If I Was The Priest
This Rabbi Didn't Get A Priest
Sunday, March 30, 2025 Entry #152
I realize that I have referenced Bruce Springsteen’s song “If I Was The Priest” quite a few times in these posts. “Priest” has the distinction of being both one of the most recent and one of the earliest of Springsteen’s songs. Springsteen wrote it all the way back in 1971, during a short window of time when he was pulling double duty, fronting rock and roll bands (including a nascent iteration of the E Street Band), and performing as a singer-songwriting solo artist. “Priest” was actually one of the songs Springsteen played at his audition in front of the legendary Columbia Records executive John Hammond. Hammond was the Artists and Repertoire expert who had signed Bob Dylan to Columbia some ten year earlier. By the time Springsteen’s brief session was over, Hammond knew that he had seen another future star. As for “Priest,” Springsteen recorded a demo of it accompanying himself on piano, but that version has remained an outtake, yet to be officially released on one of Springsteen’s archival albums. Springsteen also apparently performed the song live in those early years a few times, but no recordings have surfaced.
When a brand-new Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band album came out in 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it packed a time-capsule surprise. The ninth track of Letter To You was a fresh full-band studio recording of “If I Was The Priest” (check it out at the top of the post in an “audio-only video”). In the midst of a group of compositions containing his reflections about being an artist and a human being in his 70’s, Springsteen decided to include a new version of a song he wrote when he was a much younger man.
The juxtaposition works. The lyrics and Springsteen’s vocal delivery bring the listener right back to the days when Springsteen was putting his own street-kid spin on the Dylan thing. But the backing music is beautifully layered and it builds artfully from a soft ballad to the driving rumble of folk-rock and back again, the signature sound of the later-day E Street Band.
The shaggy-dog allegory (with a dose of stream of consciousness) within “If I Was The Priest” combines an Old West saloon setting with deeply religious imagery. It is profane without being cruelly sacrilegious; a screenplay of sorts with characters such as Jesus Christ, a sheriff with a buckskin jacket, the Virgin Mary, who “serves Mass on Sunday and then sells her body on Monday,” and the Holy Ghost, the host of a burlesque show. Springsteen, who considers himself a lapsed Catholic, nevertheless knows his way around the rituals and the New Testament story well enough to be playful with them.
I find the song utterly compelling and infectious. When the album first came out, I played “Priest” relentlessly—among other things, it’s a great driving song. Since one of the goals of this current tour was to promote Letter To You and “air out” its songs by playing them live, it wasn’t a stretch early on to hope that “If I Was The Priest” would be regularly featured in concert. However, it was not performed during the first four concerts of the tour, all of which I attended. It did come out later that “Priest” actually appeared on Springsteen’s printed setlist for the show in Hollywood, Florida (where I was on the rail), but for some reason Springsteen skipped it.
The first time Springsteen actually played “If I Was The Priest” in the 21st century was on February 14, 2023, just one week after I had gone off the road. He played it again in Tulsa a few days later, a show I strongly considered driving from St. Louis to attend, in large part with the hope of hearing “Priest.” Unfortunately, I didn’t make the trip.
In the over 100 concerts Springsteen performed in 2023-2024, he only chose to play “Priest” ten times. Most often, the song was performed as an “audible,” based on a sign request (I was definitely not the only fan who wanted to hear that song in concert!). Even when he granted his sign-wielding fans their wish to play “Priest,” Springsteen would sometimes lightly disparage his own song. At one concert he said before launching into it, “I wrote this song when I was 22…And I still don’t have a clue what the fuck it’s about!” Clearly, whatever inspired Springsteen to re-record his old tune had already receded.
As I have catalogued in this blog, I tried. The first sign I carried requesting “If I Was The Priest” was written for me by someone I was standing with in the Orlando GA line. Eventually, some friends at work helped me create a much more professional version. I liked the idea of trying to grab Springsteen’s attention with the irony of a Jewish Rabbi asking for a song about a Catholic Priest. But, none of my efforts succeeded, even when there were other signs on the same night similarly asking for “Priest.” I was still hopeful at my last concert, when I was finally at the stage extension, and I basically could hold the sign right under Springsteen’s nose! In fact, at that Edmonton show, I added a second sign, scratched out in my awful handwriting, with a rather desperate sounding plea.
In the end, the disappointment I felt in not hearing Springsteen perform “If I Was The Priest” over my fourteen concerts was of course overshadowed by the awesomeness of my overall tour experience. And, my shadow of regret about “Priest” was partially mitigated last summer when I went to see a Springsteen cover band in St. Louis with a friend. Along with the expected hits, the group who called themselves “Asbury Park” performed what they announced as a “rarity,” a passable version of “If I Was The Priest.” I had finally heard a live “Priest!”
Springsteen did play “If I Was The Priest” in Canada, by the way. Only, it happened in Toronto, just days before the shows I drove up to see in Calgary and Edmonton. Introducing the song, you can hear Springsteen exclaim, “I saw two signs for it tonight!” Though it stings a little bit, here is a YouTube video of that performance, the last live Springsteen “Priest,” at least so far.
In the minor psycho-drama that is being played out in the song, Springsteen casts himself as a priest on a loping spiritual journey that will take him away from a convectional path. At the Edmonton concert where Springsteen did not play “Priest” (despite my sign request lol), I did capture him in quite a priestly pose, prostrating in solemnity and humility.
As a bonus, I am including here the original demo of “If I Was The Priest” from 1972 (in a video that displays some vintage Springsteen photos in a loop as the audio plays), a studio outtake that has been circulating as a bootleg for many years. Try comparing the new version of “Priest” at the top of the post with this oldie that ends it. Have fun!