Unsatisfied Heart is an outtake I return to frequently. As with most Bruce songs, more than one recorded version exists, with the acoustic version of this demo being titled Fugitive's Dream. I'm just curious which version you prefer. I go for Unsatisfied Heart. The atmospheric music and the melody are beautiful. When I listen to these Hollywood Hills demos from 1983, I always imagine an album called Sugarland and I have specific versions of each of the outtakes on my fantasy record. Richfield Whistle is on that album and the melody of Fugitive's Dream is too similar for me to have them both on the nonexistent Sugarland album.
When we get the Born In The U.S.A. boxed set, there just has to be a crystal clear version of Unsatisfied Heart included.
I hadn't heard "Fugitive Dreams" before, it's beautiful, but I prefer the other version. It sounds a lot like The War on Drugs to me (or rather, The War on Drugs sound like a Unsatisfied heart).
This is magic already. I am listening, and will attempt something later.
Thematically it is similar to Straight Time. Except....in Straight Time the wife knows she can't trust her man in Unsatisfied Heart she is about to find that out. The repeating and repeating of the title at the end I think that a bad ending for the family is inevitable.
I meant to say that, in that moment, when that line is sung, I realize that I've been worried too much about George and not enough about his wife and kids.
The "George, are you alright" line; yes, yes.
Bruce has a knack for slipping in little lines of dialogue, spoken in the song by someone other than the protagonist, that somehow give me a full picture of a character we know much less about than the main character. It's reminiscent of the "she sighs baby, did you make it alright" line at the end of Racing In The Street.
The girl in Racing; her life is devastated by the troubled, monotonous, adolescent lifestyle of her lover, and even there on the porch in despair, she's worried that he's not alright. She expresses her love for him. In Unsatisfied Heart, I don't know much about this woman other than that she is kind and loving and a mother of two. I imagine she thinks her life is cozy and safe, but her husband is experiencing guilt and anguish and fear about something she knows nothing of. Her life is on the brink of potential devastation and she proves her introduction as kind and loving with that simple expression of concern for her husband who hasn't been sleeping well.
Firstly, this is what I've been missing for nearly four months.
Secondly, I don't think I knew that "Unsatisfied Heart" had an alternatively titled acoustic version. After listening to both I prefer "Heart". As you say the melody is stronger and the quicker tempo allows us to appreciate the urgency in the protagonist's state of mind all the more. And I adore that delivery of "she'd sigh, 'George are you alright?'"
Can't wait for the U.S.A. box.