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Tunnel Of Love, Bruce Springsteen’s 1987 album, was recorded by The Boss throughout the first half of that year. His divorce from his first wife, Julianne Phillips, was initiated by her in August of 1988 and finalized the following year. So the timing isn’t quite right for Tunnel Of Love to be considered Springsteen’s “divorce record.” But many of the songs on the album, such as the woeful ballad “One Step Up,” clearly reference a relationship beset by ambivalence and doubt, so that the eventual dissolution of the marriage hardly seems surprising in retrospect.
The album marked the first time Springsteen dealt with love and its pitfalls on a large scale, and, as he explained to Q Magazine in 1992, it also represented his efforts to understand himself better. “I reached a point where I thought I knew myself pretty well and I had a variety of things happen where I realized I actually didn’t,” he said. “It was a very good eye-opener because it throws everything wide open; it’s not that you don’t know parts of yourself, but very few people can confront themselves very accurately. We all live with our illusions and our self-image, and there’s a good percentage of that that’s a pipe dream.”
The narrator of “One Step Up” is soberly self-aware and perhaps wishes he wasn’t; otherwise he might be able to avoid seeing the signs of his impending breakup. His whole life seems to be turning against him to an almost comical extent; with his busted furnace and broken-down truck, he’s just a dead dog away from having every last country tearjerker cliché wrapped up. But these are just nuisances compared to the inner turmoil caused by his busted relationship.
“We’re giving each other some hard lessons lately/ But we ain’t learnin,” he sings, suggesting a destructive pattern that neither party is able or willing to break. He sits at a bar musing about quiet church bells and mute lovebirds, as if unwilling to face the actual reasons for his distress. In the bridge, he details an endless series of pointless fights: “It’s the same thing night on night/ Who’s wrong, baby, who’s right/ Another fight and I slam the door on/ Another battle in our dirty little war.”
In the final verse, the narrator finds his eyes wandering to a possibility that might temporarily ease the pain while causing a lot more of it in the long run: “There’s a girl across the bar/ I get the message she’s sendin’/ Mmmm she ain’t lookin’ too married/ Me well honey I’m pretending.” That kind of self-subterfuge is likely the last straw breaking the spine of the marriage. But Springsteen really breaks our hearts by having this sad sack confront what he’s about to lose, this love now tarnished but once pristine: “Last night I dreamed I held you in my arms/ Music was never-ending/ We danced as the evening sky faded to black.”
“One Step Up” is essentially a Bruce Springsteen solo recording; the only other contributor on the subdued, moody track is Patti Scialfa, who lends haunting wordless vocals to the closing moments. Considering the contents of the song, the fact that Springsteen would eventually marry Scialfa can be seen as either ironic or foreshadowing or both depending on your outlook. It’s telling that Springsteen leaves the song’s gut-punchline out of the title (“One step up and two steps back.”) After all, nobody heading into romance sees the downside until it’s too late.
Jim Beviglia is the author of Counting Down Bruce Springsteen: His 100 Finest Songs.
