Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska

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Forgot to mention in my post yesterday that I read Deliver Me From Nowhere, a short little book about the making of Springsteen's Nebraska album. It was good. I think it was a piece of missing context for me in the discourse around Springsteen as a pre-eminent artist. I mean, there's no doubting the hits, and his stuff is good, but I think there's a deeper thing there. Maybe it's the hero cycle of suffering for your art, or having existential crisis or something.. and I think that this record is a pretty stark embodiment of whatever that thing is. The police had approached Dylan when the future Nobel Prize winner was on the grounds of a home up for sale, apparently investigating the property. The proximity to Springsteen’s former rental, coupled with Dylan’s somewhat recent visits to Neil Young’s and John Lennon’s childhood homes, gave interested journalists a basis from which to work. The Guardian reported it this way: So where was I in my life? I was a character in “Nebraska.” Wow. It seems like an album you’ve turned to over the years.

It’s very interesting to see the self doubt Bruce had and the many ways these songs may have been ruined if they kept with the plan to record them with the E Street band.

Talking about it, I get choked up. “The Odyssey” has lasted because so many of us have these moments in our lives. As we’re being challenged, we’re also being built — but we don’t know it when it’s going down. I guess the only question that wasn’t answered for me in this book is why some of the songs from this session were never used. You can find anything online these days and Losin’ Kind and Child Bride have since become favourites of mine as well as striped down version of Pink Cadillac and Downbound Train.

Zane also explores the personal inspirations for the album. Springsteen talked to Zane about the album. He explains how his childhood with his grandparents, his struggles with depression and his feelings of isolation while surrounded by people were all getting worked out in the songs. Nebraska' came at us cold, without interviews, videos, or promo. Springsteen wanted fans to have their own journey with the music. He trusted his art and trusted his audience. The album’s structured to tell the story of murderer Charles Starkweather and his accomplice, Caril Fulgate. He tells the story without judgment, and considers the characters to be a pivotal part of his work. As it transpired, his close team of collaborators made a collective decision: go for the plain unvarnished demos. Mixing the DIY cassette had its own dilemmas as Zanes charts the frustration of bringing the songs to life. The quiet triumph of that detail alone showed how dedicated the people around him were to these songs and what they could mean to his audience. Near the end of the book, the author suggests to Springsteen that he hears connections to Homer’s “Odyssey” in the album. Odysseus can only regain his home by disguising himself “as a beggar, anonymous, stripped of his former glories.”For readers who aren’t Springsteen fans or who are unfamiliar with “Nebraska,” this book probably isn’t for you. But to the Bruce diehards and even the Bruce-curious, I say: Read this book. A glimpse into a moment in time while Bruce was still cultivating his legacy. Nebraska was the first Bruce album I ever bought though I had heard earlier music this album was different in so many ways as any fan surely already knows. Deliver Me from Nowhere by Warren Zanes is a fascinating look at both this superb album and the creative process in general, with plenty of input from Springsteen himself.

Erase the performer, the verve, energy, the bombast and the optimism. Replace open roads for empty towns. Haunting dirges for full swinging bands. Broken spirits for young men. And an album covers of a desolate landscape instead of the profile of the talented Springsteen. Only then do you get close to imagining the austere Midwestern desert known as “Nebraska” Even the technical aspects of making Nebraska into a physical, deliverable work of art were interesting as was Jon Landau’s role in the process as not only a manager, but as a friend. The reactions of other singer/songwriter performers to what Springsteen had done with Nebraska were also illuminating.

Success!

What followed were seemingly insurmountable moments to get Springsteen’s vision completed. Although he returned to the studio to begin a “real” album with the E Street Band, the atmosphere was slanted. Where would these bedroom sessions stand in the white-hot spotlight? Made in an orange shaggy bedroom in New Jersey with amateur recordings by a TEAC 144, “Nebraska” was first imagined onto a cassette tape. Despite cycling through recording studios and series of self doubts, the originals persisted. After a trio of albums flourishing with romanticism, passion and self-belief, Springsteen’s 6th album would be released without fanfare or tour. With limited instrumentation and muted expression, Springsteen cast a shadowy world rooted in the darklore of the 1950s and seeped with his own concerns about the Reagan Administration. Absent of hits or hope, and hopelessly out of step with the pop music of the early 1980s, “Nebraska” would attain the status by many as one of Bruce Springsteen’s best albums. And by his own admission, the album fans would listen to of his some 100 years from now.

Nebraska" is my favorite Bruce Springsteen album. Warren Zanes was the guitarist for the Del Fuegos, a semipopular group that released five albums in the 1980s. He went on to be a writer and academic. He wrote a very good biography of Tom Petty. This is his excellent book on the making and significance of "Nebraska". Recommended for Springsteen fans (even old ones like me that still think of Born in the USA as the later Springsteen, though now I guess I would have to change that to the middle Springsteen) as well as music fans in general. Those readers who enjoy learning more about the hows and whys of an album will particularly enjoy this. He’d answered my first question. But we arrived at the second question pretty damn fast. Fortunately, I had another one ready to go. But what of the first? Springsteen biographer Warren Zanes shares the stories of the inward turns and music. He highlights that transitory time between the 144 stadium shows of the “River” and the megaton hitmaker “Born to Run”. Examining the origns of “Nebraska”, we the broad spectrum of literary and musical influences. From the proto-punk hissing music of Alan Vega’s “Suicide” to the hard Catholic stories of Flannery O’Connor, we lean into Bruce’s introspection and artistry. In 1982, I was going into my senior year at Phillips Andover Academy. I bought “Nebraska” at Pitchfork Records in Concord, N.H. and brought it to boarding school with me. I felt a connection with these characters who lost, who were without hope, who were confused, who were out of control.It’s a brilliant reading. Zanes continues to unspool his analogy, explaining that “the only way to restore [Odysseus’s] place as man and hero was to first be nobody.” You can waste your access by protecting your subject or trying to get too pretty. Warren Zanes does neither. He honors the access he gets to all of his central characters. If you’re a writer, his gift will make you jealous. But not jealous enough to stop reading. This is the Springsteen book we’ve been waiting for.” —Geoff Edgers, national arts reporter for The Washington Post and author of Walk This Way: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song that Changed American Music Forever