Ain't Got You

Ain't Got You is the opening track on the TUNNEL OF LOVE album (released in 1987). It's a song about a person who has all the riches, wealth, fame, and other material possessions you could possibly want and more, but feels incomplete because he "ain't got you." By '87, Bruce Springsteen probably had all that stuff, but by then his marriage to Julianne Phillips was on the rocks. Reportedly, it was obvious to anyone who saw a show on the Tunnel of Love tour in 1988 that something was going on between Bruce and Patti Scialfa, his new band member/backup singer. She and Nils Lofgren joined the E Street Band on the Born in the USA tour, and I hear things got very hot during the Tunnel tour. One wonders if he's singing about Patti in Ain't Got You. I'm sure at the time, if I had seen a show, I'd be disgusted with Bruce and maybe lose a little respect for him. But knowing what I know now in 2010 - after Bruce and Patti have enjoyed 20+ years of marriage and raised 3 children - the split with Julianne was inevitable and Patti was a much better match for the Boss. In any case, TOL has been nicknamed The Divorce Album, and signified a maturation and acknowledgment of mortality for Springsteen. For the first time, the songs were beginning to touch on what happens when the dreams either don't come to fruition or go sour. Bruce himself stated that he'd spent his whole career putting people in cars. Now it was time to figure out where they all end up. Another departure from the norm was the way the album was recorded. All members of the late 80s incarnation of the E Street Band played on the album, but they all came in separately and recorded their parts. All other albums before this were pretty much recorded live in the studio.

So, how do I feel about Ain't Got You? I love the song. Makes a great album opener, concert opener (for me, I mean. Bruce has never opened with this song.), and seque-way song into something else. I played it a lot in my live shows in 2000, then it popped up once in 2002 as the opener to a show I played in California, then found its way into the setlist for Schroederfest 2004. Nothing since then I don't think. Springsteen's live history with the song was it was played extensively on the TOL tour as a medley sequeing into She's the One. It then stayed on the shelf until the Devils and Dust tour in 2005, played on electric. It has had no live plays since then.

It had a slightly different arrangement on the Tunnel tour, which you'll hear below. I like the way he tailored it to better fit in with She's the One, and I wish I knew who was doing that masterful guitar work.



Here's me playing a faithful-to-the-original version, taken from a show I played on July 8, 2000. The reason it ends so abruptly is because it goes right into a song I wrote called Your Time.