ALONE

Yesterday I walked the world alone
Sunlight caught a glade of cobblestone
Trees like death slowly lost their leaves
Woodland sounds like doors swing at the breeze

Twigs beneath my feet like bones
Yesterday's life new is crumbling old
Trees like towers once so high
Till storm and lightning fall them from the sky

Dead limb creaks like someone's dirty laugh
or girder rusting slowly starts to crack
Here is dream flows into a cave
Like gutter cracked to subway slowly drains

Berries ripe unto the ground they fall
Dust plays ghostly instruments in silent halls
Through the world silence it did creep
And rapped the world in everlasting sleep

Page last updated: 18 Aug 2010

Info

ALONE is a song written by Norman Luck (lyrics) and Bruce Springsteen (music) in late 1967.

Norman Luck

Artist, pianist, violinist and songwriter Norman Luck, a friend of Springsteen's since 1965, was a member of the Jersey Shore band Purpul Dyneste, who became the regular "house band" at Freehold's Left Foot Teen Club during that club's brief existence (Sep 1867 to Mar 1968). Purpul Dyneste opened for Springsteen's band The Castiles a number of times, including 16 Sep 1967 during the Left Foot's grand opening.

Composition

Luck wrote the lyrics, Springsteen the music, to ALONE. According to Luck, the song was written by the two of them one day while at Springsteen's South Street home in Freehold (his parents home). Bruce wrote the music on piano (not guitar), while Norman wrote the lyrics at the same time, sitting with Bruce. Bruce's parents had an old piano in the living room in the house - the primary source of Springsteen's early, self-taught skills on that instrument. ALONE was the only song that Luck and Springsteen ever wrote together, although they did start a couple of other songs together during this same period that they never finished.

Live History

ALONE, like the other introspective, singer-songwriter material Springsteen was writing during this period, was not performed by The Castiles. However Norman believes Bruce probably performed ALONE at some point during Bruce's solo shows in mid-late 1968 at venues such as The Off Broad Street Coffee House in Red Bank, NJ. Springsteen utilized both acoustic guitar and piano at these solo shows; in fact Norman recalls one Springsteen solo performance at a local school where Bruce utilized only a baby grand piano.

1968 Lyrics Notebook

Thanks to the It's Only Rock 'N Roll online auction that was held in June 2006, a handful of Springsteen handwritten lyrics sheets and setlists saw the light for the first time. The highlight of the auction was a Bruce Springsteen spiral notebook of never before published collection of 20 handwritten lyrics from 1968:

1. CLOUDS [2 pages]
2. CRYSTAL [2 pages]
3. THE WAR SONG [2 pages]
4. THE WINDOW [2 pages]
5. A WINTER'S REVELATION (IN 9 ILLUSIONS) [3 pages]
6. THE VIRGIN FLOWER [3 pages]
7. FOR NEVER ASKING [3 pages]
8. UPON THIS DAY (EURYDICE) [2 pages]
9. UNTIL THE RAIN COMES [3 pages]
10. INSIDE THE CASTLE WALLS [3 pages]
11. DEATH OF A GOOD MAN [2 pages]
12. ALONE [2 pages, lyrics by Norman Luck]
13. NEW YORK MORNING LOVE [2 pages]
14. SLUM SENTIMENTS [2 pages]
15. SUNLINE [2 pages]
16. MISSISSIPPI [2 pages]
17. untitled [1 page]
18. LOVE CYCLE [3 pages]
19. THE WIND AND THE RAIN [2 pages]
20. untitled [1 page]

The first page of the notebook is a "contents page" listing the first 15 songs.

Songs #1 to #4 were transcribed on 26 Apr 1968. Songs #5 to #7 were transcribed on 29 Apr 1968. Songs #8 to #11 were transcribed on 30 Apr 1968. These songs (#1 to #11) appear to have been transcribed into the notebook in a tidy fashion in three batches over a five day period. Same pen and writing style. These are likely to represent writings that Bruce had accumulated over some time in late 1967 or early 1968, and then shifted into the newly purchased writing notebook.

There is no transcription date noted for songs #12 to #15. The writing style is more rushed and multiple pens have been utilized (both on the individual songs and in the "Contents Page" listing). These 4 songs may have been transcribed at separate times into the notebook over a more scattered timeframe after April 1968 (perhaps summer or fall 1968).

Items #16 to #20 are undated and show much more "work-in-progress" characteristics. Various pens were used. These are likely to date from fall 1968 to late 1968 to possibly (in the case of #19 and #20) the early months of 1969.

It certainly appears that the notebook (in total) has Springsteen writings spanning the entire year of 1968.

Song #17 seems to be too short to be a completed song, and is most probably just a work-in-progress idea. Lyrics are (see scan here):

Jesus Mary and Joseph
Can you help a lost sheep please
Won't you show me the way
Cause I got more confused each day and
I got calluses on my knees

Song #20: This appears to be merely an "lyrics ideas" sheet, with no song really formulated yet (see scan here). The first two paragraphs are in completely different ink than the final (longer paragraph). The first two paragraphs seem to have been written at the same time and seem to relate to each other. The final (longer paragraph) seems unrelated to the first two, and contains lyrics from the 1969 Child's song RESURRECTION.

Several of the first 15 song titles, or slight variations of the titles, (particularly those from the first batch of 11 titles in the book) have been known about (in vague terms) for many years via the recollections of some people who actually saw Springsteen play solo at the time - including unpublished interview comments by the late Curt Fluhr (of the Castiles).

Jeannie Clark, who performed solo shows with Bruce at the Off Broadstreet Coffee House in Red Bank, NJ, in mid 1968 (she even performed once at the time with The Castiles in place of vocalist Paul Popkin), recalled several of the song titles years ago and has recalled that Bruce had a repertoire of about 10-20 self-penned songs at the time. But nobody had ever seen any setlist or lyrics or audio to back up Jeannie's (or others') memory. For this reason, this notebook is such an important historical find.

Norman Luck, co-writer of ALONE, vaguely recalls some of the other song titles in the notebook, and recalls them as being from the late 1967 to spring 1968 period.

According to Brucebase, the first 15 of the above songs were performed in May 1968 at The Off Broad Street Coffee House in Red Bank, NJ, which opened in May 1968 to cater for the acoustic orientated, singer/songwriter music scene then taking hold in the area. The club provided "open mike and hoot nights" for aspiring young songwriters to perform. Springsteen was among the first to take advantage of the opportunity and is known to have given at least two solo performances in May and several others during the summer. These performances included an impressive array of folk-orientated songs Bruce had written in recent months - material that didn't fit into the rock setlists performed by The Castiles. The above-mentioned 15 songs (all Springsteen originals) represent most of his original solo-oriented music repertoire played at these shows during May-Aug 1968. One of these songs, ALONE, was co-written by Springsteen and Norman Luck (leader of the band Purpul Dyneste). The Springsteen songwriting style of this mid 1968 period bears similarities to the lyricism displayed in his 1972 solo demos and was strongly influenced by Tim Buckley, Leonard Cohen, Donovan and Dylan - and these four artists songs were often intermingled with Springsteen's originals during the solo shows.

For additional information, read the notes about this item as published on the It's Only Rock 'N Roll auction page (note that there are some minor mistakes/inaccuracies).

The bid on this notebook started at $5,000.00, and reached $57,706.61. The auction also included many other lyrics sheets and setlists from the late '60s or early '70s, which included additional songs, most of which were also unheard-of: WE'VE GOT TO DO IT NOW, SOME TIMES AT NIGHT, IF YOU WANT TO GET HIGH, OH NO NO NO, SPANISH DREAMS, GYPSY RIDER, SHE'S GOT THE LORD, and others... We don't know if all of these songs are original compositions or covers.

The collector who purchased the notebook in the late 1980's never gave out any information about it. So we are lucky this was a public auction sale, or else we may have never seen the contents.

Request

If you have any corrections or additional info, please contact me via the below form or by email: . If you own or have access to the above-mentioned spiral notebook, I would be very grateful if you'd send me higher resolution scans. You will be credited (unless you prefer not to). Thanks in advance.