Live 14 Jul 2005 version
[Spoken intro:] One of the greatest love songs ever written was written by a guy named Geno Washington, a soul singer from, I believe, Detroit, who wrote a song called "I'm A Coward When It Comes To Love". And uh, it was the directness of the title that sort of got to the heart of the whole thing, you know. I forget how it went, uh... "I ain't afraid of no lion, I ain't afraid of no grizzly bear", you know, uh... "I ain't afraid of old King Kong," uh, something about Samson losing his hair. And uh, if there ain't one thing in this whole wide world that I am frightened of except, "I'm a coward when it comes to love, I'm a coward when it comes to, I'm a coward when it comes to love". You get the idea. So, (chuckles) because how this ties into the next song is as, is as a child growing up, my, my father told me that all love songs were, uh, government propaganda. And uh, that they were written, I guess, at the behest of the government, I would suppose, uh, in order to get people married and get your nose to the grindstone and pay taxes and uh, and this was his explanation of all the love songs on the radio. Uh, so I didn't write any love songs for about 25 years. (chuckles) But uh, and then when I did, they were, they were kind of spooky, you know. But uh, I did, on my early records I did write some hidden love songs, this one was probably one of my first and one of the best ones and uh, it's not that hidden but uh, uh, uh, I'll give it a shot, here we go. It's no "Coward When It Comes To Love" but it's alright.
Princess cards she sends me with her regards
Her barroom eyes shine vacancy, to see her you gotta look hard
I was wounded deep in battle, I stood stuffed like some soldier undaunted
To her Cheshire smile I'll stand on file, she's all I ever wanted
But you let your blue walls get in the way of these facts
Honey, get your carpetbaggers off my back
You wouldn't even give me time to cover my tracks
You said, "Here's your mirror and your ball and jacks"
They ain't what I came for, I'm sure you see that too
I came for you, for you, baby I came for you, but you did not need my urgency
For you, for you, darling I came for you, but your life was one long emergency
Your cloud line urges me, my electric surges free
Crawl into my ambulance, your pulse is getting weak
Reveal yourself now to me baby while you've got the strength to speak
'Cause they're waiting for you at Bellevue yeah with their oxygen masks
But I could give it all to you if only you would ask
Don't call for your surgeon, even he says it's too late
It ain't your lungs this time, it's your heart that holds your fate
Don't give me my money, honey I don't want it back
You and your pony face and your union jack
Well you can take that local joker and teach him how to act
I swear I was never that way even when I really cracked
Didn't you think I knew that you were born with the power of a locomotive
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?
Your Chelsea suicide with no apparent motive
You could laugh and cry in a single sound
Your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds
Remember how I kept you waiting when it was my turn to be the god
Now you were not quite half so proud when I found you broken on the beach
Remember how I poured salt on your tongue and hung just out of reach
The band they played the homecoming theme as I caressed your cheek
And that ragged, jagged melody, still clings to me like a leech
That medal you wore on your chest always got in the way
You were like a little girl with a trophy, so soft to buy her way
We were both hitchhikers but you had your ears tuned to the roar
Of some metal-tempered engine on an alien distant shore
So you left to find a better reason than the one we were living for
It's not that nursery mouth I came back for
It's not the way that you're stretched out on the floor
'Cause I've broken all your windows and I rammed through all your doors
And who am I to ask you to lick my sores?
You should know it's true
I came for you, for you, baby I came for you, but you did not need my urgency
For you, for you, darling I came for you, but your life was one long emergency
Your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free
For you, for you, baby, I came for you
For you, for you, darling, I came for you
For you, for you, baby, I came for you
The above lyrics are for the live 14 Jul 2005 performance of FOR YOU at Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Canada, during the Devils & Dust Solo Acoustic Tour. The song was played solo on acoustic guitar. Introducing the song, Springsteen spoke about Gino Washington's I'M A COWARD and sang a snippet of his version of the song (see the live 25 Jan 1988 version of I'M A COWARD).
List of available versions of FOR YOU on this website:
FOR YOU [Album version]