Songfacts®:

• In "All The Way Home," Bruce Springsteen tries to convince a woman to allow him to walk her all the way home, with the unspoken classification of "home" being her bedroom. The negotiations occur in an unnamed blue-collar bar in an unnamed town. Because Springsteen wrote the song for a Jersey Shore band (more on that below), we're justified in imagining it being a Jersey Shore bar.
  
  The woman in the song is healing from a failed marriage. She's lost her husband, as indicated by the line "like the shadows of the ring that was on your finger."
  
  Springsteen's advances are forthright and non-slimy. He never pretends he's offering love, as made clear by his declaration that "love leaves nothing shadows and vapor." He's offering her company, physical and emotional. Sometimes, at some points in life, a little company is what we need to get us through the night. It's at least better than nothing.
• Springsteen wrote this song for Southside Johnny to use on Better Days, released in 1991. Southside Johnny is headed by John Lyon, widely known as the "godfather of the New Jersey sound" and a big influence on Bon Jovi.
  
  On the Southside Johnny version, Springsteen plays keyboards and provides background vocals.
• Now it's some old Stones' song the band is trashin'
  
  The line is referring to The Rolling Stones. Springsteen is saying that the bar cover band is playing the Stones very poorly.
• This is one of two singles released from Springsteen's Devils & Dust album. The other was the title track.