“Black Mountain Ballad” improves on “Don’t Back Down on Our Love” in almost every way.
As we noted in the early pages of this book, “Black Mountain Ballad” is so close lyrically to “Don’t Back Down on Our Love” that it seems more accurate to call it an alternate arrangement than a song in its own right.
But boy, what an arrangement. Ditching the earlier song’s rockabilly backing track and swapping in a slower, folky, pensive accompaniment makes a world of difference.
As does adding a verse:
There’s a highway over yonder lit by a moon pale and cold
Where together we would wander before our love grew old
There were roadside stands and a hundred faces we would never know
But we held tight to each other and you said, “John, I love you so”
That’s lovely imagery and a wistful romanticization of a life and love that could have been. And that last line is especially powerful once we realize how the song ends.
Even the bridge is an improvement, tightening and tautening the narrator’s insomnia to the point where we can feel his frustration.
But the ending… remember I wrote that “Black Mountain Ballad” improves on almost every aspect of “Don’t Back Down on Our Love.” Here’s the reason for the caveat.
In the earlier track, our narrator’s last words are haunted and grieving as he wakes in darkness:
Last night I stood on Black Mountain and looked out to the sea
Where the waters of Mystery River go rushing endlessly
And the love we swore would last as long as those waters roared on
I awoke in the darkness, it was gone, gone, gone
Inexplicably, in “Black Mountain Ballad,” Bruce swaps out the last couple for two lines from “Downbound Train,” which Bruce had already completed writing:
Last night I stood on Black Mountain and looked out to the sea
Where the waters of the Mystery River go rushing endlessly
All she said was “I’m sorry Joe but I gotta go”
We had it once but we ain’t got it anymore
I have to believe those lines were intended as a temporary placeholder, if for no other reason than Bruce had just established the narrator’s name as John in the previous verse! But even if he had cleaned up the continuity error (and fixed the rhyme), the lines jar when joined to the narrator’s dreamtime reminiscence.
I believe Bruce was searching for a way to contrast the words we utter when newly in love (John, I love you so) with the ones we say when that love dies (We had it once but we ain’t got it anymore), and it’s a great lyrical device. But it needed more than a skin graft to do it right, and so we’re left with a blemish on an otherwise beautiful and haunting song.
Black Mountain Ballad
Recorded Early 1983
Released: L.A. Garage Sessions ‘83 (2025)
Never performed
© January 18, 2026