Live July 2018 version
Gonna add this song to our set tonight. All right, this is uh, in the final days of Patti's first pregnancy. I receive a surprise visit from my father at my home in LA. You know, he had driven 500 miles, unannounced, to knock on my door. That's his style. So at 11:00 a.m., we sit in the sunlit dining room and we're nursing morning beers. That's his style. It's my father's breakfast of champions. When my dad, never a talkative man, right, blurted out, "You've been very good to us." And I nodded that I had, you know? And uh... and then he says, "And I wasn't very good to you." And the room just... well, stood still. As to my shock, you know, the unacknowledgeable was being acknowledged. If I... if I didn't know better, I would have sworn an apology of some sort was being made. And it was. Here in the last days, before I was to become a father, my own father was visiting me to warn me of the mistakes that he had made. And to warn me not to make them with my own children. To release them from the chain of our sins, my father's and mine and our fathers' before. That they may be free to make their own choices and to live their own lives. We are ghosts or we are ancestors in our children's lives. We either lay our mistakes, our burdens upon them and we haunt them. Or we assist them in laying those old burdens down, and we free them from the chain of our own flawed behavior. And as ancestors, we walk alongside of them, and we assist them in finding their own way and some transcendence. My father, on that day, was petitioning me for an ancestral role in my life after being a ghost for a long, long time. He wanted me to write a new end to our relationship, and he wanted me to be ready for the new beginning that I was about to experience. It was the greatest moment in my life with my dad. And it was all that I needed.
Yeah. (Wipes a tear and sighs).
Out where the creek turns shallow and sandy
And the moon comes skimming away the stars
The wind in the mesquite comes rushing over the hilltops
Straight into my arms
Straight into my arms
I'm riding hard carrying a cache of roses
And a fresh map that I made
Tonight I'm gonna get birth naked and bury my old soul
And dance on its grave
I'm gonna dance on its grave
It's been a long time coming, my dear
It's been a long time coming, but now it's here
Now it's here
Well my daddy he was just a stranger
Lived in a hotel downtown
When I was a kid he was just somebody
Somebody I'd see around
Somebody I'd see around
Now down below and pulling on my shirt
I got some kids of my own
If I had one wish in this god forsaken world, kids
It'd be your mistakes would be your own
Yeah your sins would be your own
It's been a long time coming, my dear
It's been a long time coming, but now it's here
And now it's here
Well out 'neath the arms of Cassiopeia
Where the sword of Orion sweeps
It's me and you, Rosie, crackling like crossed wires
You breathing in your sleep
You breathing in your sleep
There's just a spark of a campfire left burning
Two kids in a sleeping bag beside
Reach 'neath your shirt, lay my hands across your belly
And feel another one kicking inside
And I ain't gonna fuck it up this time
Oh it's been a long time coming, my dear
Oh it's been a long time coming, but now it's here
Now it's here
The above lyrics are for the live July 2018 performance of LONG TIME COMIN' at Walter Kerr Theatre in New York City, NY, during Springsteen On Broadway. The song was played solo on acoustic guitar and harmonica.
This performance of LONG TIME COMIN' was recorded on 17 or 18 July 2018 during the taping of the Springsteen On Broadway Netflix special. It was released on the Springsteen On Broadway album in 2018.
Springsteen On Broadway was a Bruce Springsteen concert residency held at Walter Kerr Theatre (in 2017-2018) and St. James Theatre (in 2021) in New York City, NY. The show consisted of Springsteen performing five shows a week, Tuesday through Saturday, at the Broadway theatres. The sold-out series of performances began with seven previews starting on 03 Oct 2017 and officially opened on 12 Oct 2017. It was extended three times after its initial eight-week run, running through 15 Dec 2018 and bringing the total number of performances at Walter Kerr Theatre to 238. On 10 Jun 2018, Springsteen received a special Tony Award for his Broadway show. In 2021, an additional limited run was announced, this time held at St. James Theatre instead of Walter Kerr Theatre. This new series of performances opened on 26 Jun 2021 and ran through 04 Sep 2021, bringing the total number of performances at both theatres to 268.
The show featured Springsteen, solo, playing guitar, piano, and harmonica, performing his music, restating incidents from his 2016 autobiography Born To Run, and performing other spoken reminiscences written for the show. His wife, Patti Scialfa, has also appeared at most shows, singing backing vocals on a total of three different songs.
Springsteen On Broadway, a Netflix special directed by Grammy- and Emmy-winning filmmaker Thom Zimny, was filmed during two special invitation-only shows on 17 and 18 Jul 2018. The film launched globally on Netflix on 16 Dec 2018 at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time, just hours after the final Broadway performance at Walter Kerr Theatre closed. Two days prior, on 14 Dec 2018, Columbia Records released Springsteen On Broadway, an audio album encompassing the full film soundtrack. The audio was mixed by Bob Clearmountain and mastered by Bob Ludwig. The album is available physically as a 2-disc CD set or a 4-disc LP set, as well as digitally.
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List of available versions of LONG TIME COMIN' on this website:
LONG TIME COMIN' [Album version]