The fascinating story behind the making of Bruce Springsteen’s most surprising album Nebraska
revealing its pivotal role in Springsteen’s career—now with a new afterword Soon to be a
major motion picture starring Jeremy Allen White ( The Bear ) “Brilliant . . . For fans of
American music Deliver Me from Nowhere makes a great ghost story.”— The Boston Globe AN NPR
BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Without Nebraska Bruce Springsteen might not be who he is today. The
natural follow-up to Springsteen’s hugely successful album The River should have been the
hit-packed Born in the U.S.A. But instead in 1982 he came out with an album consisting of a
series of dark songs he had recorded by himself for himself. But more than forty years later
Nebraska is arguably Springsteen’s most important record—the lasting clue to understanding not
just his career as an artist and the vision behind it but also the man himself. Nebraska is
rough and unfinished recorded on cassette tape with a simple four-track recorder by
Springsteen alone in his bedroom just as the digital future was announcing itself. And yet
Springsteen now considers it his best album. Nebraska expressed a turmoil that was reflective
of the mood of the country but it was also a symptom of trouble in the artist’s life the
beginnings of a mental breakdown that Springsteen would only talk about openly decades after
the album’s release. Warren Zanes spoke to many people involved with making Nebraska
including Bruce Springsteen himself. He also interviewed more than a dozen celebrated artists
and musical insiders from Rosanne Cash to Steven Van Zandt about their reactions to the
album. Zanes interweaves these conversations with inquiries into the myriad cultural
touchpoints including Terrence Malick’s Badlands and the short stories of Flannery O’Conner
that influenced Springsteen as he was writing the album’s haunting songs. The result is a
textured and revelatory account of not only a crucial moment in the career of an icon but also
a record that upended all expectations and predicted a home-recording revolution.
