COWBOYS OF THE SEA

Version 3

They ride beneath the waves at 20,000 leagues
On stallions stitched to seaweed strands
So smiling, so smiling
They herd the fishes of the deep
They ride for you and me
They ranch the rich and the sunken soil
At the bottom of the sea

And in the dead of night, alive in sleep
I hear them calling me
Them deep sea desperadoes
Them midnight maelstrom freaks
The cowboys of the sea

On wings of sleep I pierce the deep
And ride like a hurricane
At midnight still I paid my bill
And I turned my back on the land
With the help of Old Paint, that seaweed nag
Its just Jesse James and me
We ride the depths and rob the banks
At the bottom of the sea

Oh and with a seaman's grip on navigation
And some fired, hired hands
We ride out to confront the nation
And lend a cowboy's hand

We do the dolphin's dance duet
My mermaid babe and me
Then I ride off into the blue sunset
At the bottom of the sea

And with the seaman's grip on submarining
And some aqualung outlaws
Our guns are made of solid dreamin'
And bullets from a broken cause
And with hand held high to touch the sky
A good Texas Ranger I'll be
But sometimes I feel like a lone stranger
'Midst the cowboys of the sea

Oh and man above he cannot make love
He must rape his mother the sea
And because of his greed
We're a vanishing breed
We cowboys of the sea

Know from various 1972 demos, maybe played live sometimes in that period. These lyrics refer to the version recorded in Jun-Jul 1972 at Media and 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt, NY, and that later appeared on the Demo Tapes.
Version 1 and version 2 are very similar, it is even hard to spot the differences, but I included them because I am a "gotta have it all" Bruce Springsteen fan.

The amount of demos featuring Wild West and cowboy imagery suggest that Bruce had enough material for an early concept album, or was it that he was simply lost in the aura that the code of the cowboys promised? Bruce said himself he wrote his early songs in fits and bursts of energy, a storyline lost in a flow of pictures and rhymes. This track manages to combine both elements.