T11:00:00","date_gmt":"1983-01-05T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=35847"},"modified":"2025-12-28T13:52:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T21:52:12","slug":"roll-of-the-dice-johnny-bye-bye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/1983\/01\/05\/roll-of-the-dice-johnny-bye-bye\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnny Bye Bye"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I remember when I was nine years old and my mother had on The Ed Sullivan Show<\/em> and Elvis came on. I sat there and I said, ‘When I grow up, I wanna be just like that.’ I remember I was sitting at home when somebody called me up and told me that he died. It\u00b4s something I still think about all the time… how somebody that had so much and was so alive inside could end up losing so bad and seeming so lonely.”<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

— Bruce Springsteen, September 2, 1981<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In March of 1981, Bruce Springsteen was exhausted.<\/p>\n

He’d been on the road non-stop for six months, and he needed a break. He’d completed the first U.S. leg of the River Tour on March 5th and was due in the U.K. for the kick-off of the European leg just twelve days later. But Bruce was tired, and something had to give.<\/p>\n

Atypically, he cancelled almost three weeks worth of shows and retreated to his home in Colts Neck, New Jersey to rest. And because he’s Bruce Springsteen, he wrote.<\/p>\n

He had an outtake from his previous record called “Come On (Let’s Go Tonight)” that didn’t make either\u00a0Darkness on the Edge of Town<\/em> or The River–<\/em>most likely because its melody (and a few of its lyrics) gave way to “Factory.”<\/p>\n