The classic Bruce Springsteen song that is actually a Jimmy Cliff cover
Some time in the late 1980s, the Cleveland, Ohio radio station WMMS broadcast a live concert by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, which my dad recorded onto a cassette as it aired. It was from that extremely unprofessional bootleg tape that I was introduced to a song I’d never heard before and wouldn’t hear in any other context for years to come. It was called ‘Trapped.’
Springsteen first started incorporating ‘Trapped’ on to his setlists in 1981, but it really became a staple of the E Street Band’s live show during the Born in the USA tour across 1984 and 1985. Technically speaking, it’s a Springsteen “deep cut,” as it was never released on a proper studio album and wasn’t heard on CD until the release of the bonus disc on 2003’s The Essential Bruce Springsteen. For a lot of fans, though, ‘Trapped’ is one of the quintessential Springsteen songs of the ‘80s; a slow-building, atmospheric track that bears a sonic resemblance to some of the Boss’s other big, synth-inflected singles of that era (‘I’m on Fire’, ‘Tunnel of Love’, ‘Brilliant Disguise’), but arguably packs a fiercer punch and a better chorus.
A live version of ‘Trapped’ did get a commercial release on the full LP version of the 1985 charity album We Are the World, alongside previously unreleased songs by Prince, Tina Turner, and Chicago. That sudden influx of fresh attention turned it into a surprise hit of sorts, with the vast majority of listeners assuming it was another Springsteen original, considering the song’s lyrics and composition suggested nothing to the contrary: “Seems like I’ve been playing your game way too long / Seems the game I’ve played has made you strong / When the game is over I won’t walk out the loser / I know I’ll walk out of here again / I know someday I’ll walk out of here again”.
If you happened to have a gander at the liner notes inside the We Are the World record, however, you’d see that ‘Trapped’ was, in fact, a cover! And it wasn’t the sort of cover you might expect from Bruce, like a reworking of Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, or CCR. Instead, as more astute observers and regular listeners to reggae music could have already informed you, ‘Trapped’ was a Jimmy Cliff tune, first recorded as a 1972 single, and later released on the compilation album Goodbye Yesterday.
The original ‘Trapped’ wasn’t a hit, mind you, but the single was produced by Yusuf/Cat Stevens and came out the same year as Cliff’s starring role in the classic Jamaican film The Harder They Come, so it did enter the culture and strike some chords long before ‘The Boss’ got around to it.
For whatever reason, Springsteen decided to remove the bouncier, funkier elements from the original ‘Trapped’, creating something darker and more anthemic. Jimmy Cliff didn’t seem to mind the effort, though.
“I look at it as a compliment,” Cliff, who died last November, told Newhouse News in 1988, “[Springsteen] is an artist in his own right and he’s written a lot of good songs, too. It’s good when an established artist does your work and does it his own way. I’ve also done other people’s work. I recorded [Yusuf/]Cat Stevens’ ‘Wild World’, a big hit in Europe, and I did it my way.”
If Cliff had a mild sense of disappointment, it was only that Springsteen’s ‘Trapped’ didn’t generate any royalties for him, but then again, “All the royalties were donated to the cause [of USA for Africa], and I gained in the moral sense that I have done something for the cause,” Cliff said.
