LEAVIN' TRAIN^©

Official studio version

Baby when I ask you if everything is alright
You whisper "Don't worry" and you shut out the light
Well now black is black in this bed we're laying
Yeah and I wanna believe the words yeah that your lips are saying

Whoa but your eyes look like a leavin' train
Yeah they keep on dragging me down
Your eyes look like a leavin' train
They keep on draggin'
They keep on draggin'
They keep on draggin' me down

Well I did anything just to try to get close to you
Yeah I took it step by step yeah like a man's supposed to
Tell me now, is this my, baby, is this my contrition
To have the love that I longed for fill me with suspicion

'Cause your eyes look like a leavin' train
Yeah they keep on dragging me down
Your eyes look like a leavin' train
They keep on draggin'
They keep on draggin'
They keep on draggin' me down

[guitar solo]
Whoaaa yeah yeah...

So now it's tellin' time, oh my little sister
Now can I believe the words, the words of love you whisper
Is my train in vain, oh has my soul gone to waste
Am I just a victim of, a victim of my lost faith

Whoa but your eyes look like a leavin' train
Yeah they keep on dragging me down
'Cause your eyes look like a leavin' train
They keep on draggin'
They keep on draggin'
They keep on draggin' me down

[guitar solo]
Whoaaa yeah yeah...

Page last updated: 15 Aug 2008

Intro

Music and lyrics by Bruce Springsteen, LEAVIN' TRAIN is a very guitar driven Human Touch outtake that was released on the Tracks box set in 1998.

Composition and Recording

Jon Landau mentioned in an interview that Springsteen did virtually no songwriting during this Oct 1988 - Aug 1989 period. LEAVIN' TRAIN was probably written after that writing break, and, of course, prior to the song's 27 Feb 1990 recording date.

The song title had circulated among fans after being registered at the US Copyright Office 06 Sept 1995.

According to Brucebase, the sessions for what became the Human Touch album took place entirely on the west coast (a first for Springsteen) and spanned about a 19-month period, from Sep 1989 to Mar 1991. According to the Tracks booklet liner notes, LEAVIN' TRAIN was recorded on 27 Feb 1990 at Oceanway Studios, Los Angeles, CA.

On LEAVIN' TRAIN, Springsteen handles guitar and vocals, and is backed up by Ian McLagan of the Small Faces on organ, Human Touch mainstay Jeff Porcaro on drums, and Bob Glaub, a member of Jackson Browne's band from 1978-1992, on bass. This 3-man backing band is the same that Springsteen used a few months earlier, in Sep 1989, when he recorded his rendition of Elvis' VIVA LAS VEGAS.

Lyrics

On the Tracks booklet, the line "Yeah and I wanna believe the words yeah that your lips are saying" is written as "And I wanna believe the words that you're saying". Other lyrics in this song also slightly differ from what's on the booklet.

The Tracks box set

In the liner notes of Tracks, Bruce Springsteen introduces the box set as follows:

During long intervals between my record releases, as I was spending more and more time in the studio, when I met a fan out on the street I was often asked, "What are you guys doing in there?" I regularly pondered that question myself.

What we were doing in there was making a lot of music, a lot more music than I could use at any one time. As a result, my albums became a series of choices – what to include, what to leave out? I based my decisions on my creative point of view at the moment – the subject I was trying to focus on, something musical or emotional I was trying to express. In certain instances, as on Darkness on the Edge of Town, Nebraska, and The Ghost of Tom Joad, these choices crystallized the album I was making. On some of my other records the reasons I had for choosing one song over another, in hindsight, feel a good deal less significant. One of the results of working like this was that a lot of music, including some of my favorite things, remained unreleased.

This collection contains everything from the first notes I sang in the Columbia recording studio, my early and later work with the E Street Band, through to my music in the 90s. It's the alternate route to some of the destinations I travelled to on my records, an invitation into the studio on the many nights we spent making music in search of the records we presented to you. I'm glad to finally be able to share this music; here are some of the ones that got away.

-- Bruce Springsteen, September 1998

Bruce Springsteen's albums were thematically linked even if they were not strictly concept albums; so some tracks that didn't fit the theme of the album ended up orphaned, not necessarily because they didn't meet his high standards, but because, he says, they didn't fit in with the tone or themes he mined for each set. Many of these unreleased studio outtakes got under the hands of bootleggers. Discussing that issue in 1984, Springsteen told Rolling Stone's Kurt Loder, "We record a lot of material, but we just don't release it all. [...] I always tell myself that some day I'm gonna put an album out with all this stuff on it that didn't fit in. I think there's some good material there that should come out. Maybe at some point, I'll do that."

During a break in The Ghost Of Tom Solo Acoustic Tour, Springsteen thought that "if it's gonna be a year or longer in between records, I have all this music that I know is very good that I never released and I should release some of it whether it was just a CD or something. In that period of time, I should put something out because people would like to have it and I'd like to see it get out." He told Toby Scott (his audio archivist and recording engineer), "send me all the archives, send everything that we recorded". Scott then went to work gathering the potential material from Springsteen's massive audio library (located, along with Sony's sound archives, in the high-tech Iron Mountain facility near Buffalo, NY). "For a week or so," he told Billboard in a Nov 1998 interview, "I just listened to everything that I'd done that we hadn't put out. I made some very brief notes in a notebook, and then I just put it away. It was something that I could do at some point when I get to that place in a new project where I'm not sure how long it's going to take and it would be nice to sort of fill the gap so the fans wouldn't be so long without hearing any music from me".

Springsteen told Mark Hagen in an interview for Mojo Magazine published in January 1999, "So it began just with that idea and we listened to about 250 songs, maybe more, I made quick notes in a notebook and put it away. A year went by, more maybe, and I came off the Tom Joad tour and I began to write acoustically again and I wrote about half a record. Then I got stuck and said, 'Well, I'm going to put this aside for a while.' Then I wrote half of an electric record, and hit the same place. So I thought, instead of waiting for another year to put something out I'll put some of this music together. So once again I went back to the archives." According to interview comments made by engineer Toby Scott (Springsteen's audio archivist and recording engineer), it was in February 1998 during solo sessions being conducted at Thrill Hill East (Bruce's home studio in Colt's Neck, NJ) that Springsteen told Scott that the time was right to proceed with the long-anticipated box set of archived, unreleased studio takes. Thrill Hill East served as the main operational center for all Tracks project activities.

Springsteen told Billboard that the songs were culled from between 200 and 300 tunes. According to Toby Scott, the number was down to about 128 songs by late June 1998. It was then narrowed down yet again in July to about 100 songs that were prepped for the Tracks release. Although the project was originally projected to be a 6-disc set, there was a commercial decision made later in the summer to reduce the size of the release to a 4-disc (66-track) set. The package was delivered to Sony in mid-September in order to facilitate the mid-November 1998 release schedule.

Unreleased songs from the Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ sessions were not included on the box set due to ongoing and still-unresolved court proceedings involving most of these unreleased 1972 recordings. The court battle wasn't resolved until in 2001, and those material are now free for release at any time. The opening four tracks of the box set – which were culled from Springsteen's 03 May 1972 Columbia Records audition – were not part of the court proceedings.

The Tracks box set was released on Columbia Records on 10 Nov 1998. It's a 4-disc set consisting of a total of 66 tracks (almost 4.5 hours long), 10 of which were heretofore unavailable single B-sides, 6 were demos and alternate versions of already-released material, and 50 (48 studio and 2 live) were never-before-released songs recorded during the sessions for Springsteen's many albums. Some tracks were treated with a recent touch-up here or there to give the older recordings a fresh polish.

• Disc 1 consists of material from 1972 to 1980, including Springsteen's very first Columbia Records audition for legendary A & R executive John Hammond. This disc also features additional songs most of which recorded for (but never released on) Springsteen's first four albums.
   
• Disc 2 consists of material from 1979 to 1983, taken primarily from the recording sessions of The River, Nebraska, and Born In The USA. Springsteen describes this disc as "almost the completely other album from 'The River'."
   
• Disc 3 consists of material from 1982 to 1987, taken primarily from the recording sessions of Born In The USA and Tunnel Of Love.
   
• Disc 4 consists of material from 1989 to 1998, taken primarily from the recording sessions of Human Touch.

Click here to display/hide detailed track listing with locations and dates.

Live history

Bruce Springsteen never performed LEAVIN' TRAIN live. The song was however reported to be sound-checked during The Reunion Tour, on 08 May 2000 at the Civic Center, Hartford, CT, but was not played during the show.