Gun Song Top Ten: Held Up Without a Gun (#10)

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“There was the same ol’ shoot-em-up and the same ol’ rodeo,” the song “Along Came Jones” said. It’s just another shoot-em-up countdown from me, this time with “gun” in the title. Let’s start out rocking! #10: Held Up Without a Gun - Bruce Springsteen Lawyers can steal more with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks. — from Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, 1969 That’s the basic gist of this incredibly short (less than 90 seconds!) song that ended up as the B-side of “Hungry Heart,” the first single from The River. I guess they just didn’t have enough room for it on the album. Bruce looks at three ways that what we used to call “highway robbery” happens every day: at the pump (and remember, when he wrote this, gas was a whopping 75c a gallon), with contracts (especially in the music world: royalties are about 80c - $1.00 an album, and songwriter royalties are six cents, half of which goes to the publishing firms of ASCAP or BMI), and just life in general (“try to make a living, try to have a little fun”). And he did that all in one minute, fourteen seconds. Held Up Without a Gun Written by Bruce Springsteen Recorded by Bruce Springsteen Released as the B-side to “Hungry Heart,” 1980 Man with a cigar says “sign here son”: