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Bruce Springsteen - My Father's House

Bruce Springsteen - My Father's House Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Nebraska
Released: 1982

My Father's House Lyrics

Last night I dreamed that I was a child
Out where the pines grow wild and tall
I was trying to make it home through the forest
Before the darkness falls

I heard the wind rustling through the trees
And ghostly voices rose from the fields
I ran with my heart pounding down that broken path
With the devil snappin' at my heels

I broke through the trees, and there in the night
My Father's House stood shining hard and bright
The branches and brambles tore my clothes and scratched my arms
But I ran till I fell, shaking in his arms

I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart
Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts
I got dressed, and to that house I did ride
From out on the road, I could see its windows shining in light

I walked up the steps and stood on the porch
A woman I didn't recognize came and spoke to me through a chained door
I told her my story, and who I'd come for
She said "I'm sorry, son, but no one by that name lives here anymore"

My father's house shines hard and bright
It stands like a beacon calling me in the night
Calling and calling, so cold and alone
Shining 'cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned

Writer/s: GIBB, BARRY / GIBB, ROBIN
Publisher: Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

My Father's House Song Chart

This was the last song Springsteen finished for Nebraska, an album that became solo Springsteen when he felt adding the band detracted from the feel of the songs.

Springsteen wrote this based on childhood memories of his family, and his distant relationship with his father. Other songs where Springsteen alludes to his father include "Factory," "Independence Day," and "Adam Raised A Cain."

Bruce Springsteen - Used Cars

Bruce Springsteen - Used Cars Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Nebraska
Released: 1982

Used Cars Lyrics

Used Cars Song Chart

Springsteen: "The exciting story of my own personal life."

Springsteen wrote this from the viewpoint of him as a child. He would often introduce this by sharing various childhood memories.

Recorded as a demo by Springsteen on a 4-track tape recorder in his house. After trying it with the band, he decided this and the other songs that would make up Nebraska sounded best as he originally recorded them.

Ani DiFranco covered this in 2000 on Badlands, a tribute album of songs from the album Nebraska.

Bruce Springsteen - Highway Patrolman

Bruce Springsteen - Highway Patrolman Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Nebraska
Released: 1982

Highway Patrolman Lyrics

My name is Joe Roberts I work for the state
I'm a sergeant out of Perrineville barracks number eight
I always done an honest job as honest as I could
I got a brother named Frankie and Frankie ain't no good

Now ever since we was young kids it's been the same come down
I get a call over the radio Frankie's in trouble downtown
Well if it was any other man, I'd put him straight away
But when it's your brother sometimes you look the other way

Yeah me and Frankie laughin' and drinkin'
Nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band
Played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"

I catch him when he's strayin' like any brother would
Man turns his back on his family well he just ain't no good

Well Frankie went in the army back in 1965
I got a farm deferment, settled down, took Maria for my wife
But them wheat prices kept on droppin' till it was like we were gettin'
Robbed
Frankie came home in '68, and me, I took this job

Yeah we're laughin' and drinkin'
Nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band
Played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"

I catch him when he's strayin' teach him how to walk that line
Man turns his back on his family he ain't no friend of mine

Well the night was like any other, I got a call 'bout quarter to nine
There was trouble in a roadhouse out on the Michigan line
There was a kid lyin' on the floor lookin' bad bleedin' hard from his head
There was a girl cry'n' at a table and it was Frank, they said

Well I went out and I jumped in my car and I hit the lights
Well I musta done one hundred and ten through Michigan county that night
It was out at the crossroads, down 'round Willow bank
Seen a Buick with Ohio plates. Behind the wheel was Frank

Well I chased him through them county roads
Till a sign said "Canadian border five miles from here"
I pulled over the side of the highway and watched his tail-lights disappear

Me and Frankie laughin' and drinkin'
Nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band
Played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"

Writer/s: ACOSTA, GEORGE/RENEE, NADINE
Publisher: Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Highway Patrolman Song Chart

This is told from the viewpoint of the highway patrolman who has to deal with his brother constantly getting in trouble with the law.

Springsteen recorded this in one take on a 4-track tape deck. Intended as a demo for the band to work with, he decided that this and the other songs he recorded sounded best as they were and Nebraska became a solo album.

Johnny Cash used this to open his 1983 album Johnny 99. The album was named after another Springsteen song that Cash also covered.

This song was the basis for the 1991 Sean Penn move The Indian Runner.

A version with The Seeger Sessions Band that Springsteen performed on his "American Land" tour appeared on this 2007 album The Sessions Band: Live in Dublin. (thanks, Bertrand - Paris, France)

The lyric "When the band played Night of the Johnstown Flood" concerns a flood that engulfed the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania on the night of May 21, 1889. It was caused by a ferocious storm that broke down the South Fork Dam, 15 miles upstream. 20 million tons of water engulfed the town and 2,000 lives were lost. Over the years several songs have been written about the flood and it is thought that Springsteen is most likely referring to Mack Moody's 1963 version of the traditional folk song "Jonestown Flood."

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.

Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Nebraska
Released: 1982

Nebraska Lyrics

I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died

From the town of Lincoln Nebraska with a sawed-off .410 on my lap
Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path

I can't say that I'm sorry for the things that we done
At least for a little while sir me and her we had us some fun

The jury brought in a guilty verdict and the judge he sentenced me to death
Midnight in a prison storeroom with leather straps across my chest

Sheriff when the man pulls that switch sir and snaps my poor neck back
You make sure my pretty baby is sittin' right there on my lap

They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd
Be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world

Writer/s: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Publisher: DOWNTOWN DLJ SONGS
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Nebraska Song Chart

This song is about Charles Starkweather, who was 19 when he went on a murder spree in 1958. Along with his 14-year-old girlfriend Caril Fugate, he killed 11 people in Nebraska and brought out fears that rebellious movies and rock music were creating a new breed of offenders. Springsteen considered "Starkweather" as the title.
In a 1996 interview with NME, Springsteen talked about writing about unsavory characters: "You're not trying to recreate the experience, your trying to recreate the emotions and the things that went into the action being taken. Those are things that everyone understands, those are things that everyone has within them. The action is the symptom, that's what happened, but the things that caused that action to happen, that's what everyone knows about - you know about it, I know about it. It's inside of every human being. Those are the things you gotta mine, that's the well that you gotta dip into and, if you're doing that, you're going to get something central and fundamental about those characters."

The 1973 movie Badlands, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, was inspired by Starkweather's story. After seeing a poster for the movie in a theater lobby, Springsteen used the title for his 1978 song, but did not see it until 1980.

This was the title track to the first album Springsteen recorded by himself. He recorded the songs at his house with a 4-track recorder, and after playing them with The E Street Band, decided they worked best as they were.

Springsteen included four mixes of this song on the tape of demos he gave to his producer/manager Jon Landau, which would form the album.

E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zant recalled to Rolling Stone magazine that Springsteen started cutting the tracks that made up Nebraska as demos for the band. However he saw potential in them and persuaded Springsteen to record them for an album: "I remember him playing them for me one day and said 'Here's my new songs. We'll start rehearsing them as a band soon.' And I listened to this thing and I thought to myself, 'I gotta say there's something extraordinary about this.' There was no intention of it being a record and no intention of it being released, but there was something just extraordinarily intimate about it. And I thought 'What a wonderful moment has been captured here just accidentally.' And I said to him, 'Listen, I know this is a bit strange but I honestly think this is an album unto itself and I think you should release it.' And he was like 'What do you mean? It's just demos for the band.' And I'm like 'I know you didn't intended for this to be recorded but I just know greatness when I hear it, okay? It's my thing, it's why I'm a record producer and that's why I'm your friend and I'm just telling you I think your fans will just love this and I think it's actually an important piece of work. Because it captures this amazingly strange, weirdly cinematic kind of dreamlike mood. I don't know what it is. All I know is I know greatness when I hear it and this is it, okay? And this deserves to be heard I think people will love it and I think it's a unique opportunity to actually release something absurdly intimate.'"

Introducing this song at a 1990 concert in Los Angeles, Springsteen explained: "This is a story about disconnection and isolation. I've always been fighting between feeling really isolated and looking to make some connection or find some community to belong to. I guess that's why I picked up the guitar initially. I spend enormous periods of time feeling very isolated. I guess this is a song about what happens when that side of you gets really set loose. And you don't feel the connections, and you don't feel what sense laws make or morality makes. And you're gone."

Chrissie Hynde performed this on the 2000 album Badlands, a tribute album of songs from the album Nebraska.