Bruce Springsteen has written many warm love songs over the years, songs that paint domesticity in a quite flattering light. Maybe it was a case of needing to find it in his own life before he could get to that point.
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The song “Cautious Man,” found on his 1987 album Tunnel of Love, is ambivalent at best, downright pessimistic at worst, about the potential of a life-altering love. Stark and dark thought it might be, it stands out still as one of his finest songs about relationships.
Getting “Cautious”
Bruce Springsteen dedicated Tunnel of Love to his then-wife Julianne Philips. Unfortunately, that was not a union destined for longevity. Barely three years after they were married and less than a year after the release of Tunnel of Love in October 1987, Phillips filed for divorce (by which time, Springsteen was already seeing future wife Patti Scialfa).
Neither Springsteen nor Phillips has ever spoken at length about the trials and tribulations of their relationship. But folks have long speculated some of the evidence for their struggles could be found within the songs on Tunnel of Love.
While there are some songs on the record that display a somewhat hopeful outlook on love and relationships, hints of guilt, mistrust, and even unfaithfulness are sprinkled throughout the songs. God have mercy on the man / Who doubts what he’s sure of, Springsteen sings on the hit single “Brilliant Disguise,” and that might as well be the motto for the entire album.
“Cautious Man” suggests far more than it spells out about the nature of a relationship. But it’s certainly tempting to connect the dots between the narrator, a man who jumps suddenly into marriage after living a tentative life up to that point, and the songwriter himself.
Behind the Lyrics of “Cautious Man”
“Cautious Man” tells the story of Bill Horton, a man devoted to the code of the road who never moves without first considering the consequences: When something caught his eye, he’d measure his need / And then very carefully he’d proceed. But everything changes when he meets a special girl: It was there in her arms he let his cautiousness slip away.
At first, he seems benignly bewildered by the turn of events: He’d lay back in her arms and laughs at what had happened to him. But it’s probably not a great sign this guy sees life like a film-noir antihero: On his right hand Billy tattooed the word love and his left hand was the word fear /And in which hand he held his fate was never clear.
Still, he pushes forward, building them a home and providing for her every need. But he struggles to keep the old demons from burbling to the surface: Alone on his knees in the darkness for steadiness he’d pray / For he knew in a restless heart the seed of betrayal lay. The turning point comes one night, when, after a scary dream, he heads out to the highway looking for answers.
The last verse makes clear these two are not headed for any kind of happy ending: Billy felt a coldness rise up inside him that he couldn’t name / Just as the words tattooed ‘cross his knuckles he knew would always remain. As for the final scene, which sees him gently regarding his wife in the beauty of God’s fallen light, it seems like a calm before the storm.
“Cautious Man” is one of the underheard Bruce Springsteen gems that hasn’t been played to death in concert. Maybe he knows the tender, elegiac studio version is not one that can be improved all the much, considering how chillingly it evokes a relationship in covert turmoil.
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