Right now, this song is everything ...
Bruce Springsteen wrote “If I Was The Priest” nearly fifty years ago. It predates his debut album on Columbia Records. In fact, “If I Was The Priest” is one of the songs Bruce played at his audition with the legendary talent scout John Hammond, who also discovered Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among many others. “If I Was The Priest” is a Bob Dylan-esque old west fantasy about Sheriff Jesus requesting Father Bruce’s presence in Dodge City, where the Holy Ghost also runs a burlesque show ("where they'll let you in for free and they hit you when you go"). Father Bruce ultimately declines Sheriff Jesus’s request to join him, because Bruce is overdue for Cheyenne. Hammond said he immediately knew Bruce was raised Catholic when he played the song for Hammond at his audition back in 1972. I first heard “If I Was The Priest” nearly thirty years ago, on a bootleg recording of Bruce's audition tape. It’s been a favorite of mine ever since.
Bruce’s new album, Letter To You, is a rocking meditation on the loss of loved ones, and how their presence still haunts and influences our lives. My description makes the album sound like a bummer, but it isn’t. It’s actually quite joyful. Bruce wrote most of the songs for the album after the last member of his first band, The Castiles, passed away recently, leaving Bruce the last surviving member of his teenage band. Besides the new songs Bruce wrote about death and ghosts, Bruce recorded “If I Was The Priest” – along with two other unreleased songs from back in the day – with the E Street Band, for which I am very happy and grateful, because now we have a full band version of this amazing song. Bruce has what sounds like a gospel choir backing him up, and Steve Van Zandt contributes an outstanding guitar solo at the end of the song. It sounds like they recorded “If I Was The Priest” in 1975 instead of 2019. That’s a high compliment.
I was listening to “If I Was The Priest” full blast this afternoon while driving northbound on I-15 after picking up Tristen’s boys from their dad. Seven-year-old Maxwell complained about the volume, but ten-year-old Harrison told me how much he liked the song. Smart kid. Anyway, when the chorus of the song kicked in, I got a little misty eyed, because I realized how much my brother Phil, who is never far from my thoughts, would have enjoyed “If I Was The Priest”. It’s classic E Street Band rock and roll — which is the highest compliment I can give — and Phil would have loved Bruce’s rocking, slightly blasphemous take on the old west as much as Harrison and I were enjoying it. And ultimately, that’s the message of Bruce’s new album: music can help us feel the presence of people we love who are no longer with us. So Phil rode shotgun on the Fargo line — that’s a line from the song — with me as we headed home together, listening to a Springsteen masterpiece. The end.
