Springsteen’s searing “Spare Parts”

A forgotten gem from Tunnel of Love offers no gloss, cover, or potential escape, lyrically or musically until the very end.  This couple doesn’t even appear to have fond memories to haunt them.  The riff, like we assume their relationship has to be as well,  is exceedingly short and simple, pumping up and down like a piston.

Bobby said he’d pull out, Bobby stayed in
Janey had a baby, it wasn’t any sin

So begins one of Bruce Springsteen’s darkest, most searing, and unsparing tracks, “Spare Parts” from 1987’s Tunnel of Love.  It only takes two lines, 16 words, none more than two syllables, to depict the scene itself and the overall situation.  Unlike “The River,” which tackled a similar story and theme far more sensitively seven years earlier, Springsteen offers no gloss, cover, or potential escape, lyrically or musically.  This couple doesn’t even appear to have fond memories to haunt them.  The riff, like we assume their relationship has to be as well,  is exceedingly short and simple, pumping up and down like a piston, pushing events forward as inexorably as the coming birth of Janey’s baby, a direction once taken which cannot be taken back.  We’ve heard this story before, teenage lust turned into broken dreams.  We can picture exactly what happened, whether in the back of a car, out in the woods, upstairs at a party, even under the bleachers.  Springsteen’s word choice allows us to dig much deeper, however.  Bobby is the one who said he’d pull out, allowing us to imagine the lead up to the consummation; the promises he made when Janey asked him if he had any protection.  The way he told her not to worry about it, everything will be fine.  Maybe he even said he’d done it before.  Since Bobby chose to stay in, we may wonder if he coerced her at the end or even the beginning.  All of us probably know someone like him, his overall character defined by a single action.  Janey alone had the baby, however, giving us a glimpse of the future before it happens:

They were set to marry on a summer day
Bobby got scared and he ran away

The unsettled tone of the song and the careful use of language make this revelation something less than a surprise, as though it were as inevitable as Bobby staying in in the first place.  The marriage taking place on a “summer day” offers the briefest glimpse of hope in a world that is unrelentingly bleak, we can imagine Janey nervous about her future, excited for the big moment, picturing herself in her wedding dress all at the same time, but somehow we already know how this turns out and it isn’t pretty.  Sure enough, Bobby abandons her before the wedding, leaving his potential bride and future son behind.  We can’t say for certain yet, but it seems unlikely he’s ever coming back and in the long run, we suspect she might well be better off without him – if she can recover from the shock and the reality of being a single mother.  In the meantime, “Jane moved in with her ma out on Shawnee Lake, She sighed, ‘Ma sometimes my whole life feels like one big mistake.’”  Here, Springsteen appears to present Janey as older than we might have expected at the beginning of the song.  Rather than a high school student, perhaps she was a young woman, just getting started on her own or maybe given the reference to “ma” rather than her parents, she lived with her father previously.  Springsteen also plays with time between the second line, saying Janey “had” the baby, and the second line in the second verse, “She settled in in a back room, time passed on, Later that winter, a son come along.” In less skilled songwriting hands, the subtle shifts of age and timeline might be confusing, but instead they serve to deepen and expand the narrative, allowing the listener to fill in the gaps with their own preferred backstory before we are plunged into the universally bleak reality of the chorus and Springsteen’s own take on what all this means:  “Spare parts and broken hearts, Keep the world turning around.”

Unlike most of Springsteen’s classics, “Spare Parts” relies on the third person omniscient point of view rather than first person limited.  The speaker in “The River,” for example, is the young man that got his girlfriend pregnant.  “I come from down in the valley, where mister when you’re young, They bring you up to do like your daddy done.”  The first person perspective allows us to imagine what the speaker is thinking and feeling, considering what he or she says as much as what they leave unsaid.  The speaker is therefore a character in the story, participating in it, perhaps lying to themselves or not seeing things the right way because they are blinded by emotion.  The omniscient detachment of third person offers a different feel, as though we were watching these events unfold in a movie where the camera cannot lie.  Of course, we cannot say that the speaker is supposed to be Springsteen himself, but whatever the case, there is an authority and finality to it, fundamentally lacking in first person.  The speaker sees and knows what we cannot, maybe far more than the simple story being imparted in the song.  He or she might know these stories and more, fully appreciating all the heartbreak in the world in a way a mortal cannot.  The speaker could conceivably be some deity who knows all things and what really makes the world turn.  Therefore the impact of the brutal “spare parts and broken hearts,” as though these horrors were not merely figurative and we were in some kind of morgue with the actual bleeding arms and legs lying around, is all the more inescapable.  This is the way the world works.  Indeed, the phrasing suggests it’s the way the world has to work or it will cease turning entirely.  It is our lot simply to deal with the pain like Janey herself.  We are, in fact, no different than her in the speaker’s eyes, just a little luckier in our relationships and wiser in our choices.

Most of us at least try to do the right thing even when we fail, as Janey does after her child is born, walking “that baby across the floor night after night.”  Most also suffer from competing demands, contrasting wishes, desires that do not line up with our commitments and best interests, making it exceedingly difficult at times to honor what we know is right.  If the right way were the easy way, everyone would do it.  In Janey’s case, she “was a young girl and she missed the party lights.”  This should not imply she doesn’t love her son, only the challenge in adapting to the tumult that has upended her life.  First, she got pregnant.  Then, the father abandoned her.  Next, she moved in with her mother in what we imagine is a remote location, far from her friends (there is actually a real Shawnee Lake in rural Pennsylvania.)  Now, she has a baby to take care of, requiring total commitment, all her time and effort.  Janey’s attempts, however desperate, to do the right thing by her child are contrasted with the father who left them in the next line, confirming our early suspicions that Bobby is gone for good.  “Meanwhile in South Texas in a dirty oil patch, Bobby heard about his son bein’ born and swore he wasn’t ever goin’ back.”  Once again, Springsteen presents us with two simple statements that say so much.  The phrase “dirty oil patch” (more than suggests) that Bobby is living a subsistence existence.  He hasn’t run away to become a rockstar or famous actor, or to better himself and succeed in business.  Like many Springsteen characters before him, he’s a manual laborer in a less than desirable field not exactly ripe with potential for the future, but he still doesn’t want anything to do with the commitment of a child.  He would prefer to live in squalor, alone and free at least, rather than be a parent.  

Janey, however, has no such luxury and it wears upon her to the point of depression, something we learned more recently that Springsteen himself is all too familiar with.  After the chorus reminds us once again how broken and bloody our existence is, “Spare parts and broken hearts Keep the world turnin’ around,” the song takes an even darker, unexpected turn:

Janey heard about a woman over in Calverton
Put her baby in the river, let the river roll on
She looked at her boy in the crib where he lay
Got down on her knees, cried ‘til she prayed    

Springsteen doesn’t say so specifically, but we can likely assume Janey suffers from postpartum depression in addition to the other dramatic changes in her life.  Desperate for an escape, she hears about a woman who simply let her child go, as if our cares can be swept away by a river so easily.  A foolish hope, but one that is not unheard of in this broken world.  The biblical reference is immediately apparent, though entirely relevant except for the notion that the baby would be placed in God’s hands, possibly by some miracle being found and raised by another.  Janey places herself in God’s hands as well, though we might see this as occurring only with some reluctance given Springsteen’s phrasing that she “cried ‘til she prayed.”  Whatever the case, the song literally jump cuts to potentially the most gut-wrenching scene in Springsteen’s catalog outside of “Nebraska” where a “meanness in this world” is an excuse for pure evil.  A jump cut is a technique Springsteen picked up from film making, when one scene abruptly runs into another across a single frame, rather than a dissolve, time lapse or other bridge, disorienting the viewer for a few minutes as they come to grips with the new reality.  Springsteen adapts it here in song to maximum effect, lyrically and musically jumping from Janey on her knees to the side of the river where, presumably, she will leave her baby behind:

Mist was on the water, low run the tide
Janey held her son down at the riverside

The sudden change and the obvious conclusion hits the listener like a punch to the gut, the contrast between the image of Janey praying for guidance only to find her with the baby at the side of the river almost too jarring to contemplate for a moment.  The song, however, has been so dark and unrelenting so far, we consider the possibility Janey will actually go through with it, abandoning her baby to the current in the depths of her depression.  Springsteen takes us one step further down that brutal path, describing her as “Waist deep in the water,” we can picture the baby in her arms, the holding him tight, a final kiss the moment before letting him go, but then he relents in just as quick a bolt of hopefulness, almost another jump cut, careening from the darkness into the light, “how bright the sun shone, She lifted him in her arms and carried him home.”  The song moves into the final verse, far more positively and satirically than it began, as if Janey’s catharsis (or baptism?) at the river also served the listener.  First, Janey takes stock of her life, taking a “look around at everything,” before going to a “draw in her bureau.”  Then, she:

…got out her old engagement ring
Took out her wedding dress, tied that ring up in its sash
Went straight down to the pawn shop man and walked out with some good cold cash

The ending needs no explanation as Janey has transformed the emotional scars of her runaway boyfriend and child into something useful, the rare case of empowerment amid the desperation of pawning your belongings.  Springsteen usually equates the desire for money above other things with the darker side of human nature, but here having cash on hand to help raise the baby is turned around into a self-evidently good thing, even a little cheeky considering all that has come before.  At the same time, he is sure to repeat the chorus one more time, suggesting that the story of heartbreak in this world never ends.  Somehow, however, knowing Janey and her son survived, it’s less dark this time around, hinting that the scars we carry are not entirely negative.  In their own way, they define us and make us who we are, whether we like it or not.  “Spare parts and broken hearts Keep the world turnin’ around,” indeed.

SPARE PARTS

Booby said he’d pull out, Bobby stayed in
Janey had a baby wasn’t any sin
They were set to marry on a summer day
Bobby got scared and he ran away
Jane moved in with here ma out on Shawnee Lake
She sighed, “Ma, sometimes my whole life feels like one big mistake”
She settled in in a back room, time passed on
Later that winter a son came along

Spare parts and broken hearts keep the world turning around

Now Janey walked that baby across the floor night after night
But she was a young girl and she missed the party lights
Meanwhile in South Texas in a dirty oil patch
Bobby heard ’bout his son being born and swore he wasn’t ever going back

Spare parts and broken hearts keep the world turning around, around

Janey heard about a woman over in Calverton
Put her baby in the river let the river roll on
She looked at her boy in the crib where he lay
Got down on her knees cried till she prayed
Mist was on the water low run the tide
Janey held her son down at the riverside
Waist deep in the water how bright the sun shone
She lifted him in her arms and carried him home
As he lay sleeping in her bed Janey took a look around at everything
Went to a drawer in her bureau and got out her old engagement ring
Took out her wedding dress tied that ring up in its sash
Went straight down to the pawn shop man and walked out with some good cold cash

Spare parts and broken hearts keep the world turning around
Spare parts and broken hearts keep the world turning around