Songfacts®:

• This song tells the story of a young woman named Janey whose boyfriend Bobby gets her pregnant. The agree to get married, but Bobby gets cold feet and runs off, leaving Janey to have the baby and raise the child on her own. She's robbed of her youth but finds the strength to carry on. At the end of the song, she pawns her wedding dress and engagement ring, leaving behind the memory of Bobby and replacing him with something better: good old cash.
  
  "This is a song about a woman struggling to understand the value of her own independent existence," Springsteen explained at a 1988 show in Sheffield. "Trying to find something new, and beautiful and meaningful in her life today."
• The studio version of "Spare Parts" runs 3:44, but it goes a lot longer when Springsteen plays it live. A performance from 1988 running 7:45 is included on Springsteen's home video Video Anthology 1978-1988, released in 1989. This version features Nils Lofgren on slide guitar and backing by a full brass section. Although Springsteen is not renowned for his guitar work, The Boss lets rip at the end of the track with a guitar solo.
• "Spare Parts" features James Woods on harmonica (not the actor). The LA blues artist got the gig through co-producer Chuck Plotkin whom he has known since high school. "Chuck said, Jimmy, do you still have your blues musician's Union card?" he recalled to Mojo magazine.
  
  "I did this chugging thing that is sort of a trademark of mine," Woods continued. "I wish I was louder in the mix" (laughs).
  
  Woods added that he got a lot of subsequent session work afterwards, "because I was the first non-E Street cat to play harp on a Springsteen record."
• Springsteen often names the characters in his songs, and they're usually typical American names, making them very relatable. Bobby and Janey from this song join Mary, Johnny, Sandy, and several others in his catalog. Janey also shows up in his 1973 song "Spirit In The Night."
• The song is a lively rocker, but Springsteen played it solo acoustic on his Ghost Of Tom Joad tour, which ran from 1995 to 1997. Since that tour, the song has entered his setlist sparingly.