ICEMAN^©

a.k.a. THE ICEMAN

Tracks version

Sleepy town ain't got the guts to budge
Baby, this emptiness has already been judged
I wanna go out tonight, I wanna find out what I got

You're a strange part of me, you're a preacher's girl
And I don't want no piece of this mechanical world
Got my arms open wide and my blood is runnin' hot

We'll take the midnight road right to the devil's door
And even the white angels of Eden with their flamin' swords
Won't be able to stop us from hittin' town in this dirty old Ford

Well it don't take no nerve when you got nothin' to guard
I got tombstones in my eyes and I'm runnin' real hard
My baby was a lover and the world just blew her away

Once they tried to steal my heart, beat it right outta my head
But baby they didn't know that I was born dead
I am the iceman, fightin' for the right to live

I say better than the glory roads of heaven, better off ridin'
Hellbound in the dirt, better than the bright lines of the freeway
Better than the shadows of your daddy's church
Better than the waiting, baby better off is the search

A Darkness On The Edge Of Town outtake recorded on 27 Oct 1977 at The Record Plant, New York City. Contains some lyrics that later appear in BADLANDS. Bruce completely forgot this song existed until he started listening to material to compile the Tracks box set (read interview below).

The song has been circulated on bootlegs for years: The Definitive Darkness Outtakes Collection, The Iceman, Son You May Kiss The Bride... That circulating version is actually the same recording that appears on Tracks, but the mix is different: it has some backing vocals and the sound is not so clean (it suffers from drop-outs).

Played live for the first time during the Devils & Dust tour on 17 May 2005 at the Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, PA. Bruce introduced the song as being written for the Darkness On The Edge Of Town album, and he's never played it live before. It was also reported that the song was sound-checked that afternoon. Check out the live 17 May 2005 version.

From the interview with Mark Hagen on MOJO Magazine, Jan 1999:

Mark Hagen:
One of the pleasures is actually tracking the evolution of some of the material; Santa Ana has got a couple of lines that crop up in She's The One, and Living On The Edge Of The World is Open All Night, effectively.

Bruce:
If you have a good line, you don't like to throw it - you don't write that many. If I came up with a line that I liked I always tried to use it because writing was hard and, for one reason or another, things would begin here and end up there. Bob Benjamin sent me a tape with about three songs on it, and Iceman was one of them. I had forgotten I had even written it and I had no idea what it was, and I went back and it was a pretty nice song. Finding some of the things you'd forgot you had done, that was fun.

Mark Hagen:
Do you really forget?

Bruce:
Yes. There were some things that I forgot I'd done - Give The Girl A Kiss, which was a big sort of party tune, I had forgotten; Iceman, like Born In The USA, was just something that I didn't get at the time that I did it. When I went back and listened I realized that the reason I left it off Nebraska was partly because we'd already cut the band version, and this one I felt hadn't really nailed it. But it came off pretty well, when I came back and I listened to it.