Acabo de escuchar Outlaw Pete, el primer corte del nuevo álbum de Bruce Springsteen, Working on a dream, a la venta el 27 de este mes. Es un tema largo, con intro basada en un acompañamiento de cuerda y con ecos del trabajo de homenaje a Seeger, algunos arreglos vaqueros y cierta épica. Es la historia de un forajido del salvaje oeste, pero no creo que vaya a funcionar en directo. Se va hasta los ocho minutos, la canción más larga del álbum y el tema de estudio más largo más larga grabada por Springsteen desde principios de los 80. Lo cual me gusta, por lo que tiene de declaración de intenciones. Atentos al final, épica como antaño.

La historia, sin estribillos:
He was born a little baby on the Appalachian Trail
At six months old he’d done three months in jail
He robbed a bank in his diapers and his little bare baby feet
All he said was “Folks, my name is Outlaw Pete.”

At twenty-five a Mustang pony he did steal
And he rode her around and ’round on heaven’s wheel
Father Jesus, I’m an outlaw killer and a thief
And I slow down only to sow my grief

He cut his trail of tears across the countryside
And where he went, women wept and men died

One night he woke from a vision of his own death
Saddled his pony and rode her deep into the West
Married a Navajo girl and settled down on the res
And as the snow fell he held that beautiful daughter to his chest

Out of the East on an Irish stallion came Bounty Hunter Dan
His heart quickened and burned by the need to get his man
He found Pete peacefully fishing by the river, pulled his gun and got the drop
He said, “Pete, you think you’ve changed, but you have not.”

He cocked his pistol, pulled the trigger and shouted “let it start”
Pete drew a knife from his boot, threw it, and pierced Dan through the heart
Dan smiled as he laid in his own blood dying in the sun
And whispered in Pete’s ear, “We cannot undo these things we’ve done.”

For forty days and nights Pete rode and did not stop
Till he sat high upon an icy mountain top
He watched the hawk on a desert updraft slip and slide
Moved to the edge and dug his spurs deep into his pony side

Some say Pete and his pony vanished over the edge
Some say they remain frozen high upon that icy ledge
The young Navajo girl washes in the river, skin so fair
And braids a piece of Pete’s buckskin chaps into her hair