126 - Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska with Warren Zanes

Join us for a deep dive into Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska with writer Warren Zanes, author of Deliver Me From Nowhere which was recently made into a Hollywood movie.

In late 1981 Bruce Springsteen is coming off his biggest success to date with The River album & tour plus his first hit single, Hungry Heart.

But rather than offer more of the same Springsteen offers a curveball - a quiet, almost ghostly sounding record with no hit singles, no tour & not even any interviews to support it.

Springsteen had recently relocated to a house in Colts Neck, New Jersey, where he recorded the bulk of the album on the evening of January 3rd 1982 on a TEAC 144 home recorder.

Influenced by the films of Terence Malick, specifically Badlands, the writing of Flannery O’Connor & the first couple of Suicide albums, Springsteen recorded what were intended as home demos in a bedroom.

Later attempts to re-record the material with the E Street Band proved largely fruitless & they eventually went back to the original water damaged cassette recording, which was released as the finished album.

The album proved hugely influential to the likes of Steve Earle & Matt Berninger (The National) & even Johnny Cash recorded two of its tracks.

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