{"id":806720,"date":"2020-04-23T09:58:50","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T15:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=988832"},"modified":"2020-04-23T09:58:50","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T15:58:50","slug":"flashback-tom-waits-performs-a-moving-jersey-girl-in-1986","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/flashback-tom-waits-performs-a-moving-jersey-girl-in-1986\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Tom Waits Performs a Moving \u2018Jersey Girl\u2019 in 1986"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bruce Springsteen<\/a> has no shortage of original songs about New Jersey that he could have played near the end of the Jersey 4 Jersey<\/em> fundraising event<\/a> on Wednesday night. \u201c4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)\u201d would have been a touching tribute to his adopted boardwalk town, while \u201cMy Hometown\u201d would have been a bittersweet look at his childhood in Freehold, and \u201cMy City of Ruins\u201d would have gone back to its original, pre-9\/11 meaning as an elegy for the struggling community of Asbury Park, now devastated once again due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Instead, he went with \u201cJersey Girl.\u201d It\u2019s been a fan favorite ever since he first played it live on the River<\/em> tour in 1981. It got more exposure in 1984 when it appeared as the B side to \u201cCover Me.\u201d Two years later, he included it on the Live 1975\u201385<\/em> box set. It never fails to rev up a crowd and get them singing along to the \u201csha la la\u201d chorus, but he\u2019s done it just 48 times in the past 37 years and it\u2019s often reserved for special nights in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s odd is that Springsteen didn\u2019t actually write the thing. That may be like learning that Brian Wilson didn\u2019t pen \u201cSurfer Girl\u201d (he did), but \u201cJersey Girl\u201d is a Tom Waits<\/a> tune. It was written about his wife Kathleen Brennan and it appears on his 1980 LP Heartattack and Vine<\/em>. Waits and Springsteen sang it together at a 1981 show<\/a> at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Check out this video of Waits singing the song alone at a 1986 gig in San Remo, Italy.)<\/p>\n

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Springsteen did add some unique touches to the song that made it his own. First off, he removed the Waits line \u201cDon\u2019t want no whores on Eighth Avenue\u201d in favor of the gentler \u201cor the girls out on the avenue.\u201d But more importantly, he added an entire verse from his discarded 1979 tune \u201cParty Lights\u201d<\/a> onto the end that frames the romance in a very different light.<\/p>\n

The Waits version is about an idyllic evening with his love at a carnival in New Jersey where they dream about a life together. There\u2019s not even a hint of darkness or despair. The \u201cParty Lights\u201d verse changes that quite a bit. The Jersey Girl is suddenly drained after a long day at a job she hates. \u201cGo in the bathroom, put your makeup on,\u201d Springsteen sings. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna take that little brat of yours and drop her off at your mom\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their night together is now a brief respite from the pressures of single motherhood and an unfulfilling career. Things are even grimmer in \u201cParty Lights,\u201d where the woman desperately misses her care-free evenings before she had the baby, but even the isolated lines end \u201cJersey Girl\u201d on a very different note. (Many other \u201cParty Lights\u201d lyrics were later used on \u201cPoint Blank.\u201d And \u201cAtlantic City\u201d also has a line where the narrator instructs a woman to \u201cput your makeup on\u201d before they head out.)<\/p>\n

Springsteen didn\u2019t sing the \u201cParty Lights\u201d verse at the end of the Jersey 4 Jersey<\/em> telecast. It was basically the Tom Waits rendition minus the \u201cwhores\u201d line, which probably seemed like the right choice considering the occasion.<\/p>\n

Waits himself hasn\u2019t played the song a single time since a 1999 gig at the Orpheum Theater in Vancouver. He also hasn\u2019t toured since 2008 or played an extended set since the 2013 Bridge School Benefit.<\/p>\n

Hopefully when this all ends, Waits and Springsteen will both hit the road for long overdue tours. At the very least, Waits could come out again at an E Street Band show to sing \u201cJersey Girl.\u201d If it does nothing else, it will remind people that he wrote it.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bruce Springsteen has no shortage of original songs about New Jersey that he could have played near the end of the Jersey 4 Jersey fundraising event on Wednesday night. \u201c4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)\u201d would have been a touching tribute to his adopted boardwalk town, while \u201cMy Hometown\u201d would have been a bittersweet look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-806720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-13 04:57:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}