The White Room
Recording Artist: Rick Springfield
Writers: Rick Springfield
Jim Vallance
Date Written: January 1990
Albums: Karma (1999)
Audio:
Studio recording (1998)
 
 
Rick Springfield: vocal, guitar, keyboards
Tim Pierce: guitar
John Philip Shenale: organ?
Jason Scheff or Lance Morrison: bass
Jack White: drums
Backing vocals: Stan Bush, Richard Page
 
Produced by Rick Springfield and Bill Drescher.  Recorded and mixed by Bill Drescher at Sound Image Studios, Los Angeles.
Additional Audio:
Demo recording (1990)
 
 
Rick Springfield: vocals, guitar, keyboards
Jim Vallance: keyboards, drums
 
Recorded 1990 at Distorto Studios, Vancouver.
Comments:
 
In 2004 (twenty years after we wrote "Summer Of '69") Bryan Adams and I traded a few emails, discussing the writing sessions that led to the creation of that song.  Only then did I realized -- even though we'd been in the same room when we wrote the song -- that we'd been on completely different wave-lengths. For me, the song really was about the summer of 1969.  For Bryan, it was about something else altogether.

The same is true with "The White Room". 

When Rick and I were writing the song, I was thinking about the John Fowles book, "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (it was later turned into a film starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons). It's the story of a lonely woman who spends her days looking out to sea, waiting for her lover to return. I imagined her in a stark, white room, slowly coming apart at the seams

It seems Rick was thinking about something else ...

Rick (from an interview with Guyo Katich): "The White Room" is a story about ... meaning ... just being inside your head. The person who's inside their head ... my, ah, obscure reference to your skull ... the brain inside the skull."
Lyrics: I can see her at her windows watching
Locked away inside her skin
I can see her but I can't get to her
She won't come out, and she won't let me into

The White Room (she's living in)
Lying alone 'til she comes undone
In The White Room
She burns for the real thing
But it won't come

In her head is the same obsession
And all the bottles and pills won't heal her heart
She heard his last confession
Every word just tears her apart

In The White Room (locked away)
Doing time 'til her time is done
In The White Room there's so much to say
But the words won't come

Come back to the land of the living
When you gonna break that chain
There's much too much that you're leaving
And you're never gonna stop the rain

In The White Room
Waiting for the call that never comes
In The White Room, she waits

Look at something long enough you'll find
That the splinters and the cracks begin to show
I'll be the first in line when the walls start falling
And she lets go of

The White Room (it's late)
Living alone only makes you numb
In the White Room
She burns for the real thing but it won't come

Come back to the land of the living
When you gonna break that chain
There's much too much that you're leaving
And you're never gonna stop the rain

In The White Room (she's living in)
Doing time 'til her time is done
In The White Room she burns

In The White Room (it's late)
Lying alone till she comes undone
In The White Room she waits

In The White Room