The story behind the making of Bruce Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska is so compelling, and such a significant chapter in his career, it's now the subject of a dramatised feature film, Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. And while there's no getting around the fact that this five-disc set has been released to promote said film - even the Boss isn't above cross-platform media marketing - it still succeeds as the last revealing word on the album's gestation.
That legendary story in short: Bruce Springsteen recorded the demos for Nebraska at home on a four-track tape machine with the intention of remaking them with the E Street Band. After five days in the studio, during which they recorded eight songs, Springsteen eventually decided that he preferred the haunted feel of his original solo cassette versions and put those out as the finished album.
A myth has persisted that some of the so-called 'Electric Nebraska' recordings pointed towards the bombastic stadium-tooled sound of Springsteen's next album, Born in the USA. Nothing could be further from the truth, as we discover here. Springsteen assembled a stripped- down E Street Band entirely in tune with the desolate folk-country mood of the slower numbers and - per his apt description in the liner notes - the "punk rockabilly" demands of songs such as Johnny 99.
The standout track in that latter mode is a previously unreleased version of Born in the USA, which wouldn't sound out of place on a Hüsker Dü or early Replacements record. It suggests an alternate reality where Springsteen abandoned his desire for mainstream success in favour of a major cult career à la Neil Young.
The set also includes unused songs from his home recordings, a skeletal demo of Pink Cadillac, everything from the 1982 solo studio sessions in which he attempted to recapture that intimate bedroom vibe, a remastered Nebraska, and an exclusive 2025 live performance - also available to watch on the bonus Blu-Ray disc - where he performs the album for the first time in its entirety.
There's no audience or chat from the Boss - it takes place in an empty theatre. A solitary pursuit, true to Nebraska's original intentions.
