Perhaps it was compiling a collection of unreleased songs in 1998 that inspired Springsteen to enter the second half of his career, rejuvenated and reinvented after what most consider a moribund 1990’s. There’s a lesson here, about life’s ups and downs, finding the future in the past, letting things go, hoping they come back, and finding your way forward.
In 1998, Bruce Springsteen released Tracks, a compilation of 66 songs that didn’t make the final cut on his prior albums, though some were released as B-sides of singles and others appeared in concerts from time to time. As difficult as it might be to believe when the man is now a living legend, the 1990’s in general can rightly be considered the low point of his career. The dual release of Human Touch and Lucky Town in 1992 was met with limited critical acclaim or even outright criticism after disbanding the E Street Band in 1988, and 1995’s austere, acoustic The Ghost of Tom Joad represented one of his least commercial efforts, a folk album instead of a rock album, much less anything as poppy as Born in the USA. Given the material, The Ghost of Tom Joad was followed by a solo-tour of small theaters, one where Springsteen bizarrely insisted the audience remained seated, limit their applause, and cheering, and generally suffer through a series of gut wrenching tracks. Gone was the epic, thunderous, three hour plus celebrations of music, shared joy, and simply letting loose, replaced with a struggle session against the vagaries of fate and how the world grinds us all down. At this point, it might have been easy to conclude the Boss had lost his mind, either unable to write or perform the anthems he’d been known for throughout the prior two decades, or so uncomfortable and fed up with fame, that he preferred not to, effectively choosing to waste away the second half of his career on obscure material for a shrinking fan base. Tracks, in and of itself, didn’t immediately change this dynamic. Nothing could – it took a reunion with the E Street Band the following year and the release of The Rising in 2002 to prove he truly was back to form, a period of almost five years. If anything, Tracks had something of the opposite effect, reminding people of how great Springsteen was compared to how dramatically he’d slowed down over the course of a decade. The Ghost of Tom Joad was his eleventh studio album, but here was the equivalent of another six he’d chosen not to release, many of which fans and critics considered better than some of the songs he included at the time.
Perhaps, there is no better example of this than “Loose Ends,” the sixth track on the second CD, though it was originally recorded in 1979 as part of The River sessions. The phrase “toxic relationship” had yet to enter common usage, but here, Springsteen describes how a couple can devolve from hope and joy to pain and a desire for retribution, and whether it’s possible for a chance of redemption. This is all rapidly spelled out in the first seven lines, powered by one of those majestic rhythms Springsteen is justly famous for, when neither the song nor the speaker wastes any time plunging the listener into the past, present, and potentially the future, sharing enough detail that we can immediately relate:
We met out on open streets when we had no place to go
I remember how my heart beat when you said I love you so
Then little by little we choked out all the life that our love could hold
Oh no
It’s like we had a noose and baby without check
We pulled until it grew tight around our necks
Each one waiting for the other, darlin’, to say when
Well baby you can meet me tonight on the loose end
From the very first line, we can hear echoes of other Springsteen classics, as though this was the couple from “Backstreets” that stayed together too long rather splitting up when they were still young. The speaker in that incarnation described “Laying in the dark, you’re like an angel on my chest,” or even from the “The River,” where he’s lying on the banks of reservoir and holding his lover close just to “feel each breath” she’d take, but unlike those two couples that were torn apart by outside forces and unexpected events, this one did it to themselves. There was no other lover or underage pregnancy to derail their future, only the either conscious or unconscious destruction, figuratively presented as violence when they “choked out all the life” from their relationship for reasons that are unexplained (or at least we can hope that is merely a metaphor and this isn’t an outright abusive relationship). Regardless, the speaker still has some hope for the future, imploring his lover to set the past aside and meet him anew on the “loose end.” The title alone contains multiple metaphors through which we can consider the the relationship. There’s the direct analogy of the noose, choking each other and their love, but also a linguistic similarity to being at your “wit’s end” and the sense that perhaps the real problem is counterintuitive: They held themselves too tightly together rather than leaving the necessary room to grow both as individuals and as a couple. Evidence of this interpretation arrives on cue in the second verse:
We didn’t count tomorrows, we took what we could and baby we ran
There was no time for sorrow, every place we went I held your hand
And when the night closed in I was sure your kisses told me all I had to know
Without saying so directly, the speaker manages to let the darker side of their relationship creep through what are objectively positive or at least neutral descriptions. We can imagine a young, inexperienced couple, living in the moment, together all the time, confident in how each made the other feel, rather than the underlying bond they shared. Beneath the surface, this is a selfish kind of love, however, one where the partners in the couple are taking rather than giving, consuming each other even if they aren’t fully aware of it. The passion might have been there on both sides, but as the Friar pointed out as early as Romeo and Juliet, passion quickly burns itself out while moderation is the key to a long-lasting relationship, “These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.” The speaker might not have been familiar with these lines, or even Springsteen himself for that matter, but little is more violent than death by hanging, placing the relationship in a centuries old spectrum of love as a serpent eating its own tail. In the meantime, however, those who fall victim to this sort of selfish passion rarely realize at the time. They “don’t count tomorrows” while they’re taking whatever they can, anymore than an addict does. It’s only after when they realize they have arrived where they’d never thought they’d be:
Our love has fallen around us like we said it never could
We saw it happen to all the others but to us it never would
Well how could something so bad, darling, come from something that was so good
Many have likely wondered the same thing, how we can move from what seem like auspicious beginnings to tortured endings without the knowledge of what’s happening, but at the same time, we cannot escape that denial and delusion are often to blame. We see the truth as we want it to be, not how it actually is, leading us astray. In the context of “Loose Ends,” it seems clear the couple, or at least the speaker, believed the relationship was far stronger and deeper than it actually was, seeing flaws in others that were equally present in himself and his lover when the preceding verses capture the reality that the couple has been troubled for some time, perhaps since the beginning. Phrases such as “little by little,” “pulled until it grew tighter,” and “waiting to say when” suggest that the end has been slow to arrive, a slow motion suffocation, making the promises and comparisons to others suspect, even the notion that it was ever “something that was so good.” More likely, the very escape they sought in each other, the lack of foresight about the future and awareness of where they were headed, were present the entire time, but went unnoticed in the throes of intense passion. The speaker cannot explain why this is so, but the why is largely relevant and given everything else, might not be true any way, another instance of self-rationalization. The reality is simply that it’s happened. To paraphrase the title of another Springsteen classic, they were blinded by the light from the flames of their own love, a love which was consuming them from the very start. Awareness, however, only came much later, when the passion has burnt itself out, leaving only the cold ashes behind. Now, the speaker perceives the flames as good, even though they were actually bringing about the relationship’s downfall.
The only question at this point is whether they can find the more meaningful things in each other to start again, and in that regard, the song itself doesn’t provide an answer. “Loose Ends” is rather sparse lyrically as Springsteen tracks go, relying on what’s unsaid as much as what’s said, and the song ends with another repeat of the chorus, imploring his lover to “meet [him] tonight on the loose end.” We find nothing there to indicate whether the couple has a future together, if she met him at all or just ran off, but songs are about more than mere words. The music counts as much as everything else and “Loose Ends” is as musically lush as it is lyrically sparse. There is a somberness to the entire affair with hints of a funeral procession, the stately sort of drive, but one cannot escape the force behind the wall of sound as the riff ends on a high note, only to begin again, suggesting that there are ups and downs, and yet the future might somehow be brighter than the past. There is a romance to it as well, complete with a powerful and lengthy Clarence Clemons saxophone solo, leading us to believe that this couple might – just might – find a way to renew their love on stronger, less self-destructive terms. Uplifting might be a stretch, but the open ended promise is present as the song fades out. In a sense, Tracks fulfilled that promise for Springsteen’s career. Looking back on it now, we know he entered the next decade rejuvenated and reinvented. Perhaps it was compiling this collection of songs that got away which inspired him to do so in the first place and perhaps, like this couple, even he didn’t know it at the time. There’s a lesson here for all of us, about life’s ups and downs, about finding the future in the past, letting things to at times, hoping they come back at others, and finding your way forward no matter what.
LOOSE ENDS
We met out on open streets when we had no place to go
I remember how my heart beat when you said I love you so
Then little by little we choked out all the life that our love could hold
Oh no
It’s like we had a noose and baby without check
We pulled until it grew tight around our necks
Each one waiting for the other, darlin’, to say when
Well baby you can meet me tonight on the loose end
We didn’t count tomorrows, we took what we could and baby we ran
There was no time for sorrow, every place we went I held your hand
And when the night closed in I was sure your kisses told me all I had to know
But oh no
It’s like we had a noose and baby without check
We pulled until it grew tight around our necks
Each one waiting for the other, darlin’, to say when
Well baby you can meet me tonight on the loose end
Our love has fallen around us like we said it never could
We saw it happen to all the others but to us it never would
Well how could something so bad, darling, come from something that was so good
I don’t know
It’s like we had a noose and baby without check
We pulled until it grew tight around our necks
Each one waiting for the other, darlin’, to say when
Well baby you can meet me tonight on the loose end
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 