{"id":37176,"date":"1980-07-08T11:00:00","date_gmt":"1980-07-08T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=37176"},"modified":"2026-09-20T13:58:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T20:58:22","slug":"roll-of-the-dice-the-time-that-never-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/1980\/07\/08\/roll-of-the-dice-the-time-that-never-was\/","title":{"rendered":"The Time That Never Was"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s so obscure you practically have to spelunk to find it.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s never been played live, appears on no studio album, has never circulated on any bootleg, and is buried deep on a box set bonus disc of outtakes we&#8217;d already had for years on <em>Tracks<\/em> or bootlegs.<\/p>\n<p>Other than a studio log that referenced its title, no one even knew it existed until it showed up one day in\u00a0<em>The Ties That Bind: The River Collection<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>But oh, was it ever worth the wait.<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"758\" height=\"427\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EGwvS9NpCoQ?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;The Time That Never Was&#8221; is classic Darkness\/River-era Springsteen. Lyrically, it explores the same themes as &#8220;The River,&#8221; but it&#8217;s paired with a lush, romantic backing track that would be right at home on\u00a0<em>The Promise<\/em> (or the soundtrack to\u00a0<em>Eddie and the Cruisers<\/em>, which is what this song constantly evokes for me).<\/p>\n<p>The narrator of &#8220;The Time That Never Was&#8221; could easily be the same narrator of &#8220;The River,&#8221; in fact. Bruce&#8217;s lyrics take that final, immortal line of &#8220;The River&#8221; (<em>is a dream a lie of it don&#8217;t come true, or is it something worse?<\/em> ), and he answers it with a narrator who can&#8217;t help but look back on a youthful past that never lived up to its promise, even at the time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>Sometimes I wake up in the morning and it cuts me like a knife<\/em><br \/>\n<em>I come face-to-face with my longing for another world, another life<\/em><br \/>\n<em>And a time that never was<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>We drove on, fueled not by the future but by a past we could never touch<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Forced to run head-on collisions till we vanished in the dust<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Of a time that never was<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>So kiss me once more baby, one more kiss baby you must<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Don&#8217;t ever let me forget, girl, a time that never was<\/em><br \/>\n<em>A time that never was<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Bruce&#8217;s lyrics are spare but cutting. It&#8217;s one thing to live in the past, constantly reliving one&#8217;s glory days. It&#8217;s another to reach life&#8217;s late stages and realize those glory days never came at all. Our narrator had a dream and a promise, but they never came true.<\/p>\n<p>But\u00a0 it&#8217;s the backing track that elevates &#8220;The Time That Never Was&#8221; to true hidden gem status, from Max&#8217;s girl group drum beat to the Four Seasons-esque backing vocals by Stevie, Clarence, Bruce, and Roy, to that gorgeous, swoony Big Man sax solo.<\/p>\n<p>Not only do we hear the E Street Band at the peak of their power, &#8220;The Time That Never Was&#8221; may be a contender for the finest band arrangement and mix on record. We easily hear each band member&#8217;s contributions, and each gets a chance to shine. Even Garry is unusually prominent in the bass-driven mix, a treat we don&#8217;t often get to experience.<\/p>\n<p>The 2016 River Tour was a missed opportunity to give &#8220;The Time That Never Was&#8221; the concert debut it deserves. Maybe we&#8217;ll yet see it, but there&#8217;s something perfectly fitting about a song that sounds like classic E Street with a title like &#8220;The Time That Never Was&#8221; remaining forever unplayed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Time That Never Was<br \/>\nRecorded:<\/strong> June 27, 1979 &#8211; March 16, 1980<br \/>\n<strong>Released:\u00a0<\/strong><em>The River: Outtakes\u00a0<\/em>(2015)<br \/>\n<strong>Never performed<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 August 25, 2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeff A true hidden gem from the Darkness\/River era that should have seen an official release long before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3623,3],"tags":[2790,571,3526],"class_list":["post-37176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-river","category-roll-of-the-dice","tag-the-river-outtakes","tag-the-ties-that-bind-the-river-collection","tag-the-time-that-never-was"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t<!-- 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17:45:10","updated":"2026-09-20 21:49:01","seo_analyzer_scan_date":null,"focus_keyword":null,"additional_keywords":null,"truseo_locale":null},"aioseo_breadcrumb":"<div class=\"aioseo-breadcrumbs\"><span class=\"aioseo-breadcrumb\">\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/\" title=\"Home\">Home<\/a>\n\t\t<\/span><span class=\"aioseo-breadcrumb-separator\">\u00bb<\/span><span class=\"aioseo-breadcrumb\">\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/category\/roll-of-the-dice\/\" title=\"Roll of the Dice\">Roll of the Dice<\/a>\n\t\t<\/span><span class=\"aioseo-breadcrumb-separator\">\u00bb<\/span><span class=\"aioseo-breadcrumb\">\n\t\t\tThe Time That Never Was\n\t\t<\/span><\/div>","aioseo_breadcrumb_json":[{"label":"Home","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/"},{"label":"Roll of the Dice","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/category\/roll-of-the-dice\/"},{"label":"The Time That Never 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studio.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;River&quot;","block_context":{"text":"River","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/category\/river\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/estreetshuffle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/mag-glass-1.jpg?fit=1066%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/estreetshuffle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/mag-glass-1.jpg?fit=1066%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/estreetshuffle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/mag-glass-1.jpg?fit=1066%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/estreetshuffle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/mag-glass-1.jpg?fit=1066%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/estreetshuffle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/mag-glass-1.jpg?fit=1066%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 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