#226 - Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska (1982)
MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:
BACKGROUND – BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Bruce Springsteen has released 21 studio albums during a career spanning six decades, most of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. He is an originator of heartland rock, a genre combining mainstream rock music with poetic and socially conscious lyrics that tell a narrative about working-class American life. Nicknamed "The Boss", he is known for his lyrics and energetic concerts, with performances that can last more than four hours. Often described as cinematic in their scope, Springsteen's lyrics frequently explore highly personal themes such as individual commitment, dissatisfaction and dismay with life in a context of everyday situations. Springsteen's themes include social and political commentary, and are rooted in the struggles faced by his own family of origin.
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on September 23, 1949. He is of Dutch, Irish, and Italian descent. He grew up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey. His mother was originally from Brooklyn, worked as a legal secretary, and was the main breadwinner in the family. His father, Douglas Frederick "Dutch" Springsteen (1924–1998), worked various jobs such as a bus driver, and had mental health issues throughout his life, which worsened in his later years. Springsteen has two younger sisters. He attended Catholic school, where he was at odds with the nuns and rebelled against the strictures imposed upon him, though some of his later music reflected a Catholic ethos and included Irish-Catholic hymns with a rock music twist. In a 2012 interview, he explained that it was his Catholic upbringing rather than his political ideology that most influenced his music. He said his faith had given him a "very active spiritual life" but joked that this "made it very difficult sexually" and added "once a Catholic, always a Catholic". He grew up hearing fellow New Jersey singer Frank Sinatra on the radio, and became interested in being a musician at the age of seven when he saw Elvis Presley's performances on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956 and 1957. Soon after, his mother rented him a guitar for $6 a week. In ninth grade, Springsteen began attending the public High School, but did not fit in there either. A former teacher said he was a "loner who wanted nothing more than to play his guitar". In 1964, Springsteen saw the Beatles' televised appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. and bought his first guitar for $18.95. Thereafter, he started playing for audiences with a band called the Rogues at local venues. Later that year, his mother took out a loan to buy him a $60 Kent guitar, an act he later memorialized in his song "The Wish". He graduated in 1967, but felt so alienated that he skipped his graduation ceremony He briefly attended Ocean County College, but dropped out. Upon being drafted when he was 19, Springsteen failed the physical examination and avoided service in the Vietnam War because the concussion he had suffered in a motorcycle accident two years prior (and his behavior at induction) reportedly made him unacceptable for service.
In the late 1960s, Springsteen performed briefly in a power trio known as Earth, playing in clubs in New Jersey, with one major show New York City. From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed with the band Child, which later changed its name to Steel Mill and included Danny Federici, Vini Lopez, Vinnie Roslin, and later Steve Van Zandt and Robbin Thompson. During this time, they performed regularly at venues on the Jersey Shore, especially The Stone Pony.
As Springsteen sought to shape a unique and genuine musical and lyrical style, he performed with multiple bands over a 2 year period in the early 1970s, including Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom, the Sundance Blues Band, and the Bruce Springsteen Band. His prolific songwriting ability was described as having "more words in some individual songs than other artists had in whole albums". He brought his skills to the attention of several people who went on to prove influential to his career development, including his new managers who in turn brought him to the attention of Columbia Records, whom Bruce auditioned for in May 1972. In October 1972, Springsteen formed a new band for the recording of his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. The band eventually became known as the E Street Band, although the name was not used until September 1974. Springsteen acquired the nickname "The Boss" during this period, since he took on the task of collecting his band's nightly pay and distributing it amongst the band. The nickname also reportedly sprang from games of Monopoly that Springsteen would play with other Jersey Shore musicians. Springsteen released his first two albums,Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle in 1973 (January and November); but neither earned him a large audience. He then changed his style and achieved worldwide popularity with Born to Run in 1975. This was followed by Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) and The River. The double album was Springsteen's first to go number one on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart and spent four weeks at the top of the charts.
After the solo album Nebraska (1982), he reunited with his E Street Band for Born in the U.S.A. (1984), which became his most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling albums of all time. All seven of its singles reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, including the title track. Springsteen mostly hired session musicians for the recording of his next three albums, Tunnel of Love (1987), Human Touch (1992), and Lucky Town (1992). He reassembled the E Street Band for Greatest Hits (1995), then recorded the acoustic album The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) and the EP Blood Brothers (1996). Seven years after releasing The Ghost of Tom Joad—the longest gap between any of his studio albums—Springsteen released The Rising in 2002, which he dedicated to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. He released two more folk albums, Devils & Dust (2005) and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006), followed by two more albums with the E Street Band: Magic (2007) and Working on a Dream (2009). The next two albums, Wrecking Ball (2012) and High Hopes (2014), topped album charts worldwide. From 2017 to 2018, and again in 2021, Springsteen performed the critically acclaimed one-man show Springsteen on Broadway which saw him perform some of his songs and tell stories from his 2016 autobiography; the album version was released in 2018. He then released the solo album Western Stars (2019), the album Letter to You (2020) with the E Street Band, and a solo cover album Only the Strong Survive in 2022. Letter to You reached No. 2 in the U.S. and made Springsteen the first artist to score a top five album across six consecutive decades.
Listed among the album era's most prominent acts, Springsteen has sold more than 71 million albums in the U.S. and over 140 million worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has earned numerous awards, including 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award. He was inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 by Bono, a favor he returned in 2005. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009, and was named MusiCares person of the year in 2013. The Boss was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2016, and the National Medal of Arts by President Biden in 2023. He ranked 23rd on Rolling Stone's list of the Greatest Artists of All Time, which described him as being "the embodiment of rock & roll" (just ahead of Jerry Lee Lewis, but right behind U2)
In 1964, Springsteen saw the Beatles' televised appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show (which he frequently watched). Inspired, he bought his first guitar for $18.95 at the Western Auto appliance store. The Animals, Chuck Berry, Harry Chapin, Bob Dylan, Wooddy Guthrie, Van Morrison, Roy Orbison, Elvis, Pete Seeger, Hank Williams, Joe Strummer, and author John Steinbeck are some of his listed influences.
The Killers frequently cited Nebraska as an influence for their 2021 album Pressure Machine. Being a highly influential album, the songs of Nebraska have been covered numerous times. Notably, country music icon Johnny Cash's 1983 album Johnny 99featured versions of two of Springsteen's songs from Nebraska: "Johnny 99" and "Highway Patrolman". Cash also contributed to a widely praised tribute album, Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, which was released in 2000. It featured a wide group of artists including Hank Williams III, Los Lobos, Ani DiFranco, Ben Harper, Aimee Mann, and others. Kelly Clarkson compared her effort to move away from mainstream to edgier and more personal music on her third studio album My Decemberto Springsteen's Nebraska. In 2022, Ryan Adams released a full track-by-track cover of the album. Widely regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Springsteen has been called a "rock 'n' roll poet" who "radiates working-class authenticity". His work "epitomizes rock's deepest values: desire, the need for freedom and the search to find yourself.
ALBUM BACKGROUND – NEBRASKA
Nebraska is the sixth studio album Bruce Springsteen, released in September 1982. This album consists of very dark songs questioning society, and ends with “Reason to Believe”, a somewhat hopeful song that reflects on humanity’s determination to go on. The placement of the song leaves the dark album with a note of hope.
Even though Springsteen did not record the album in the same style as Johnny Cash, he tried to find inspiration for the style and the themes of the album by listening repeatedly to the singles and the albums Cash published for his first label, Sun Records. Those records featured songs talking about the poor, the beaten down, the prisoners. Johnny Cash himself reacted enthusiastically to this album, seeing shades of his younger self in this new, dark version of Springsteen, and in fact, he recorded two covers from Nebraska: Johnny 99 and Highway Patrolman.
Nebraska is the only Bruce Springsteen album without his photo on either the front or back cover. "I knew I shouldn't be on there. The world I was describing, that's what the cover needed to be." Bruce chose not tour for this album, which is only 1 of 2 albums he didn't do a supporting tour (2019's Western Stars being the other)
Nebraska's ten songs marked a departure for Springsteen, even as they took him farther down a road he'd already been traveling. Gradually, his songs became darker and more pessimistic, and those on Nebraska marked a new low. They also found him branching out into better developed stories.
On the germination of this album, Springsteen said, "I was just doing songs for the next rock album, and I decided that what always took me so long in the studio was the writing. I would get in there, and I just wouldn't have the material written, or it wasn't written well enough, and so I'd record for a month, get a couple of things, go home write some more, record for another month—it wasn't very efficient. So this time, I got a little Teac four-track cassette machine, and I said, I'm gonna record these songs, and if they sound good with just me doin' 'em, then I'll teach 'em to the band.
The demo recording sessions that produced the album actually covered several days, but January 3, 1982, is credited as the "legendary night" when 15 tracks were recorded. They were "Starkweather" ("Nebraska"), "Atlantic City", "Mansion on the Hill", "Johnny 99", "Highway Patrolman", "State Trooper", "Used Cars", "Wanda" ("Open All Night"), "Reason to Believe", "Born in the U.S.A.", "Downbound Train", "Child Bride", "Losin' Kind", "My Father's House" (May 25, 1982), and "Pink Cadillac", a total of 15 songs; 10 ended up on Nebraska
E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zant recalled that he saw potential in the demos and persuaded Springsteen to record them for an album: "I remember him playing them for me one day ...And I listened to this thing and I thought to myself, 'I gotta say there's something extraordinary about this.' There was no intention of it being a record and no intention of it being released, but there was something just extraordinarily intimate about it. And I thought 'What a wonderful moment has been captured here just accidentally.' And I said to him, 'Listen, I know this is a bit strange but I honestly think this is an album unto itself and I think you should release it.' And he was like 'What do you mean? It's just demos for the band.' And I'm like 'I know you didn't intended for this to be recorded but I just know greatness when I hear it, okay? It's my thing, it's why I'm a record producer and that's why I'm your friend and I'm just telling you I think your fans will just love this and I think it's actually an important piece of work. Because it captures this amazingly strange, weirdly cinematic kind of dreamlike mood. I don't know what it is. All I know is I know greatness when I hear it and this is it, okay? And this deserves to be heard I think people will love it and I think it's a unique opportunity to actually release something absurdly intimate.'"
Springsteen stated that the stories in this album were partly inspired by historian Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States.