Nebraska

Springsteen's lo-fi classic is having a moment

The legend of Springsteen’s Nebraska album is well known in rock annals. He went off by himself to a cabin in New Jersey to record demos for a new album, meant to be recorded as full electric songs with the E Street Band. But the full band versions didn’t capture the same vibe as his cassette demos. So following the double album The River, his biggest and most expansive release yet, with his biggest hit yet (“Hungry Heart”), he put out a stark collection of decidedly non-radio friendly acoustic songs recorded with a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder, and an echoplex, and mixed down to a cassette “boombox” as we called them back then. There’s a book written about the whole thing called Deliver Us From Nowhere, which was a really good read, written by Warren Zanes, formerly of the Del Fuegos. And there’s a movie out now based on the book. I haven’t seen it yet, but I keep meaning to go. (Maybe later tonight?)

So Springsteen takes a huge risk and drops this completely unmarketable bunch of songs about people at the end of their rope, serial killers on a spree, desperate men turning to crime to return “debts no honest man can pay”. It’s dark stuff. My favorite track on the album is “Reason to Believe,” which is maybe the most cynical thing he’s ever written, a song quizzically wondering how people manage to find anything to believe in after life kicking them in the teeth.

Thing is, it’s a fucking masterpiece. He’s said it’s his favorite thing he’s done, and its right there with Darkness on the Edge of Town for me.

So why is it having a moment? Well, the film obviously, and also the release of the big Nebraska box set, which contains Electric Nebraska, the aforementioned E Street band demos of the Nebraska songs. Electric Nebraska had gained almost the sort of mythical status as The Beach Boys’ Smile, and was thought to be lost. But here it is. I was damn excited to hear it.

Thing is, it sucks. Springsteen clearly made the right move releasing what he did. The electric versions contain none of the spooky echoey lo-fi sound of the album, and thus, none of the ominous dark sensations that it so brilliantly captured. Listening to Nebraska makes me feel like someone draped a black wet blanket over my head, in the best possible way. And the electric versions just don’t have that. It’s impossible not to be gobsmacked with dread when Bruce sings “I killed everything in my path” in the opening track, not-so-loosely based on Charles Starkweather, who went on a killing spree through Nebraska and Wyoming in the late 50’s, killing eleven people in total. Terrence Malick’s film Badlands was also based on Starkweather, and apparently Bruce had been watching it and felt moved by it.

*side note: I recently watched Malick’s Knight of Cups and found it to be totally hypnotizing and moving, if lacking in plot. Someone described it as the most expensive ASMR piece ever made, which isn’t inaccurate, as it’s really about. I wish I’d seen it in the theater, where you can really allow a film to take you over. I saw Tree of Life that way and it blew my mind. I’ve been thinking of just putting Knight of Cups on in the studio while I’m writing. It’s absolutely the most visually beautiful movie I’ve seen except maybe some of Malick’s other films. Ok, enough about Terrence Malick. Back to Bruce.

Like I said, I haven’t seen the new film about Nebraska. But from the book and the clips I’ve seen, it’s pretty clear the theme is about the courage it takes to make an artistic statement like that when there’s so much commercial success at stake, so many expectations and pressures. You’ve got to respect it. And you have to take into account that when he released it, he had no idea if anyone would get it, or if it might end his career just as it was exploding.

Springsteen went back to more stripped down songs on a few later albums, most notably The Ghost of Tom Joad, and then Devils and Dust. And while these are great records, they’re not Nebraska. They were recorded traditionally, with crystal clear studio sound. I suppose it’d be impossible to recapture what happened on Nebraska however, so it’s probably best he never tried to.

It’s funny, I was not a Springsteen fan at all for most of my life. My first exposure to him was the Born in the USA album, which certainly has it’s moments, but isn’t one of his best in my opinion. It was almost like an apology for Nebraska, an attempt to make up for its commercial lack of success by being big and poppy and having lots of very 80s sounds on it. So I guess that stuck in my head. Later in life, I saw a great documentary on HBO about the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, and suddenly a light went off in my head, and I “got it” so to speak. I wonder how I would've felt about Bruce if my first exposure to him had been Nebraska instead.

As you may remember, I released a “Nebraska” version of “Kick My Tires” a while back. I’d just read the book, and thought it’d be an interesting experiment. So I bought a tascam 4 track on Ebay, got a fake Echoplex pedal, and did some recording. I was pretty pleased with how it came out, as it gave “Kick My Tires” a whole different emotional impact. I’ve been considering doing some more recordings like that and maybe releasing a whole Nebraska edition of Significance. But I haven’t started it, as it felt like a case of me avoiding the hard slog of writing new stuff, and I didn’t want it to get in the way of that.

What do you guys think?

That’s all for now.

Cheers,

Craig