HEAVEN'S WALL

Album version

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(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
One, two, three, four (Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)

There was a woman waiting at the well
Drawing water 'neath the desert sky blue
She said, "He'll heal the blind, raise the dead, cure the sickness out of you"
Come on men of Gideon
Come on men of Saul
Come on sons of Abraham
Waiting outside heaven's wall

Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand
Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand
And together we'll walk into Canaan land
Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand

He saw the watcher at the city gates
Jonah in the belly of the whale
He watched you walk your ragged mile
His mercy did not fail

(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
And together we'll walk into Canaan land
(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
Hey!

Lai lai-lai lai, lai lai-lai lai
(Lai lai-lai lai, lai lai-lai lai)

Whoa! Whoa!

One, two!
Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand
Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand
And together we'll walk into Canaan land
Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand

Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand
Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand
And together we'll walk into Canaan land
Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand

(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
And together we'll walk into Canaan land
(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)

(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)
And together we'll walk into Canaan land
(Raise your hand, raise your hand, raise your hand)

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Info

HEAVEN'S WALL is a song written by Bruce Springsteen and released on his 2014 album High Hopes. The above lyrics are for Bruce Springsteen's album version of HEAVEN'S WALL as released on High Hopes.

Studio Recording

HEAVEN'S WALL was originally recorded sometime between 2002 and 2008, but most likely in 2007 during the Magic recording sessions. In a 19 Dec 2013 interview that premiered on 10 Jan 2014 during Dave Marsh's Live From E Street Nation show on Sirius XM's E Street Radio channel, Bruce Springsteen said that HEAVEN'S WALL "might've been something we played with for Magic."

In a December 2013 interview for Rolling Stone, Ron Aniello told Andy Greene that the core recording of HEAVEN'S WALL was used. "We took the basic track and jumped on there with overdubs. That's pretty much the original, vocal, drum and bass." The New York Chamber Consort strings and Tom Morello's guitar are among the parts that were overdubbed in 2013. Morello is actually recorded twice playing guitar: one layer can be heard on the left channel and one layer can be heard on the right channel, giving the illusion of a call-and-response guitar battle during the guitar solo parts.

The album version of HEAVEN'S WALL was produced by Brendan O'Brien and co-produced by Ron Aniello with Bruce Springsteen. The performing musicians line-up on the track is:

• Bruce Springsteen (vocal, guitar, additional bass, percussion loop, organ, synth)
• Patti Scialifa (backing vocals)
• Garry Tallent (bass)
• Max Weinberg (drums)
• Tom Morello (lead guitar)
• Soozie Tyrell (backing vocals)
• Ron Aniello (percussion loop, synth, Farfisa organ)
• Sam Bardfeld (violin)
• Everett Bradley (percussion)
• Tawatha Agee (backing vocals)
• Keith Fluitt (backing vocals)
• Curtis King (backing vocals)
• John James (backing vocals)
• Cindy Mizelle (backing vocals)
• Al Thornton (backing vocals)
• Brenda White (backing vocals)
• Rob Mathes (New York Chamber Consort — string arrangement and conductor)
• Lisa Kim (New York Chamber Consort — concertmaster, violin)
• Quan Ge (New York Chamber Consort — violin)
• Hyunju Lee (New York Chamber Consort — violin)
• Jessica Lee (New York Chamber Consort — violin)
• Ann Lehman (New York Chamber Consort — violin)
• Joanna Mauer (New York Chamber Consort — violin)
• Suzanne Ornstein (New York Chamber Consort — violin)
• Annaliesa Place (New York Chamber Consort — violin)
• David Southorn (New York Chamber Consort — violin)
• Jeanine Wynton (New York Chamber Consort — violin)
• Sharon Yamada (New York Chamber Consort — violin)
• Maurycy Banaszek (New York Chamber Consort — viola)
• Desiree Elsevier (New York Chamber Consort — viola)
• Shmuel Katz (New York Chamber Consort — viola)
• Robert Rinehart (New York Chamber Consort — viola)
• Maria Kitsopoulos (New York Chamber Consort — cello)
• Alan Stepansky (New York Chamber Consort — cello)
• Ru Pei Yeh (New York Chamber Consort — cello)

High Hopes

High Hopes is Bruce Springsteen's eighteenth studio album. It was officially released on 14 Jan 2014 on Columbia Records. It consists of 12 tracks and clocks at 56:24. Four songs were previously released in different versions (two of which are covers), two more were previously performed live but never released, and the remaining six are new to fans (one of which is a cover). "This is music I always felt needed to be released," Springsteen wrote in the album's liner notes.

In a December 2013 interview for Rolling Stone, Springsteen told Andy Greene that he has always written and recorded significantly more songs than can fit on to whatever album he's creating at the moment. "I have a lot of this music on a computer," he said. "I bring it out on the road to amuse myself. Very often, if I have nothing to do late at night I'll bring it up and look at different bodies of music." The songs that began catching Springsteen's attention were largely recorded after he reunited with the E Street Band in 1999. "The songs were relatively current and had a similar sound picture," he said. "I was interested in putting this material together in some form because it sounded like it all fit together... You have to imagine that when I'm home or done with a tour I go into a studio and I'm surrounded by paintings that I've sorta half-finished. There might be something wrong with this one and I didn't have time to finish this one. When I go into my studio, I'm surrounded by all my music that I haven't released. I wait to see what's going to speak to me." But then they cut a few sessions in 2013 while on tour. "I said, 'Well, these sound good,'" Springsteen told Rolling Stone. "These things blend together. Suddenly, it began to feel very fresh and fit together quite well."

Work on the album started in late 2012 when Springsteen called producer Ron Aniello asking him to work on some demos that he was thinking about releasing. "I remember that Bruce called me on my birthday, so it was December 9th, 2012", Aniello told Andy Greene in a December 2013 interview for Rolling Stone. "He said to me, 'I have some songs. I want to get together.'" According to Aniello, these were old demos that Springsteen had done with Toby Scott and that had been around for a while. Springsteen told him that he wanted to get these songs in shape and see what comes out of that. Aniello was not able to sit with Springsteen to sort it all out because Springsteen was away most of the time touring with the E Street Band. "It all happened in a very unusual manner," Aniello told Rolling Stone. "There was a lot of conversations in Europe and I did some of the recording via iChat when the band was in Australia."

In a January 2014 interview for Rolling Stone, Tom Morello told Andy Greene that he wasn't aware that there was ever talk of a new studio album when they sent him a couple of songs to add guitar on. He did that in his home studio and shortly after he was recording in studio with Max Weinberg and Ron Aniello. "But these studio sessions just kept occurring without any formal notion of what we were doing," Morello recounted. "My assumption was just that 'Bruce is always recording music.' So it was fantastic that I was asked to be a part of it. I was psyched." In March 2013 Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band performed ten shows in Australia as part of the Wrecking Ball Tour. Steven Van Zandt was off filming his television series Lillyhammer and was replaced by Morello for that leg of the tour. Morello suggested to add HIGH HOPES to the live set. They worked it up during the rehearsals prior to the Australian shows and Morello then "proceeded to burn the house down with it," as Springsteen said. They then re-cut the song along with JUST LIKE FIRE WOULD at Studios 301, Australia's largest studio complex. "Tom and his guitar became my muse, pushing the rest of this project to another level," Springsteen said. He told Rolling Stone's David Fricke, "We've never had a recording session during a tour in our lives. We did a couple of things that I wanted to put down. So that was very exciting. And being with Tommy was exciting. The band — Steven, Nils, all those guys — continues to be a source of inspiration for me." Morello told Rolling Stone that he didn't get the notion that this was "coalescing into what was going to be a major release" until they were in Australia.

No less than sixteen recording studios were used in the making of High Hopes: Thrill Hill Recording (Springsteen's home studio in Colts Neck, NJ), Stone Hill Studio (Springsteen's new home studio in Colts Neck, NJ), Very Loud House (in Los Angeles, CA), Renegade Studio (in New York City, NY), Veritas Studio (in Los Angeles, CA), Southern Tracks (Atlanta, GA), East West Studios (in Los Angeles, CA), NRG Studios (in Los Angeles, CA), Village Studios (in Los Angeles, CA), Studios 301 (in Byron Bay and Sydney, Australia), Record Plant (in Los Angeles, CA), Electric Lady Studios (in New York City, NY), Avatar Studios (in New York City, NY), Sear Sound (in New York City, NY), and Berkeley Street Studio (in Santa Monica, CA).

Ron Aniello revealed that at least 20 tracks were recorded for the album. Among the tracks that didn't make the album cut were COLD SPOT, HEY BLUE EYES, AMERICAN BEAUTY, and MARY MARY.

The album was produced by Bruce Springsteen, Brendan O'Brien, and Ron Aniello. It features all E Street Band members, including the late Clarence Clemons and the late Danny Federici on several songs of what Springsteen calls "some of our best unreleased material from the past decade." The album also features an ensemble of guest artists, including Tom Morello who's featured prominently on the album, appearing on eight tracks.

High Hopes is available in three configurations: standard CD edition, limited edition, and double-disc LP. The limited edition consists of the standard audio CD and includes a bonus live DVD of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band performing the entire Born In The U.S.A. album on 30 Jun 2013 at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, England, during the Wrecking Ball Tour. The double-disc LP is pressed on 180-gram vinyl and includes a CD version of the album.

High Hopes was officially announced on 25 Nov 2013 and the release date was set for 14 Jan 2014, but on 28 Dec 2013 it became available for purchase as individual tracks in MP3 format through Amazon.com's mobile application. Although Amazon quickly removed the files, presumably recognizing its mistake, the album had already made its way onto file-sharing websites.

The album topped the charts in 20 countries, including the United States and the UK. It was Springsteen's eleventh #1 album in the US, placing him third all-time for most #1 albums only behind The Beatles and Jay-Z. It was his tenth #1 in the UK, putting him joint fifth all-time and level with The Rolling Stones and U2.

Live History: on-tour

In preparation for the High Hopes Tour, HEAVEN'S WALL is known to have been practiced during at least one of the private rehearsals that took place in January 2014 in Cape Town prior to the tour's first leg.

HEAVEN'S WALL was performed 14 times during the High Hopes Tour (34 dates, January to May 2014). The song was played in its album arrangement.

Live History: off-tour

HEAVEN'S WALL was performed off-tour on 14 Jan 2014 at Rockefeller Center in New York City, NY, during a TV appearance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. The song was played in its album arrangement, with the E Street Band and Tom Morello. See the live 14 Jan 2014 version for more details.

Covers

At least one artist has recorded and released Bruce Springsteen's HEAVEN'S WALL.

Request

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Available Versions

List of available versions of HEAVEN'S WALL on this website:

HEAVEN'S WALL [Album version]
HEAVEN'S WALL [Live 14 Jan 2014 version]

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Page last updated: 23 May 2018