Review - Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska
Artistic inspiration, creative risk-taking, and the power of music.
While Deliver Me From Nowhere can function as a remembrance of the 1982 album Nebraska, I would gently remind the reader that this is but a tiny droplet in the tsunami of humanity that Bruce Springsteen was swimming with before, during, and after its release.
Warren Zanes is fortunate and in turn, tuned into the intricate web of storytelling and personal redemption, whichever door you enter in those terms, with this book. Only someone who has scraped along the same sidewalks, gigged in the same lung-squeezing smoky underground clubs, and then completely immersed themselves into Springsteen’s laconic, minimalistic headspace, could get this tome written.
I’m not gonna lie: I’m familiar with Zanes’ band the Del Fuegos. And being from Boston - the band’s stomping ground - I spent some time in those suffocating but exhilarating zones that Zanes inhabited. His complete involvement in recollection inhabits every page and for this, the pinpoint accuracy in getting inside Springsteen’s cranium is absolutely essential for the reader.
Nebraska came at a stereotypical crossroads for Springsteen. Sandwiched between two stratospherically commercial albums - The River and Born In The U.S.A. - the stripped-to-the-bones, whisper-voice of Springsteen signaled insight few listeners understood. But they should have, according to Zanes. If they were listening closely, they had seen it forming since Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ.
But where did all of this inner lurking around corners and unsaid uneasiness seep from? Springsteen saw it as a place he had to go to get real. He was “The Boss,” in a sense, but not of himself.
His close friend and bandmate Steven Van Zandt could be that guy, the one who knew. But as a musician, he wanted to fashion a name for himself. Solo. Apart from the band. Springsteen in his way saw this as the opportunity to go inward and find something he had yet to see or fix.
Going it alone, he rented a ranch house in Colts Neck, NJ, poured forth in notebooks, and watched late-night television. And then, it was there. Terrence Malick’s Badlands. This was the slow-burn epiphany. And he grasped onto that vision, and wouldn’t let it go for the ensuing weeks.
Zanes is colorfully blunt in the descriptions and mindsets zeroing in on this visual inspiration. Pretty much everyone connected with the film wanted done with it, due to Malick’s idiosyncrasies. Except for Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. For them, this was their moment and they ran with it. Springsteen saw that in the performances and bathed in its darkness and confusion, Nebraska was born.
Composing songs alone at the rental, he sat at the end of his bed and sang into Shure SM57 mics as a TEAC 144 captured the stark input onto a cassette. This was just above a home consumer tape recorder and worlds away from the studio setting Springsteen was known for.
And with that tone, the songs took shape. The cassette itself was as incongruous as they came back then. For the final demo, Springsteen found a personal piece of equipment that might do the job. But where were these songs going? It felt uncertain and raw and as Zanes noted, “You don’t master your recordings to a water-damaged Panasonic boom box if you’re looking to follow up The River.”
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?
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.
And although there were label executives to get through to the finish line, Springsteen’s manager and confidante Jon Landau had the backing of Columbia Records. In so far that Springsteen was well-passed the sophomore slump and the accountants would be bean-counting if this dark, moody and sometimes frightening antithesis to the holy power of The Boss, would actually sell. Like records. Like to the radio.
And Springsteen - against his usual “control nut” nature - gave over to how the visual identity would be associated with the music. He had already decided that he was taking a backseat to publicity for Nebraska: no interviews and no tour to support. While Andrea Klein’s stark use of typography was immediately apparent, and the cover image was a 1975 photo by David Michael Kennedy, the concern lay with where was the moving visual. An actual music video for the single “Atlantic City?”
Well-known music video director Arnold Levine took the non-representational approach, heading out to the legendary boardwalk of what was perceived and what it actually was. Filmed as cinema verite, handheld camera work. And as Zanes correctly points out “When MTV put the video into rotation, Springsteen was right where he wanted to be, nowhere in sight.”
Did Nebraska sell? Sure, it did. Springsteen called Landau after it had been out and asked. Yeah, it was doing great. There was hardly any other way to get that feedback, except in the charts. The critics were coming into it cold and so were the listeners. They’d basically have to trust that Springsteen knew what he was doing. And quietly find their way around and thru the murky waters of this album.
Those that truly saw it as the flag in the ground were fellow musicians. Zanes spends a good portion in a confessional of sorts, letting artists like Dave Alvin, Roseanne Cash and Steve Earle recount how deeply Nebraska affected them and their livelihood.
And then there was the road trip. As the curtain starts to fall on this epic journey, Springsteen begins to unravel as he heads to a new home in Los Angeles after the album’s release. Only after Landau suggested he seek professional help, did Springsteen start to realize he had really gone down a dark hole to hand over the heavy baggage of his complicated childhood.
In the end, there would be no Born In the U.S.A. without Nebraska and that is a vital learned point. And many of those involved in that intimate space acknowledge this, including Springsteen himself. The sheer “detonation” however that Born In the U.S.A. gave off, placed him at the highest point in his career. It would all be measured from here on out. And Nebraska? Well, it sat quietly, darkly in the background waiting for its time.
The epilogue is the recent reckoning with Springsteen and Zanes returning to the rental house in Colt’s Neck, NJ to put it all in some sort of perspective. That stillness in the air and in the bedroom. Not much had changed. But a lot had changed. There had been no photos taken inside the house back in late ‘81. Then Springsteen handed his phone to Zanes.
“Can you grab a picture of me in here?”
“Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska” by Warren Zanes :: published by Crown :: 320 pages :: Hardcover, $28.00
Top notch. You stirred up my heroin-like book addiction. Just ordered it.
Excellent review, Amy! I will look for this book and pull out my Nebraska album tonight. Also, love your wording and descriptions, especially “Only someone who has scraped along the same sidewalks, gigged in the same lung-squeezing smoky underground clubs, and then completely immersed themselves into Springsteen’s laconic, minimalistic headspace, could get this tome written.” Nicely done.