This song wooshes me back to living in Northcote, Melbourne cerca 2005. I had a girlfriend called Claire who was a clairvoyant. She was a busty, curly-short haired blonde who had these little freckles peppered around her face. I don’t think we ever had chit-chat, rather a fully transcendental conversation about the big questions in life.
I was smitten…Us two lost souls hang out a lot in her big yellow family-house beside the train-tracks and we shared moments in time that just clicked.
Claire and I often played today’s track Happy to represent what all was ‘good’ in our world together. Even when I hear it now I can’t help but think of these idealic – surreal capsules of time and place with her. Sure, they were short-lived, but we did achieve this ‘happy‘ which Bruce conveys in his song.
Some need gold and some need diamond rings
Or a drug to take away the pain that living brings
A promise of a better world to come
When whatever here is done
I don’t need that sky of blue, babe
All I know’s since I found you
I’m happy when I’m in your arms
Happy, darling, come the dark
Happy when I taste your kiss
I’m happy in a love like this
Happy comes from Tracks, a four-disc box set by American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, released in 1998 containing 66 songs. This box set mostly consists of never-before-released songs recorded during the sessions for his many albums. I went to town with this goldmine of music. Many songs like Happy were unknown until their release and some of them will feature in my project. Happy is a little gem and I never grow tired of listening to it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any specific information about it online. It’s impressive how this song was never released on an album or even performed live. What a great repertoire!
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
Well I do de-Claire… I didn’t know this song at all and it certainly evokes the right feelings of happy and sad at the same time. I guess by 1998 I was too busy to even have the radio on so I missed the Springsteen 4 disc box.
Bruce, you would have liked Claire. When she was well and high-spirited, she was quite the loquacious and inquisitive individual. This song still moves me.
What were you doing in 1998 Bruce to make you so busy?
I was writing and selling “Musicals for Schools”. In those days 75% of the primary schools in NZ (about 2,500) were staging my musicals. I was a single man production unit! and still sent out printed copies and CDs. These days it would all be just press a button stuff on the internet but in 1998 it was still licking stamps! I wrote to every school by hand which is why the selling ploy was so successful. And each musical (photocopy it to your hearts content!) cost the school only $10. When I (around 2007) got a job as a librarian in a country school, the Head of Music had written a musical but in fact it was one of mine! I told the Principal and he declared me to be a nutcase! LOL!!!
You can’t bottle or quantify the positive effect your musicals had on kids. That’s a lot of schools!
The head of Music at the school you were a librarian was a plagiarist of your work, but the Principal sided with him? Golly-gee.
A beautiful ballad I’d not heard before. Thanks for sharing it.
Cheers. There are some very decent songs which only saw the light of day on Tracks. I’d also recommend ‘Loose Change’.