Studio version #2
They ride beneath the waves at twenty-thousand 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 turned my back on the land
With the help of Old Paint, that seaweed nag, it's just Jesse James and me
We ride the depths and rob the banks at the bottom of the sea
With a seaman's grip on navigation and some fired, hired hands
We set forth to confront the nation and lend a cowboy's hand
Well, we do the dolphins dance duet, my mermaid babe and me
And I ride on into the blue sunset at the bottom of the sea
With the seaman's grip on submarining and some aqualung outlaws
Our guns are made of solid dreaming and bullets of the 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 sea
And because of his greed we're a vanishing breed, we cowboys of the sea
The above lyrics are for a studio version of COWBOYS OF THE SEA likely recorded around Jul-Aug 1972 at 914 Sound Studios in Blauvelt, NY. It features Springsteen solo on vocals and acoustic guitar. The May-Jun 1972 sessions at Pocketful Of Tunes Studios were produced by Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, and Cretecos took the role of recording engineer. See studio version #1 for more details about the song.
This studio version of COWBOYS OF THE SEA was released on the briefly-legal album Before The Fame (Pony Express Records, third issue only). See PRODIGAL SON for more details.
Before its release on the above album, this studio version of COWBOYS OF THE SEA has been circulating on some bootlegs, including The Unsurpassed Springsteen Volume 4 (Yellow Dog Records).
List of available versions of COWBOYS OF THE SEA on this website:
COWBOYS OF THE SEA [Studio version #1]
