‘Nebraska’: How Bruce Springsteen built something beautiful out of tragedy

In September 1981, Bruce Springsteen, then 32, finished the tour for his double album, The River. The singer had never been in such a triumphant position. He was enjoying what he always yearned for: for his style of rock and roll, tinged with muscular soul and stories of characters in search of freedom, to resonate with a mass audience. He was the hero of the people. However, a few days after the final concert, he collapsed. “I hit a personal wall I didn’t even know existed,” he said. This was the dark breeding ground for the most atypical album in his discography, Nebraska (1982), a work that his record label didn’t want to release because it seemed “too depressing.” Springsteen’s response further enraged the executives: “There will be no singles, no tour to support it, no press interviews.” He didn’t even want to be on the cover. Despite protests from CBS Records, the album was released and reached a creditable third place on the U.S. sales charts.

On October 24, Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition, a four-disc set of previously unreleased material, was released. On the same day, Deliver Me From Nowhere hit theaters. The biopic, directed by Scott Cooper, stars Jeremy Allen White, the star of The Bear, in the role of Bruce. The film is based on the book of the same name by Warren Zanes, who spoke to EL PAÍS for this report. “All Bruce was trying to achieve with Nebraska was survival. He describes it as childhood issues that affected his adult life. He came off the tour for The River and there were ghosts waiting for him at his apartment door. More instinctively than consciously, he set about dealing with them and finding some order in his life, some meaning beyond what was happening onstage. Nebraska was something that emerged in that process, a document of his struggles that, ultimately and strangely, gave hope. But the hope wasn’t in the songs, it was in the act of writing them and moving forward,” Zanes says.

Springsteen’s relationship with his father, Douglas, traumatized the singer for decades. At nine years old, his mother would send Bruce to find his father at the pub. An alcoholic and bipolar, Douglas’s violent outbursts were common. Bruce would lock himself in his room, curl up in bed, and cover his ears. It didn’t help: his father would appear shortly afterward. Having become a global rock star, he felt that emptiness. He had to confront his past, and he did so during the making of Nebraska.

American musician Elliott Murphy is a contemporary of Springsteen (both are 76 years old); they’ve been friends for decades and have shared the stage. Murphy answers from his home in Paris for this report: “Normally, the message of any Bruce album is hope and the pure joy of being alive, but on Nebraska there’s little hope and little joy: it’s song after song of beautiful despair, a search for understanding where there is none. Bruce has always had this uncanny ability to fully embody the characters in his songs, and Nebraska is no exception. I can’t think of any other artist who would have made an album as pure and stark as this one. It was Bruce Springsteen at his most bleakly beautiful.”

To record the album, the musician isolated himself. It caught him at a time in his life without a partner or his own home. He rented one on the Jersey Shore (Colts Neck, 50 miles from New York) and there, with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, he began the difficult journey of delving into his darkest memories. He read Flannery O’Connor’s dark short stories and binge-watched Badlands, the 1973 film directed by Terrence Malick starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Badlands tells the story of a serial killer, a 19-year-old working-class boy who got into a car with his 14-year-old girlfriend and went on a two-month killing spree, murdering a dozen people. The album’s opening title track, Nebraska, deals with this episode, but with a twist, as Bruce speaks in the first person. “I saw her standin’ on her front lawn just a twirlin’ her baton / Me and her went for a ride, sir... / and 10 innocent people died .” Impersonating the killer, Springsteen immersed himself in the story with his face uncovered. This is how the musician explained his purpose: “Nebraska speaks to isolation in America. What happens to a person when they feel excluded from their friends, their community, their government, or their job? These are the things that keep you sane, that give you meaning. If they’re gone, social obligations become a farce. And, at that point, anything can happen.”

Springsteen wrote the entire album in a few frantic days. Atlantic City tells of a young man with no future who tells his girlfriend that he has no choice but to join a gang of mobsters. Mansion on the Hill recalls his childhood. Johnny 99 describes a boy who becomes unemployed, gets drunk, and ends up killing a police officer; he is sentenced to 99 years in prison. State Trooper describes a man fleeing his demons. My Father’s House is a vision of himself as a child and his troubled relationship with his father. Many are stories of characters driven to some desperate act that will shape their lives.

The album’s sound couldn’t be more austere. Elliott Murphy analyzes: “I was drawn to its minimalist production, from the title track to the lone harmonica. I’m seduced by its darkness. There’s always a sense of a classic rock and roll groove and authentic, down-to-earth lyrics. I was amazed at how Bruce could create something so beautiful out of pure tragedy.” Zanes, who plays in an excellent band called The Del Fuegos, admits that he didn’t understand the album when his brother bought it in 1982: “We were living in New Hampshire and had been Springsteen fans since his second album. But the first time I heard Nebraska, I was a little disappointed. Where was Thunder Road or Streets of Fire? But because I believed in Bruce, even as a teenager, I kept listening to him. And the characters of Nebraska entered my bloodstream.”

Springsteen’s original idea was to show the E Street Band the cassette tape with those gloomy songs he recorded in his bedroom and then record them with the entire group in a studio. When the band became involved, Springsteen saw that it was no longer the same, that the desolation he captured solo was lost with the addition of drums, keyboards, or electric guitars. At the same time, Springsteen tried out songs like Born in the U.S.A. A double album was considered: the acoustic one he recorded alone and an electric one containing Born in the U.S.A. and other songs.

Precarious recording

After a few weeks carrying the Nebraska cassette in his jacket pocket, he decided he’d release it as it was, recorded on a rickety tape recorder. That’s when he recognized the shadows of depression. “I believe human beings are transformed on difficult days, not sunny ones,” Zanes explains. He adds, “There are days when, on a deeper level, we feel there’s a stain on us that makes us someone on the run from the law, a convict. But most popular songs prefer to talk about love, about that person we love or the one we’ve lost. Bruce helped tip the balance a little. He knew we listeners could get there, simply because we could identify with the dark people of Nebraska. The end result was that many of us felt less alone because of Nebraska.” Murphy considers Nebraska “a true cinematic work of art because the intimacy of the recording, the voice, and the strumming of the acoustic guitar made you feel like you were in a dark movie theater somewhere in West Texas.”

Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, supported him throughout, and eventually this contrarian, murky, and risky work reached stores. “I’m still fascinated by that decision,” Zanes explains. “Its illogical nature, its beauty as an unexpected event that stopped me in my tracks and made me wonder, ‘Could I make a record like that?’ I hope that when I reach that crossroads, I choose to release my Nebraska, whatever form it takes.”

Just before releasing Nebraska, Springsteen, advised by Landau, decided to seek therapy. He has since continued to do so.

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