Bruce Springsteen Songs - Mansion On The Hill Lyrics

Bruce Springsteen - Mansion On The Hill

Bruce Springsteen - Mansion On The Hill Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Nebraska
Released: 1982

Mansion On The Hill Lyrics

There's a place out on the edge of town, sir,
Risin' above the factories and the fields
Now, ever since I was a child, I can remember
That Mansion On The Hill

In the day you can see the children playing
On the road that leads to those gates of hardened steel
Steel gates that completely surround, sir,
The mansion on the hill

At night my daddy'd take me and we'd ride
Through the streets of a town so silent and still
Park on a back road along the highway side
Look up at that mansion on the hill

In the summer all the lights would shine
There'd be music playin', people laughin' all the time
Me and my sister, we'd hide out in the tall cornfields
Sit and listen to the mansion on the hill

Tonight down here in Linden Town
I watch the cars rushin' by, home from the mill
There's a beautiful full moon rising
Above the mansion on the hill

Writer/s: ROBERT SPRAGG PIERS MARSH, SIMON EDWARDS JON DELAFONS, ANTHONY HAMILTON, O?HAWKINS E?EVANS, E?BEREAL
Publisher: BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Mansion On The Hill Song Chart

Springsteen wrote this from a child's point of view. It is based on memories of a place Springsteen used to visit with his father.

In the live version of "Mansion on the Hill" from Shoreline Amphitheatre '86, Springsteen mentions that the song is about when he was a kid and his father used to drive them out to this old house on the outside of town that felt really distant to Bruce. "My father was always transfixed by money," Bruce explained. "He used to drive out of town and look at this big white house. It became a kind of touchstone for me. Now, when I dream, sometimes I'm on the outside looking in – and sometimes I'm the man on the inside."

According to the book Bruce by Peter Carlin, around 1970 Springsteen took his girlfriend out to a family meeting at his grandfather Zerelli's house, which they referred to as "the house on the hill."

The lyrics in the song also mention a sister, which suggests Bruce implicitly talks about his sister. Later in the book there is a confirmation of this: "Recollections of a summertime party in "Mansion on the Hill" (the name clearly reminiscent of Anthony Zerilli's House on the Hill) filter through the stalks of corn where the uninvited young narrator hides with his sister to take in the music and lights." (thanks, Rasmus - Stockholm, Sweden, for above 2)

This was the first song Springsteen finished writing for Nebraska. Springsteen recorded it as a demo on a 4-track tape recorder in his house on Jan 3, 1982. This and the other songs he recorded that day became the album.

"Mansion On The Hill" is also the title of 1948 Hank Williams song.

Johnny Cash covered this on the 2000 album Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska.