Live 01 Nov 2016 version
[Spoken intro:] So there's this 80-year-old couple. They're in an alley up against the fence and they're screwing like crazy. Uh, I mean, arms are flying, legs are flying, and they're screwing and screwing and screwing, till uh... they just fall down from exhaustion. And, and the, the wife says, uh, "Ooh, you, you didn't screw me like that, you didn't even screw me like that 50 years ago!" The man says, "50 years ago that fence wasn't electrified."
Well pour me a drink Theresa in one of those glasses you dust off
And I'll watch the bones in your back like the Stations of the Cross
'Round your hair the sun lifts a halo, at your lips a crown of thorns
Whatever other deals gone down, to this one I'm sworn
I'll work for your love dear
Yeah I'll work for your love
What others may want for free
I'll work for your love
Well the dust of civilizations, yeah, and love's sweet remains
Slips off of your fingers and comes drifting down like rain
Well the pages of Revelation lie open in your empty eyes of blue
I watch you slip that comb through your hair and this I promise you
Well I'll work for your love dear
I'll work for your love
What others may want for free
I'll work for your love
Your tears they fill the rosary at your feet, my temple of bones
Here in this perdition we go on and on
Now our city of peace has crumbled, our book of faith's been tossed
And I'm just out here searching for my own piece of the cross
The late afternoon sun fills the room with the mist of the garden before the fall
I watch your hands smooth the front of your blouse and seven drops of blood fall
Well I'll work for your love dear
Yeah I'll work for your love
What others may want for free
I'll work for your love
I'll work for your love dear
Yeah I'll work for your love
Well what others may want for free
I'll work for your love
The above lyrics are for the live 01 Nov 2007 performance of I'LL WORK FOR YOUR LOVE at The Theater At Madison Square Garden in New York City, NY, during the tenth (2016) annual Stand Up For Heroes benefit. The song was played in a solo acoustic guitar and harmonica arrangement.
Bruce Springsteen played a four-song acoustic set during the benefit concert: WORKING ON THE HIGHWAY, I'LL WORK FOR YOUR LOVE, LONG WALK HOME, DANCING IN THE DARK. Given that the event was part of the New York Comedy Festival, Springsteen told a dirty joke between each two songs. After his set, a signed replica of Springsteen's famous Born To Run Fender Esquire guitar was auctioned and realized $280,000 for the Bob Woodruff Foundation. Springsteen had upped the prize by offering to take the winner and three friends on a two-hour trip in his 1967 Cadillac from his house to the Jersey Freeze restaurant in Freehold, NJ, for a dinner of hot dogs and hamburgers. He also threw in his mother's lasagna.
Stand Up For Heroes is an annual benefit organized by the Bob Woodruff Foundation to raise money for injured U.S. servicemen, veterans, and their families. Robert "Bob" Warren Woodruff is an American television journalist. He was the newly appointed co-anchor of ABC World News Tonight when on 29 Jan 2006, while reporting on U.S. and Iraqi security forces in Iraq, he was critically injured by a roadside bomb that struck his vehicle. He suffered a traumatic brain injury and spent 36 days in a medically induced coma. He was not expected to survive, but he recovered and started the Bob Woodruff Foundation, a non-profit helping other Americans who were similarly wounded in war.
Bruce Springsteen has been appearing on almost all of the annual benefits since they started in 2007, playing a handful of songs each time and offering for auction one of his guitars or motorcycles to benefit the foundation.
List of available versions of I'LL WORK FOR YOUR LOVE on this website:
I'LL WORK FOR YOUR LOVE [Album version]