On Friday Bruce Springsteen released a long-awaited, highly-anticipated box set entitled Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition, a four-disc (five if you count the Blu-ray component) collection of Springsteen’s seminal album Nebraska. The same day Springsteen’s story regarding the album and that time in his life was released on the big screen entitled Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, based on the 2023 Warren Zanes book Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.
One has been craved for decades, the other has been created over a period of a year and change and is a fine companion piece. But both releases revolve around the same time period in Bruce Springsteen’s illustrious career. After issuing the critically acclaimed double-album The River in 1980 and the marathon-length concerts comprising the tour in support of it, Springsteen found himself at a crossroads. Despite selling out arenas and venues behind his biggest-selling album of his career, he felt detached from his fans and audience.
Retreating to a home he bought in Colts Neck, New Jersey, Springsteen was inspired by classic films like The Grapes of Wrath and Badlands, as well as the works of Flannery O’Connor. There he recorded most of the material over a two-week period in late 1981, with just himself and a four-track recorder, state-of-the-art at the time but an extremely rudimentary way of recording songs. In late May 1982, one other song, “My Father’s House,” was recorded as part of that batch of material. After attempting to bring the songs to the E Street Band for a fleshed out group album, the plan dissolved, leaving Springsteen with these bare bones songs. Leaving the songs essentially the way he recorded them in his bedroom, Columbia released the material as Nebraska, a far different, darker, and barren effort than he had ever put out.
Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition
Now, 43 years after the original album release, Springsteen has returned with this expanded edition: a disc of outtakes, the Electric Nebraska version diehards speculated about for decades (and Springsteen forgot he had), the remastered version of the original album, and a special Live Nebraska disc featuring Springsteen performing the tracks in order in an empty venue with sparse accompaniment. And from start to finish, it’s a keeper! The first disc is the outtakes, some of which would later appear on 1984’s Born In The USA landmark such as the title track, “Downbound Train” and “Working on the Highway.” But each of those tracks is vastly different than how they sound on Born In The USA. Rockabilly was what Springsteen was after in these tracks and nails it every time, with “Downbound Train” galloping along seamlessly. The quality of the material is top-notch with both “Losin’ Kind” and “Child Bride” more in line with the outsider theme found throughout Nebraska. But the highlight might be the closing and ominous “Gun in Every Home” which is both as timeless and timely now as it’s ever been. “From a world gone crazy now, from a world that’s gone all wrong / But I don’t know what to do, no, I don’t know what to do,” Springsteen sings.
Disc Two, Electric Nebraska, is probably the crown jewel of the set, with eight tracks Springsteen did with parts or most of his E Street Band. It’s not like each song on the original was given an electric version. Instead Springsteen went with the eight songs he thought worked best in this format. From the slow building of the opening title track which has almost a hymnal, spiritual quality, to the rabid rockabilly romp that is “Downbound Train,” the artist deftly reworks some of the material. These previously unheard versions don’t quite improve on the original but showcases them in a vastly different light. “Born In The USA” here sounds like a Bryan Adams tune with more of a groove and guitar work, not the anthem it became a short time later. And “Johnny 99” has an old-school rock feel resembling songs that might have come out of Sun Studios in the 1950s. Of the tracks here, “Atlantic City” is probably the star of a ridiculously rich octet of tunes, a riveting, fleshed out nugget that is on par with the original. A tall order indeed.
Without going into detail about the remastered Nebraska disc, which is essentially the original with minute differences diehards may pick up on, the third disc is also a weighty live recording. Springsteen, now 75 years young, revisits the album again. Performing alone in an empty New Jersey venue earlier this year, with sparse accompaniment from musicians Larry Campbell and Charlie Giordano, Springsteen sings the songs with a weight and poignancy that only comes with time, age, and wisdom. The gruff in his voice can be heard in “Nebraska” and “Mansion on the Hill” as well as “Highway Patrolman,” which has some similarities to the outtake “Child Bride.” His voice, an acoustic guitar and harmonica are more than enough to carry these 10 songs
As we all know, Springsteen’s subsequent album to Nebraska was a game-changer, even for someone who was as popular and famous as he was the last half of the ’70s. Yet he probably couldn’t have ascended to that level of stardom without this barren but brilliant collection that is Nebraska. This expanded edition is the best of both worlds, paying tribute to the original while also adding material that would’ve stood on its own equally well. A box set that has no padding is a rarity. It shouldn’t be surprising. After all, this slow year for Springsteen has seen seven albums of previously unreleased material in Tracks II: The Lost Albums and now this four-disc Nebraska collection only proving just how prolific he was in creating material that was often near-perfect.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
While creatively Springsteen found himself at a crossroads, he also seemed to be at a fork in the road both professionally and personally. Director Scott Cooper, using the engaging 2023 Warren Zanes book Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska as a blueprint, has crafted a thoughtful, poignant glimpse into the artist with this film that is as dark and brooding as the album turned out to be.
The main storyline, of course, deals with Springsteen trying to craft songs for what was supposed to be the next Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band studio album. However, with ghosts from his pasts, particularly an abusive father, never far from his thoughts, Springsteen began writing material that was culled partially from childhood experiences (“My Father’s House,” “Used Cars,” and “Mansion on the Hill”) alongside accounts of killing sprees (“Starkweather” which was later renamed “Nebraska.”) and people down on their luck.
Writing that material alone at a rather secluded home in Colts Neck, New Jersey, and using a four-track cassette recorder (ahead of its time despite the now archaic technology it possessed), Springsteen dove deep into the songs, feeling he captured something special. Transferring those songs into a band sound had some surefire hits (“Glory Days,” “Born In The USA,” “Darlington County”). Those renditions were the antithesis of what Springsteen heard on the sparse, static-riddled, distortion-soaked tape he recorded the so-called demos on. As a result, and as history shows, those surefire hits had to wait a few years before appearing on 1984’s Born In The USA.
Cooper has weaved these main storylines (including an almost obligatory romantic angle) remarkably well thanks in no small part to Jeremy Allen White. White, 34, and best known for his role in The Bear, embodies “The Boss” without going over-the-top. He captures Springsteen from his highs performing at a sold-out arena prior to starting work on Nebraska to the lows, including an almost suicidal frantic drive down a back road while the unnerving, depraved Suicide song “Frankie Teardrop” is heard in the background. The actor also does all his own singing in the film, portraying both the man and the artist ridiculously well.
White is front and center throughout most of the roughly two-hour film, but youngster Matthew Anthony Pellicano is fantastic as a young, impressionable and terrorized Bruce Springsteen in Freehold, New Jersey in the late ’50s. The childhood scenes, filmed in black and white, are sometimes hard to watch but required to tell the full story. Meanwhile Jeremy Strong (Succession) plays Jon Landau, Springsteen’s longtime manager and friend who has to deftly weave his way through Columbia Records wanting a commercially successful album and massive tour and Springsteen, who wants the warts-and-all cassette mastered as the album. No touring. No press. No radio singles. No photo of him on the album cover.
The film’s homestretch deals more with the immediate personal effect the album had on Springsteen, who relocates to California to get away from what he’s known all his life in New Jersey. But a series of mental health issues and near breakdowns have many, particularly Landau, fearing the worst possible outcome. In the end, Springsteen sought the professional help he needed, dealt with his past and his childhood, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Overall, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere isn’t a happy-go-lucky look at a legendary rock star. Instead it’s a vivid and often dark vignette of a man who, at the time, did what he had to do creatively and artistically in order to make sense of his surroundings and his past. And a revealing film that either a casual fan or diehard admirer would be wise to take in.