The film Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is in theatres this weekend. It's based on the excellent Warren Zanes book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. Zanes appeared on the podcast in 2023 at the time of the book's release. Here is a replay of that episode.
Purchase a copy of Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska
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Purchase a copy of Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're totally bumming rock and roll.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I think I'll leave you. You're reading little hands this,
It's time.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
To rock and roll. Roll up week I totally booked.
Welcome back to book don Rock. This weekend, as you
may know, is the debut of the film Springsteen Delivered
Me from Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen.
The film is based on a book written by Warren
(00:27):
Zanes called Deliver Me from Nowhere. The Making of Bruce
Springsteen's Nebraska, a phenomenal book. Warren was on the podcast
back in twenty twenty three when the book came out,
so I thought i'd replay the episode for you as
you get ready to check out the film this weekend.
So here it is, going back to episode one thirty
three for author Warren Zanes. Warren, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
When did you first hear Nebraska and what was your reaction?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I first heard it when it came out. You know,
we were we were already among the converted, and you
know that probably I'm the youngest of three, so there
was the trickle down effect from you know, music that
both my brother brought into the house and my mother
(01:16):
already had. She had a good record collection that included,
you know, everything from Aretha Franklin to Pete Seeger, Josh White,
the Band, the Stones, Van Morris, and my uncle listened
to oldies radio, so we got our Chuck Berry, our
Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and so my brother was set
(01:40):
up to be able to identify Bruce as something good
in the world. And I was the younger brother that
it was all filtering down.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
To my older brothers.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, it's when I teach, I teach it, m yu.
And you know, with my students, it's either parents or
siblings who are the determining factor that give you know,
in my classes, give them a huge advantage if they
they've kind of gotten that transmission. But while the end
is in the East Street Shuffle were we were on
(02:14):
board in a complete way by that time. And then,
as I mentioned in the book, when my brother was
in had conquered high school in New Hampshire, he covered
his school books with the Time and newsweek covers when
Bruce was at his big media week as a young man.
(02:37):
So by the time Nebraska comes, we're we're just waiting
with open arms.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So not surprised at what you heard.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Then, I don't really believe anybody who says they weren't surprised. So, yes,
we were surprised, but we were committed. And I think
this describes the majority of you know, Bruce fans. We
were committed enough to this guy to go, we'll follow you.
We don't know where you're taking us, but we will
follow you.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Bruce told you that without Nebraska, there's no Born in
the USA. What did he mean by.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
That, Well, there, the two albums come into the world
at the same time, and then it's just a matter
of kind of differentiating between them. But he had two
thirds of Born in the USA in the can before
Nebraska was officially released, So it's not that you know,
(03:31):
when we go into a record store, we see everything
kind of sequential terms. You know, there's the fourth record,
there's the fifth record. But behind the scenes it's much
sloppier for many artists. But the incredible thing to me
is that he had the strength of Born in the
USA right there, but he had some personal need to
(03:56):
follow Nebraska through and he did it despite what it
would mean for his career trajectory because he was on
this upward movement and Nebraska, you know, both in terms
of the marketplace and just spiritually it went way downward.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And credit you go to John Landau, Bruce's manager and producer, right,
because he supported Bruce.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I don't know if you know that that book mentioned
on the Hill. To me, it's like the worst part
of the art commerce dichotomy. You know, the label guys,
the managers, they're kind of the bad guys. They're only
in it for the money. They're ruining the art. And
it's just sometimes that dichotomy holds true, but often it's
(04:46):
way too simplistic. And in the case of John Landau, look,
he stood by an artist who was making one of
the strangest career moves in the history of popular music.
You know, we've had he had muddy, unfinished, very dark records,
but not from artists who just had their first number
(05:07):
one album. It's just not what anyone would expect, from
the fans, to the label, to the management. And John
Landau was right there supporting his artist.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
And when he heard the songs, he was a little
concerned for Bruce, right.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, when he first heard the songs his response was
you know is what he told me was that he
was quote concerned on a friendship level. So he was
hearing something happening with the songwriter, but he was seeing
some kind of trouble with the man. And then after
Nebraska was released and Bruce took that trip west that
(05:49):
he talks about in his memoir, it was Landau who said,
you need professional help. So he's been He's like, you know,
I talk about John Landau's time in the book like
he knew when it was time to be a friend.
He knew when it was time to be a manager.
And that takes a kind of sophistication that I know
(06:13):
I couldn't do it. If I were a manager. Being
completely honest, I'd say, we definitely are not doing Nebraska.
You know, it's just again, it's such a left turn.
It can't be overstated. God, the way it worked. And
I'll tell you when I first looked at it, I
was I had a suspicion, and my suspicion was this,
(06:36):
it's all strategy. It's all strategy. Because Nebraska gets all
the critics on board, it's a kind of declaration of
this deep authenticity. And then Born in the USA comes
and it's just like, let's go deep into you know
the world, the hits and the commercial bid it and
(07:00):
it's not the case. But it worked out so perfectly.
It was hard not to project strategy in hindsight, but
it wasn't the strategy. It was like one man following
a kind of deep need. There was some place he
had to go that was more important than career considerations,
(07:23):
and in the end it happened to benefit that career.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
There is an absence of melody on Nebraska, which was
intentional on Bruce's part. This leads us to a band
called Suicide. Who is Suicide and what influence do they
have on this album?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
So Suicide, you know, they get a good amount of
space in the book because you can't understand Nebraska without them.
So Bruce there a duo, drum machine, electronic. It was
really like the father of electronic music. But you know,
(07:59):
for listeners, the song I recommend people go to is
Frankie Teardrop, which is a very long song, around ten minutes,
but it involves a guy coming home from a factory job,
you know, and at that point you're close to some
things we've seen in Springsteen's world. But then he comes home,
(08:20):
murders his wife, murders his child, kills himself, and it's
so dark and so not what you expect of popular music.
And Alan Vega, who's in suicide, he's just on a microphone,
so he's not playing an instrument, but he does the
(08:41):
screams of that moment of infanticide, and it's it's just
you had to kind of strap your seatbelt on just
to listen to this stuff. And Springsteen felt this deep
connection with it. And when he described it to me,
he said his word was he heard it kind of
unforgivingness in suicide and he didn't know that music go
(09:06):
that far out, and so it gave him a kind
of license. And on the song State Trooper, you hear
Springsteen do these screams that are almost like him signing
Alan vegas name to that song. So their presence is
keenly felt, but it's they were the ones who kind
of gave him permission to go that low.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And they didn't have an influence on just that song, right,
it's the whole album.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I think, like musically you hear the most in State Trooper,
but I think it's a cross it's spread across Nebraska
in the sense of these things can happen in popular music,
These things can you know in a way that I
would translate it to mean the whole of life, it's
(09:57):
absolute worst can be there represented in the stories we
tell through song, and you know, the bulk of what
you hear on you know, think back to nineteen eighty two.
Look at the top one hundred. You're gonna see songs
of romance, songs of longing, songs of loss. That's always
(10:22):
in American popular music, taking up the greatest amount of
the kind of geography of it all. But life itself
has these tragedies, It has this desperation, and Springsteen, because
of suicide, says I can bring that into the music.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
The complex characters too. You know, bad person can do
good things, a good person can do bad things. It's
not all black and white.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
The absence of redemption. You know, there are a lot
of people in Springsteen's songs prior to Nebraska who are
in really hard places. But there's some like sliver of
hope I think, you know he talks about you know,
he mentioned to me like stolen car off the River
that could have been on Nebraska. You can see him
(11:13):
like stepping toward these songs that don't resolve with that
trace of hope. You know, they go into a hopeless place,
which is where we sometimes go in our lives. So
why can't the music go with us?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
That's what I think connects the fans so much to
his music. It just feels like there's a little bit
of you in his songs, in his in the characters
that make up his songs. There's just something so deep.
What was it the julia to him when you first
heard his music?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
It was it was the full package, you know, I
think because you know, again in time about my mother's
record collection and the things that were coming into the
house through my brother. Van Morrison was there astraally, you know,
moon Dance, and then we got we went back to
them and we knew that he had done. Here comes
(12:10):
in the Night Glory like, Okay, you know, Van Morrison
is a singer songwriter from rock and roll, and I
think if you're listening to that kind of artist at
that level, you're ready for Bruce Springsteen. And you know,
we loved, we did. We were We were too young
(12:30):
to kind of see Dylan go electric. He was electric
by the time we came out of the womb, and
so ye Dylan progress for that and and but Springsteen
felt like somehow he belonged to us and not to
our mother or our uncle. Right, yes, and that matters.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Bruce. He gives you a great description of what it
was like recording the songs. This is chapter eleven. He
uses a teac one four track recorder. Is that that's
a It looks kind of like what I'm recording my podcast.
I was like a little mix.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
I went falling on eBay. I just I found a
broken one. And when I do book events that bring
it with me, just because it's good to make contact
with the material history and to see this thing.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
You know, it was ahead of its time at that point, right.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Ahead of its time, and now it looks like just
this artifact of deep funkiness and it's cool for people
to see it. When we did the CBS Sunday Morning Piece,
I brought it out there and you know, it was beautiful.
Bruce kind of put his hands on it, you know,
but both his hands just like feel things like yeah, yeah,
(13:46):
But it's recording on a cassette that you could buy.
You know, at the time, you could go buy them
that cvs and you know, little kids would use them
to tape their voice. Isn't play it back. The difference
with the TC one forty four was that it's for
track recording, and so that was the revolution. It had
(14:08):
been there for a couple of years, been out on
the market for a couple of years, but to put
it really simply, it was the first consumer multi track machine. Now,
multi track recording is a mundane thing. It's on everybody's laptop,
you know, if you choose to do it. But then
it was like, whoa multi track recording? And pretty soon
(14:34):
you see that shift where people are starting to take
it home. And in that respect, Springsteen's move was very
prophetic of what was coming. But he took it home
and it was still cassette recording.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah. Well, also it's where he recorded it too. Where
is this house that he records it in? And it's
just in the bedroom, right Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah. I mean I'll tell you if I maybe hitting
ahead of things. But when I finished the book, I
sent it to John Landau first, and you know, John
got back and it was you know, we had a
call that was really rich, deep memorable for me, and
(15:20):
you know, at the end he said, so, you know,
I want to send it on to Bruce, but I'm
not going to tell him anything. I'm not going to
tell him how I feel. Let's get a cold read
off of Bruce and he sends it. And then a
couple of days later, I got an email from Bruce
and you know, at the end of it, he said,
how can I help you? And I said, I wrote back,
(15:44):
I can't find this house. You know I'm not I'm
not a great There there Bruce fans who are better
at this kind of research than I am. But it
was you can find a lot of Bruce's homes, couldn't
find this one. And a few days later, Bruce, I
get an undisclosed number on my phone and it's Bruce
calling from the bedroom where he recorded Nebraska. And you know,
(16:08):
he says, Hey, Lauren, it's I'm in the room. We're
forty years ago I made Nebraska and I haven't been
here since. And the guy who rented it to me
still rents it, and he said, I can bring you out.
And so Bruce gave me this last stop in my pilgrimage,
(16:28):
and I'll tell you to be working on a book
over a period of years, and then walk with the
artist into the bedroom where the record was made. Is
as you know, moving an experience as I've had, and
(16:49):
I think, just like I said that Tiac, I wanted
to buy one on eBay just to have the material
history in front of me. Bruce did a few things
along the way, like bringing me to that room. It
really helped me as a writer. Like when you're standing
in the room and there's some history breathing in those
(17:13):
walls and it relates to a project you've been working
on for a couple of years, it just matters. It
does something. And I think he knows that, you know,
he and so he made as much physical contact possible
for me, you know, with the the guitar that he used,
(17:33):
with the portrait of his aunt who you know, died
when she was six. Like he put these things in
front of me, and it's hard to say exactly what
that means to a writing project, but I know it
means something, you know. So when he knew, yeah, he's.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
He's really the producer at that point, he's getting the most.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, that's that's at That's a good way of putting it,
because then you know when we got into the room
that you know, there were a few minutes of like
I probably he probably saw on my feet slightly off
the ground, and after a few minutes of quiet, he
just handed me his cell phone and said, take my picture,
(18:18):
and that pictures in the book. And then he just
started going, Okay, in my bed was here, it was
turned this way, and then I had a wooden table
over there, and he just created a picture. You know.
The room was a lot the same, but he wanted
to give me exactly how it was set up. And
(18:40):
just like a writer can't ask.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
For more, the shag rug was still there, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah. I I wanted people to turn their backs so
I could cut a piece of that orange shag give
it to my sons.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yes, oh man, is it a small house.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Well, it's different than it was because they did some
They put a second story edition and they kind of
blew out the kitchen. So the house you see now
from the front doesn't look the same. But the room
where he made Nebraska, it's not just those orange shag rugs.
It's like mostly intact. So it's this corner as you're
(19:22):
looking at the house, it's the rear left corner looking
out on the reservoir, and it's like it was wow wild.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
It's in Colts Neck, right yeah, Yeah, how did it
come about that he chose that house.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
It's some of his his road crew were living in
another place rented by the fellow who owns this, So
he's a realtor. He's you know, a man wears a
few different hats. But this was rented for Bruce when
he got kind of not a but I imagine they
(20:01):
were selling the house he had been renting, so somebody
just got him a place so that he could, you know,
in his words, it was an emergency landing at the
end of the river door.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So mansion on the Hill. That's the first song that
came to Bruce, as far as he recalls. There was
a song with that title recorded by Hank Williams from
nineteen forty eight, Fred Rose credited as co writer. Rose's
theme is of a woman leaving the one she truly
loves to marry a man with money. Far from Bruce's version.
(20:37):
His version is absent of judgment.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah. The Hank Williams version is a little bit like
the Eagles Lion Eyes, same theme, and Bruce's is much more.
You know, he he it when he introduced it live.
Sometimes it'd talk about taking drives with his father around freehold,
and he was like, we were like tourists in our
(21:02):
own town, like looking at the big homes, you know,
driving by them. You know, he was young enough that
it kind of filled him with wonder. It didn't give
him a sense of you know, class difference or anything.
It was more how a child would see it and
his mansion on the hill really is it's not about
life's better if you have the mansion, or better if
(21:24):
you don't. You know, as you just said, it's it's
it suspends judgment, and it's more just about a child's wonder.
And you know that that time when you're young enough
and you know, as I say in the book, romance
and class haven't yet organized life, and you're kind of
(21:47):
open in a particular way. And you know that that
point of view in that song brought Bruce to this
young age. That was the same age he was when
he was living with his grandparents, which was, you know,
roughly until he was aged six. And you know, he said,
(22:11):
in different ways, Nebraska is about that time of his
life and that time with his grandparents in that house.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
But this is when things go from mystical to dark
and troubled. According to Bruce, the next song is the
title track. It's based on a true story. Can you
talk about the film bad Lands from nineteen seventy three
and the nineteen fifty eight stark Weather murderspree, because that
is a major influence on Bruce.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
It's kind of incredible to me still. You know, So
he sees Terrence Malick's bad Lands on TV. You know,
he's spending quite a lot of time alone. Max Weinberg
is quoted in the book is saying, you know, for
a while there, we didn't know where he lived. So
(22:59):
Bruce is kind of cut off from his band after
being you know, very close on tour for over a year.
And he's there watching TV by himself one night and
he sees Terrence Malick's bad Lands and bad Lands is
it's Martin Sheen and Sissy SpaceX their first big feature jobs.
(23:24):
So there're these actors who are having a moment, and
it's Malick's first real it's a warnerber Brothers project, so
it's a significant outing. And the subject is these nineteen
fifty eight serial murders associated with Charles Starkweather and his
(23:45):
you know, accomplice. Whose role is you know, depends on
your interpretation. But caroly Anne Fugate and they killed eleven people,
and Malick makes this film that that kind of drifts
between an account of those killings, and then there's fantasy
(24:05):
in it too, almost like a Swiss family Robinson moment
where stark Weather and if you build this place in
the forest and you're completely untethered from the historical account,
But I feel like what you're really seeing is when
everyday life just rrupts with this pure violence and a
(24:30):
kind of violence that stands beyond reason. You can't explain it.
And I think that's something that Springsteen was connecting to it.
But he just says he saw this film and somehow
the story of these killings reminded him of his childhood,
(24:52):
which is just a really on paper, a wild statement,
and it's not a one for one correspondence. You know,
there's something he only he like saw that connection. But
you know he's so he helps me, you know, in
his interviews, he helped me to make the connections. But
(25:14):
the interesting thing that happens is he watches it, he
wakes up thinking about it still and goes to the
library to look for books on the Starkweather killings, and
he finds the book Carol, written by Nannette Beaver and
two other authors, and the Neette Beaver was working in
(25:35):
the Omaha television and radio station that first reported the
serial murders. And he reads this book and then he
calls that Omaha television station and the Nett Beaver's still
working there, so, you know, at that time, it's what
nineteen eighty one, it's been since nineteen fifty eight, and
(25:58):
she's still there, and he gets her on the phone,
and you know, I said to Springsteen, like, what were
you up to? Like what was what were you doing?
And he said, well, you know, I research my songs
in a number of cases like that. That's not that
odd for me. But I was onto something else, and
(26:22):
I'm you know, I'm not entirely sure what I was doing.
But he felt like, you know, he needed to get
this right, and when Nebraska came, he saw it as
this this kind of entry point into the album as
a whole, like Mansion on the Hill could have led
to a number of different albums, but Nebraska, that song
(26:46):
led to this album.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And that opening line about the girl twirling the baton,
that's actually from the movie, right, that's a scene with
Sissy's basic.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
That comes from the movie, and it was just by
chance that Terrence Malick, I don't know where they were,
but there was a baton and she started twirling it,
and he didn't know she could twirl a baton, and
he just kind of sewed the thing into the narrative
through line of the movie. So it has nothing to
(27:16):
do with Carolyne Fugate. It only has to do with
bad Lands. But you know, Springsteen migrated it in and
I feel like that's he exposes his source materials in
really interesting ways. That's one of them.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Warren Zane's is here to talk about his brand new book,
Deliver Me from Nowhere, the making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska,
which is out now. One thing I noticed about the
book is it's not a track by track analysis.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
I don't I don't do a kind of song by song,
you know.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
I maybe that's the songwriter part of me that I
feel like that's a you gotta not go too far
into the listener's business.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And so I don't do a song by song. So
I feel like you can read my book and there's
still all the mystery you want. I left intact with
Nebraska but I think sometimes if his childhood when he
was living in his grandparents' home was kind of the
personal source material that he was drawing on. You can't
(28:26):
find easy one to one correspondences in the stories, but
I feel it's that part of his childhood is the
engine that fuels these stories. But the characters in those
stories don't derive directly from his childhood. These are stories
he's telling the thing I felt with Nebraska, and I
(28:48):
felt this pretty early on when I got it, you know,
I picked it up in eighty two and I brought
it back to boarding school. But he's telling really really
complax stories with a new level of economy. So like
highway Patrolment, to me, is still a wonder in terms
(29:12):
of the sophistication of just the narrative strategies. There. You
know those two brothers, you know, both of them dancing
with the same woman, and then the you know, the
brother who's a policeman letting the other brother go. Though
as a policeman representing the law, he should be bringing
(29:32):
his brother in, but as a brother he lets him go.
That's such a complex move because he's both because he
loves that brother, he's letting him go free. At the
same time he's getting his brother out of his life.
It's it's not some neat you know, story of love
between brothers. It's like, you can't be in my life anymore.
(29:55):
And I feel like man to get all that done
in a three or whatever minute song is a writer
working at the height of his powers.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
One track that I always find interesting lyrically is Reason
to Believe. Is Bruce making a statement or is he
asking how do you find a reason to believe when
all this stuff goes wrong in life? Or is it
that he himself is saying you got to find a
reason to believe? Like he's encouraging the listener.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I mean, you said to me, I don't see how
anybody finds anything hopeful in that song, he said. I
guess it's just the density of that title takes people
down that road. But I see no reason for it.
But he's he's seen this effect take place in his
career at many times where people they see the title,
(30:48):
you know, whether it's you know, Born in the USA
or Hungry Heart Like, they see the titles, they feel
the song and they misinterpret it look hungry heart like.
Hungry Heart is like a guy's leaving his family forever,
right first two lines.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
There's a quote in the book I want to ask
you about. It's from author D. C. Beard, and you
use it to start chapter eight. It's from eighteen eighty two,
and the quote is, there will frequently occur gaps in
the long winter evenings that are hard to fill up satisfactorily.
Hours when tired of reading or study, a boy does
not know what to do. How did you come up
with that quote and what led you to using it
(31:30):
for the book.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
That might be my favorite epigraph in the whole book,
because that's from the American Boy's Handy Book. And Beard
played some role in the origin story of the Boy Scouts.
But I just I just one of the musicians I
was doing a book event with. I just bought that
(31:53):
book for him because he pointed to that same epigraph,
and I said, that's from the American Boy's Handy Book.
I used to look at that thing when I was
growing up. I have my brother's old copy and I
still do. But it was all about different things that
you could do, like you could make your own boat,
learn how to build a fire without matches, you know,
(32:15):
learn how to make a trap for rabbits, you know,
with all this stuff. And I would pore over this
book and I really wanted to build one of these boats.
And I just go out into our barn, you know,
looking for like, can I use this? Can I use this?
Like I never got to a boat, but this book
(32:37):
just filled my imagination. And that quote, it was personal
that I wanted it in there, but it also felt
like just an interesting way to describe Bruce Springsteen there
in his rental and Colt Snack, not knowing what to
do with this free time, and he goes into Nebraska.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah. I love that. It's such a great quote.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
You can still get the American Boys Handy Book. It's
like it's just these you know, reproductions. Mine was a reproduction.
Obviously I'm not I'm all, but I'm not over one hundred.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yes. Well, this book also answers the question I always
wondered if Bruce wanted to use the original Born in
the USA for Nebraska, and he says he did, he wished,
he decided to. There was also a moment when Bruce
considered making it a double album, one side of songs
that sounded like what Born in the USA would sound like,
(33:37):
and then the other side tracks that make up Nebraska.
How come that didn't happen?
Speaker 2 (33:42):
I mean, I speculate, and you know, before this book
went to publication, you know, as I said, already Bruce
read it, and so he had a chance to say,
I know, actually, no, that's not right. But I did
my own speculation. And when you've just on a double album,
you don't want to do one again. Double albums are
(34:06):
often a solution to a problem, not an idea in
and of themselves. So and there's there's more labor, there's
more of a challenge to create cohesion. I think that's
why we celebrate double albums like Exile on Main Street, which, man,
(34:26):
it really works, but I think it's hard to make
it work. Having just done it with the River, that
was not what he wanted to go through again.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Another problem Bruce didn't see coming was getting the mixes
from the tape onto vinyl.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
You were all you know once he you know, they
try to look Nebraska is the only official release of
Bruce Springsteen's that was recorded without him realizing it was
going to be an official release. So there which you're
hearing as an artist who's thinking they're making demos. So
(35:04):
leaving mistakes in and continuing on, you know, not quite
comfortable with the lyrics. You know, they get jammed in
and places, not worrying as much about perfect pitch, tempo, a.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Little overmodulation at times.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, it's like it's it's flawed, beautifully flawed. We need
more flaws if you ask me. And this this is
a testament to that. But they finally get to this
point they try to re record it, Bruce solo, Bruce
with the band, and he feels it's not working. So
(35:41):
that day comes when he makes that decision, let's put
put the cassette out, Let's put this what's on this cassette,
let's put this out as the official release. And the
thought is okay, And it's a whole nother set of
problems because of tape speeds, because the signal wasn't enough
(36:06):
for them to be able to master with they were
getting feedback, i mean distortion in the masters, and it
took four mastering facilities to finally get something that could
become a vinyl record. So it was this odyssey where
(36:27):
these you know, this music that had become attached to
just struggled to find its way into the world.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Hey, guys, we'll get back to the show, but first
I want to tell you about an exclusive deal for
Booked on Rock. Listeners get fifteen percent off any purchase
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(37:00):
old glory dot com. Make sure to use the promo code.
Booked on Rock. Also find a link in this episode
show notes, or just go to Booked on Rock dot
com and click on my Deals. After Nebraska was released,
Bruce went on a road trip that he told you
was an epiphany of its own, which he never really
came back from. What was it about that trip that
affected Bruce so much?
Speaker 2 (37:21):
This was really the doorway that Bruce's inadvertently cut in
the wall for me to walk through to write this book,
because it's in his memoir. You know, I was reading
the memoir and Nebraska goes by really pretty quickly, and
then there's right after meaning in the memoir it goes
(37:43):
by pretty quickly, and then there's this road trip West,
which is like the centerpiece of his memoir, and he
talks about having a kind of mental breakdown and needing
to get real therapeutic help. And it happens on this
trip west after Nebraska. And by the time, you know,
(38:06):
he's driving west to go to the first home that
he ever purchased for himself, and it's in Los Angeles,
you know, overlooking Hollywood. You know, before he gets there,
he has this experience that you know, he describes beautifully
and tragically in his memoir. And I just felt like, Wow,
(38:32):
I see a connection between what he went into that
moment in his childhood, at time in his childhood that
he went into, what it shook up inside of him,
and then this breakdown and this gap between Nebraska and
(38:52):
born in the USA, where Bruce is kind of somewhere else.
I just felt like something happened that helps us to
understand Nebraska. And that was you know, that was his
memoir that gave me, really it gave me license to
(39:16):
go deeper. And then the interviews with Bruce were without them,
no book. He's the spine of this book in every way.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
He really felt like he was on the outside looking in.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah, he's feeling radical detachment, just radical detachment and disconnection
from people who are living these simple lives, you know,
raising families, having jobs, and he's recognizing that he can
only observe that. And I think he says that I
(39:52):
was an observer, and you know, it's there's a crisis
there like this, a guy who comes from a family
and wants to have one, and he's going to have to.
You know, it's very hard to I've never experienced it,
but I've been around people who, you know, because of
(40:15):
their success as songwriters, recording artists and performers, their lives
have changed dramatically, you know, and often it's from you know,
rock and roll, a lot of people from lower on
than class ladder who become famous for their contributions to
this story and their lives start to look nothing like
(40:40):
what they come from. And I think that dislocation is
really hard to do, you know. I say that as
an as an observer, and I think he was coming
up against some of that, and I think he was
also coming up against some kind of unpros asked childhood
(41:01):
trauma and it and it slammed into him. But I
feel like making peace with the idea of success comes
after Nebraska, after the road trip, and that's where the
Elvis section in the book to Me is really important.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Ronnie van Zenz said, it's it's not it's not me
that changed, it's the people around me that changed. Yeah,
they thought I changed, You changed, you know.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah, it's becomes very hard too. I mean, look, you'll
see people. I remember talking to Tom Petty about like
a party after a show that the Heartbreakers had, and
he felt like the other guys in the band didn't
want him to be at this party like they and
(41:51):
he was talking about how much it hurt, and he's like,
if I went to this party that everybody was going to,
there would only be one Tom Petty and they would
just be Heartbreakers second I came into the room. So
being Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers kind of put a
wedge between this guy and his childhood friends. But it
(42:14):
was the only way it was going to go down.
So people have lots of experiences like that. If they
experience that type of success, it's hard to know if
what somebody's telling you is how they really feel, or
are they telling you because they feel You want to
hear that, and you navigate that stuff constantly, you know,
(42:38):
like Dylan has been a little you know, you hear
it in the song. It's a little more impatient with that,
you know, like why can't you just be yourself around me?
But I like the Ronnie van sand quote.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
There's an amazing moment in the book when you brought
up Homer's Odyssey to Bruce, and this really got his attention.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
I well, I love the Odyssey. I think Homer's Odyssey
is maybe still the best self help book available because
Odysseus goes through every kind of trial and what he's doing.
It's like it's the end of the Trojan War and
(43:19):
he's trying to get home, and he goes through various temptations,
you know, various like physical challenges, you know, all of
the you know, de vices, gluttony, all the things that
could keep a man from being the man he wants
to be. Odysseus faces them all and it takes him
(43:41):
a long time to get back home. Not to labor this,
but the story really starts when Odysseus uses his cunning
to get out of the cave of the cyclops Polyphemus,
and he tells Polypemous is like keeping him captive with
(44:02):
his men in his cave and wants to kill him
and eat him and Odysseus. When Polyphemous asks him who
he is, Odysseus says, I am nobody, And then they
get the psyclops drunk and they gage out his eye
and escape, And when the other cyclops are going, who
(44:22):
did this to you, Polypemous says, nobody did it? Nobody
did it. You know that was Odysseus's cunning. So everybody's like,
what the hell's he talking about? Nobody did it? But
then Odysseus can't help himself. As he's escaped Polypemous and
he's getting back onto his boats, he declares, who did it?
(44:45):
He goes, it is I the Great Odysseus, so kind
of like ego Hubris makes him state his place as
the hero with that kind of cunning. Now, Polyphemus, who
he really just fucked up pretty good, is the son
(45:07):
of Poseidon. And Poseidon hears Odysseus say this and goes, wow,
you just gouged out the eye of my son and
you will pay now. And so it's Poseidon, because what
Odysseus did to his son, who keeps Odysseus from getting home.
So when Odysseus goes through all these trials and when
(45:30):
he finally gets home, his home is he's been gone
so long. They're all these suitors who want to take
his home and take his wife Penelope, and so his
son is there, but the house is filled with these suitors.
If Odysseus walked in by himself, those guys would just
kill Odysseus off. So he decides to come in as
(45:54):
a beggar, so he gets another chance to be nobody.
He's disguised as a beggar. The suitors just they're like
throwing scraps to him, and he doesn't let his ego
overcome him. He returns to being a hero by being
capable of being nobody. And you know, it's as a
(46:19):
beggar that he comes back to his family and to
his home and kills off these suitors. But had he
done the same thing where he says it is I
the Great Odysseus, he would have been killed. So he's
learned the lesson of being anonymous. Now that story stuck
(46:44):
with me. It was in my head. I'm like, Nebraska
is Springsteen being anonymous? He's being nobody and born in
the USA is the return of the to his home.
But to be that hero, I'm born in the USA,
(47:06):
he had to first be able to be just a beggar.
You know, you don't see him on the record cover,
you don't hear him in perfect fidelity. You know, you
don't hear all the trappings of the heroic rock star.
I was like, this, this maps on to Springsteen's story
(47:29):
right then, So I knew it was like a bold move,
Like when you're doing an interview, you're not supposed to
tell stories to the person you're interviewing. But I was
so convinced that I had something that was at least
worth a thought that I found the shortest version of
(47:50):
it that I could do. Your version was just longer.
But I gave it to Springsteen in that moment when
I'm telling him and I look up and he says,
go on. He's with me, and you know, for me
in what I do, it's one of the greatest moments
in my career as a writer. When he said to me,
(48:12):
go on. It was such a validation that this story
did map on. And there's something crucial about moments in
our lives where we need to be nobody, Like there
are times my biggest regrets in life, like I still am,
(48:37):
like dealing with some heartache that has been with me
for years. And if I could go back in time,
it would be to go back, like six years ago
to be nobody. And I needed to be nobody. And
I don't need to give you the details, but I'll
(48:59):
just say that's what was That's what I needed to
do as a man, and I was not the man
I wanted to be. My ego intruded, and so I
came into the The Nebraska project with this personal story
(49:20):
underneath it, with a kind of heartbreak, and I you know,
these long term projects are funny, like you learn from
them and if you go into them honestly, you can
heal a little bit. But I needed to. There's the
satisfaction of connecting Homer's odyssey to this moment in Springsteen's
(49:45):
career and a story of kind of humility and anonymity.
And then there's another layer beneath it where it's like
I'm learning because I'm I've been learning from Bruce Springsteen
since I was a pre teen, and I'm learning from
him again because he's confirming something that I saw in
(50:05):
Homer's Odyssey. Sometimes a man doesn't need to be the
big man. Sometimes a man needs to be the quietest
person in the room, let other people work their stuff out,
you know. And so that if I were to pick
(50:27):
my moment where the book is crackling more than any
other moment, that's the one for me as a writer.
I've been really lucky in my life and getting to
work with people who I've learned a tremendous amount from,
(50:48):
you know. And that's that's you know, Tom Petty, that's
you know, Jerry Wexler, That's I've been helping Garth Brooks
with the series of books. I've learned a ton from him. Bruce,
the way he showed up for this project, the level
(51:10):
of vulnerability and humility and curiosity and generosity, it's like
it's wild, you know. So again, no Bruce, no book.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Hey guys, thanks so much for checking out the Booked
on Rock podcast. If you've just found the podcast, welcome.
If you've been listening, thank you so much for your support,
and make sure you tell a friend, a family member,
share on social media and let people know about Booked
on Rock. And if you do like the podcast, make
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listen to the Booked on Rock podcast, Run, Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Spotify, Spreaker,
(51:53):
tune in, and on YouTube music. You can check out
the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
episodes on the Book Rock YouTube channel. Find it at
Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back to
the show. Deliver Me from Nowhere, The making of Bruce
Springsteen's Nebraska. It is out now through Crown Publishing, available
(52:13):
wherever books are sold. Where can people find you online?
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Warren, I got a website. My older son just redid
my website for me. He did it in like a night,
and my contacts on there, and you know, I'd love
to hear from people who've read the book. That's one
of the.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Treats Lawren Zan's. This was great.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Thank you so much. That's it's in the books.
We're totally bumming rock and roll.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I think I'll leave you. You're reading little hands this,
It's time.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
To rock and roll. Roll up week I totally booked.
Welcome back to book don Rock. This weekend, as you
may know, is the debut of the film Springsteen Delivered
Me from Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen.
The film is based on a book written by Warren
(00:27):
Zanes called Deliver Me from Nowhere. The Making of Bruce
Springsteen's Nebraska, a phenomenal book. Warren was on the podcast
back in twenty twenty three when the book came out,
so I thought i'd replay the episode for you as
you get ready to check out the film this weekend.
So here it is, going back to episode one thirty
three for author Warren Zanes. Warren, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
When did you first hear Nebraska and what was your reaction?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I first heard it when it came out. You know,
we were we were already among the converted, and you
know that probably I'm the youngest of three, so there
was the trickle down effect from you know, music that
both my brother brought into the house and my mother
(01:16):
already had. She had a good record collection that included,
you know, everything from Aretha Franklin to Pete Seeger, Josh White,
the Band, the Stones, Van Morris, and my uncle listened
to oldies radio, so we got our Chuck Berry, our
Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and so my brother was set
(01:40):
up to be able to identify Bruce as something good
in the world. And I was the younger brother that
it was all filtering down.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
To my older brothers.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, it's when I teach, I teach it, m yu.
And you know, with my students, it's either parents or
siblings who are the determining factor that give you know,
in my classes, give them a huge advantage if they
they've kind of gotten that transmission. But while the end
is in the East Street Shuffle were we were on
(02:14):
board in a complete way by that time. And then,
as I mentioned in the book, when my brother was
in had conquered high school in New Hampshire, he covered
his school books with the Time and newsweek covers when
Bruce was at his big media week as a young man.
(02:37):
So by the time Nebraska comes, we're we're just waiting
with open arms.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So not surprised at what you heard.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Then, I don't really believe anybody who says they weren't surprised. So, yes,
we were surprised, but we were committed. And I think
this describes the majority of you know, Bruce fans. We
were committed enough to this guy to go, we'll follow you.
We don't know where you're taking us, but we will
follow you.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Bruce told you that without Nebraska, there's no Born in
the USA. What did he mean by.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
That, Well, there, the two albums come into the world
at the same time, and then it's just a matter
of kind of differentiating between them. But he had two
thirds of Born in the USA in the can before
Nebraska was officially released, So it's not that you know,
(03:31):
when we go into a record store, we see everything
kind of sequential terms. You know, there's the fourth record,
there's the fifth record. But behind the scenes it's much
sloppier for many artists. But the incredible thing to me
is that he had the strength of Born in the
USA right there, but he had some personal need to
(03:56):
follow Nebraska through and he did it despite what it
would mean for his career trajectory because he was on
this upward movement and Nebraska, you know, both in terms
of the marketplace and just spiritually it went way downward.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And credit you go to John Landau, Bruce's manager and producer, right,
because he supported Bruce.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I don't know if you know that that book mentioned
on the Hill. To me, it's like the worst part
of the art commerce dichotomy. You know, the label guys,
the managers, they're kind of the bad guys. They're only
in it for the money. They're ruining the art. And
it's just sometimes that dichotomy holds true, but often it's
(04:46):
way too simplistic. And in the case of John Landau, look,
he stood by an artist who was making one of
the strangest career moves in the history of popular music.
You know, we've had he had muddy, unfinished, very dark records,
but not from artists who just had their first number
(05:07):
one album. It's just not what anyone would expect, from
the fans, to the label, to the management. And John
Landau was right there supporting his artist.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
And when he heard the songs, he was a little
concerned for Bruce, right.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, when he first heard the songs his response was
you know is what he told me was that he
was quote concerned on a friendship level. So he was
hearing something happening with the songwriter, but he was seeing
some kind of trouble with the man. And then after
Nebraska was released and Bruce took that trip west that
(05:49):
he talks about in his memoir, it was Landau who said,
you need professional help. So he's been He's like, you know,
I talk about John Landau's time in the book like
he knew when it was time to be a friend.
He knew when it was time to be a manager.
And that takes a kind of sophistication that I know
(06:13):
I couldn't do it. If I were a manager. Being
completely honest, I'd say, we definitely are not doing Nebraska.
You know, it's just again, it's such a left turn.
It can't be overstated. God, the way it worked. And
I'll tell you when I first looked at it, I
was I had a suspicion, and my suspicion was this,
(06:36):
it's all strategy. It's all strategy. Because Nebraska gets all
the critics on board, it's a kind of declaration of
this deep authenticity. And then Born in the USA comes
and it's just like, let's go deep into you know
the world, the hits and the commercial bid it and
(07:00):
it's not the case. But it worked out so perfectly.
It was hard not to project strategy in hindsight, but
it wasn't the strategy. It was like one man following
a kind of deep need. There was some place he
had to go that was more important than career considerations,
(07:23):
and in the end it happened to benefit that career.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
There is an absence of melody on Nebraska, which was
intentional on Bruce's part. This leads us to a band
called Suicide. Who is Suicide and what influence do they
have on this album?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
So Suicide, you know, they get a good amount of
space in the book because you can't understand Nebraska without them.
So Bruce there a duo, drum machine, electronic. It was
really like the father of electronic music. But you know,
(07:59):
for listeners, the song I recommend people go to is
Frankie Teardrop, which is a very long song, around ten minutes,
but it involves a guy coming home from a factory job,
you know, and at that point you're close to some
things we've seen in Springsteen's world. But then he comes home,
(08:20):
murders his wife, murders his child, kills himself, and it's
so dark and so not what you expect of popular music.
And Alan Vega, who's in suicide, he's just on a microphone,
so he's not playing an instrument, but he does the
(08:41):
screams of that moment of infanticide, and it's it's just
you had to kind of strap your seatbelt on just
to listen to this stuff. And Springsteen felt this deep
connection with it. And when he described it to me,
he said his word was he heard it kind of
unforgivingness in suicide and he didn't know that music go
(09:06):
that far out, and so it gave him a kind
of license. And on the song State Trooper, you hear
Springsteen do these screams that are almost like him signing
Alan vegas name to that song. So their presence is
keenly felt, but it's they were the ones who kind
of gave him permission to go that low.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And they didn't have an influence on just that song, right,
it's the whole album.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I think, like musically you hear the most in State Trooper,
but I think it's a cross it's spread across Nebraska
in the sense of these things can happen in popular music,
These things can you know in a way that I
would translate it to mean the whole of life, it's
(09:57):
absolute worst can be there represented in the stories we
tell through song, and you know, the bulk of what
you hear on you know, think back to nineteen eighty two.
Look at the top one hundred. You're gonna see songs
of romance, songs of longing, songs of loss. That's always
(10:22):
in American popular music, taking up the greatest amount of
the kind of geography of it all. But life itself
has these tragedies, It has this desperation, and Springsteen, because
of suicide, says I can bring that into the music.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
The complex characters too. You know, bad person can do
good things, a good person can do bad things. It's
not all black and white.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
The absence of redemption. You know, there are a lot
of people in Springsteen's songs prior to Nebraska who are
in really hard places. But there's some like sliver of
hope I think, you know he talks about you know,
he mentioned to me like stolen car off the River
that could have been on Nebraska. You can see him
(11:13):
like stepping toward these songs that don't resolve with that
trace of hope. You know, they go into a hopeless place,
which is where we sometimes go in our lives. So
why can't the music go with us?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
That's what I think connects the fans so much to
his music. It just feels like there's a little bit
of you in his songs, in his in the characters
that make up his songs. There's just something so deep.
What was it the julia to him when you first
heard his music?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
It was it was the full package, you know, I
think because you know, again in time about my mother's
record collection and the things that were coming into the
house through my brother. Van Morrison was there astraally, you know,
moon Dance, and then we got we went back to
them and we knew that he had done. Here comes
(12:10):
in the Night Glory like, Okay, you know, Van Morrison
is a singer songwriter from rock and roll, and I
think if you're listening to that kind of artist at
that level, you're ready for Bruce Springsteen. And you know,
we loved, we did. We were We were too young
(12:30):
to kind of see Dylan go electric. He was electric
by the time we came out of the womb, and
so ye Dylan progress for that and and but Springsteen
felt like somehow he belonged to us and not to
our mother or our uncle. Right, yes, and that matters.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Bruce. He gives you a great description of what it
was like recording the songs. This is chapter eleven. He
uses a teac one four track recorder. Is that that's
a It looks kind of like what I'm recording my podcast.
I was like a little mix.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
I went falling on eBay. I just I found a
broken one. And when I do book events that bring
it with me, just because it's good to make contact
with the material history and to see this thing.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
You know, it was ahead of its time at that point, right.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Ahead of its time, and now it looks like just
this artifact of deep funkiness and it's cool for people
to see it. When we did the CBS Sunday Morning Piece,
I brought it out there and you know, it was beautiful.
Bruce kind of put his hands on it, you know,
but both his hands just like feel things like yeah, yeah,
(13:46):
But it's recording on a cassette that you could buy.
You know, at the time, you could go buy them
that cvs and you know, little kids would use them
to tape their voice. Isn't play it back. The difference
with the TC one forty four was that it's for
track recording, and so that was the revolution. It had
(14:08):
been there for a couple of years, been out on
the market for a couple of years, but to put
it really simply, it was the first consumer multi track machine. Now,
multi track recording is a mundane thing. It's on everybody's laptop,
you know, if you choose to do it. But then
it was like, whoa multi track recording? And pretty soon
(14:34):
you see that shift where people are starting to take
it home. And in that respect, Springsteen's move was very
prophetic of what was coming. But he took it home
and it was still cassette recording.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah. Well, also it's where he recorded it too. Where
is this house that he records it in? And it's
just in the bedroom, right Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah. I mean I'll tell you if I maybe hitting
ahead of things. But when I finished the book, I
sent it to John Landau first, and you know, John
got back and it was you know, we had a
call that was really rich, deep memorable for me, and
(15:20):
you know, at the end he said, so, you know,
I want to send it on to Bruce, but I'm
not going to tell him anything. I'm not going to
tell him how I feel. Let's get a cold read
off of Bruce and he sends it. And then a
couple of days later, I got an email from Bruce
and you know, at the end of it, he said,
how can I help you? And I said, I wrote back,
(15:44):
I can't find this house. You know I'm not I'm
not a great There there Bruce fans who are better
at this kind of research than I am. But it
was you can find a lot of Bruce's homes, couldn't
find this one. And a few days later, Bruce, I
get an undisclosed number on my phone and it's Bruce
calling from the bedroom where he recorded Nebraska. And you know,
(16:08):
he says, Hey, Lauren, it's I'm in the room. We're
forty years ago I made Nebraska and I haven't been
here since. And the guy who rented it to me
still rents it, and he said, I can bring you out.
And so Bruce gave me this last stop in my pilgrimage,
(16:28):
and I'll tell you to be working on a book
over a period of years, and then walk with the
artist into the bedroom where the record was made. Is
as you know, moving an experience as I've had, and
(16:49):
I think, just like I said that Tiac, I wanted
to buy one on eBay just to have the material
history in front of me. Bruce did a few things
along the way, like bringing me to that room. It
really helped me as a writer. Like when you're standing
in the room and there's some history breathing in those
(17:13):
walls and it relates to a project you've been working
on for a couple of years, it just matters. It
does something. And I think he knows that, you know,
he and so he made as much physical contact possible
for me, you know, with the the guitar that he used,
(17:33):
with the portrait of his aunt who you know, died
when she was six. Like he put these things in
front of me, and it's hard to say exactly what
that means to a writing project, but I know it
means something, you know. So when he knew, yeah, he's.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
He's really the producer at that point, he's getting the most.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, that's that's at That's a good way of putting it,
because then you know when we got into the room
that you know, there were a few minutes of like
I probably he probably saw on my feet slightly off
the ground, and after a few minutes of quiet, he
just handed me his cell phone and said, take my picture,
(18:18):
and that pictures in the book. And then he just
started going, Okay, in my bed was here, it was
turned this way, and then I had a wooden table
over there, and he just created a picture. You know.
The room was a lot the same, but he wanted
to give me exactly how it was set up. And
(18:40):
just like a writer can't ask.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
For more, the shag rug was still there, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah. I I wanted people to turn their backs so
I could cut a piece of that orange shag give
it to my sons.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yes, oh man, is it a small house.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Well, it's different than it was because they did some
They put a second story edition and they kind of
blew out the kitchen. So the house you see now
from the front doesn't look the same. But the room
where he made Nebraska, it's not just those orange shag rugs.
It's like mostly intact. So it's this corner as you're
(19:22):
looking at the house, it's the rear left corner looking
out on the reservoir, and it's like it was wow wild.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
It's in Colts Neck, right yeah, Yeah, how did it
come about that he chose that house.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
It's some of his his road crew were living in
another place rented by the fellow who owns this, So
he's a realtor. He's you know, a man wears a
few different hats. But this was rented for Bruce when
he got kind of not a but I imagine they
(20:01):
were selling the house he had been renting, so somebody
just got him a place so that he could, you know,
in his words, it was an emergency landing at the
end of the river door.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So mansion on the Hill. That's the first song that
came to Bruce, as far as he recalls. There was
a song with that title recorded by Hank Williams from
nineteen forty eight, Fred Rose credited as co writer. Rose's
theme is of a woman leaving the one she truly
loves to marry a man with money. Far from Bruce's version.
(20:37):
His version is absent of judgment.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah. The Hank Williams version is a little bit like
the Eagles Lion Eyes, same theme, and Bruce's is much more.
You know, he he it when he introduced it live.
Sometimes it'd talk about taking drives with his father around freehold,
and he was like, we were like tourists in our
(21:02):
own town, like looking at the big homes, you know,
driving by them. You know, he was young enough that
it kind of filled him with wonder. It didn't give
him a sense of you know, class difference or anything.
It was more how a child would see it and
his mansion on the hill really is it's not about
life's better if you have the mansion, or better if
(21:24):
you don't. You know, as you just said, it's it's
it suspends judgment, and it's more just about a child's wonder.
And you know that that time when you're young enough
and you know, as I say in the book, romance
and class haven't yet organized life, and you're kind of
(21:47):
open in a particular way. And you know that that
point of view in that song brought Bruce to this
young age. That was the same age he was when
he was living with his grandparents, which was, you know,
roughly until he was aged six. And you know, he said,
(22:11):
in different ways, Nebraska is about that time of his
life and that time with his grandparents in that house.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
But this is when things go from mystical to dark
and troubled. According to Bruce, the next song is the
title track. It's based on a true story. Can you
talk about the film bad Lands from nineteen seventy three
and the nineteen fifty eight stark Weather murderspree, because that
is a major influence on Bruce.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
It's kind of incredible to me still. You know, So
he sees Terrence Malick's bad Lands on TV. You know,
he's spending quite a lot of time alone. Max Weinberg
is quoted in the book is saying, you know, for
a while there, we didn't know where he lived. So
(22:59):
Bruce is kind of cut off from his band after
being you know, very close on tour for over a year.
And he's there watching TV by himself one night and
he sees Terrence Malick's bad Lands and bad Lands is
it's Martin Sheen and Sissy SpaceX their first big feature jobs.
(23:24):
So there're these actors who are having a moment, and
it's Malick's first real it's a warnerber Brothers project, so
it's a significant outing. And the subject is these nineteen
fifty eight serial murders associated with Charles Starkweather and his
(23:45):
you know, accomplice. Whose role is you know, depends on
your interpretation. But caroly Anne Fugate and they killed eleven people,
and Malick makes this film that that kind of drifts
between an account of those killings, and then there's fantasy
(24:05):
in it too, almost like a Swiss family Robinson moment
where stark Weather and if you build this place in
the forest and you're completely untethered from the historical account,
But I feel like what you're really seeing is when
everyday life just rrupts with this pure violence and a
(24:30):
kind of violence that stands beyond reason. You can't explain it.
And I think that's something that Springsteen was connecting to it.
But he just says he saw this film and somehow
the story of these killings reminded him of his childhood,
(24:52):
which is just a really on paper, a wild statement,
and it's not a one for one correspondence. You know,
there's something he only he like saw that connection. But
you know he's so he helps me, you know, in
his interviews, he helped me to make the connections. But
(25:14):
the interesting thing that happens is he watches it, he
wakes up thinking about it still and goes to the
library to look for books on the Starkweather killings, and
he finds the book Carol, written by Nannette Beaver and
two other authors, and the Neette Beaver was working in
(25:35):
the Omaha television and radio station that first reported the
serial murders. And he reads this book and then he
calls that Omaha television station and the Nett Beaver's still
working there, so, you know, at that time, it's what
nineteen eighty one, it's been since nineteen fifty eight, and
(25:58):
she's still there, and he gets her on the phone,
and you know, I said to Springsteen, like, what were
you up to? Like what was what were you doing?
And he said, well, you know, I research my songs
in a number of cases like that. That's not that
odd for me. But I was onto something else, and
(26:22):
I'm you know, I'm not entirely sure what I was doing.
But he felt like, you know, he needed to get
this right, and when Nebraska came, he saw it as
this this kind of entry point into the album as
a whole, like Mansion on the Hill could have led
to a number of different albums, but Nebraska, that song
(26:46):
led to this album.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And that opening line about the girl twirling the baton,
that's actually from the movie, right, that's a scene with
Sissy's basic.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
That comes from the movie, and it was just by
chance that Terrence Malick, I don't know where they were,
but there was a baton and she started twirling it,
and he didn't know she could twirl a baton, and
he just kind of sewed the thing into the narrative
through line of the movie. So it has nothing to
(27:16):
do with Carolyne Fugate. It only has to do with
bad Lands. But you know, Springsteen migrated it in and
I feel like that's he exposes his source materials in
really interesting ways. That's one of them.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Warren Zane's is here to talk about his brand new book,
Deliver Me from Nowhere, the making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska,
which is out now. One thing I noticed about the
book is it's not a track by track analysis.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
I don't I don't do a kind of song by song,
you know.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
I maybe that's the songwriter part of me that I
feel like that's a you gotta not go too far
into the listener's business.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
And so I don't do a song by song. So
I feel like you can read my book and there's
still all the mystery you want. I left intact with
Nebraska but I think sometimes if his childhood when he
was living in his grandparents' home was kind of the
personal source material that he was drawing on. You can't
(28:26):
find easy one to one correspondences in the stories, but
I feel it's that part of his childhood is the
engine that fuels these stories. But the characters in those
stories don't derive directly from his childhood. These are stories
he's telling the thing I felt with Nebraska, and I
(28:48):
felt this pretty early on when I got it, you know,
I picked it up in eighty two and I brought
it back to boarding school. But he's telling really really
complax stories with a new level of economy. So like
highway Patrolment, to me, is still a wonder in terms
(29:12):
of the sophistication of just the narrative strategies. There. You
know those two brothers, you know, both of them dancing
with the same woman, and then the you know, the
brother who's a policeman letting the other brother go. Though
as a policeman representing the law, he should be bringing
(29:32):
his brother in, but as a brother he lets him go.
That's such a complex move because he's both because he
loves that brother, he's letting him go free. At the
same time he's getting his brother out of his life.
It's it's not some neat you know, story of love
between brothers. It's like, you can't be in my life anymore.
(29:55):
And I feel like man to get all that done
in a three or whatever minute song is a writer
working at the height of his powers.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
One track that I always find interesting lyrically is Reason
to Believe. Is Bruce making a statement or is he
asking how do you find a reason to believe when
all this stuff goes wrong in life? Or is it
that he himself is saying you got to find a
reason to believe? Like he's encouraging the listener.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I mean, you said to me, I don't see how
anybody finds anything hopeful in that song, he said. I
guess it's just the density of that title takes people
down that road. But I see no reason for it.
But he's he's seen this effect take place in his
career at many times where people they see the title,
(30:48):
you know, whether it's you know, Born in the USA
or Hungry Heart Like, they see the titles, they feel
the song and they misinterpret it look hungry heart like.
Hungry Heart is like a guy's leaving his family forever,
right first two lines.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
There's a quote in the book I want to ask
you about. It's from author D. C. Beard, and you
use it to start chapter eight. It's from eighteen eighty two,
and the quote is, there will frequently occur gaps in
the long winter evenings that are hard to fill up satisfactorily.
Hours when tired of reading or study, a boy does
not know what to do. How did you come up
with that quote and what led you to using it
(31:30):
for the book.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
That might be my favorite epigraph in the whole book,
because that's from the American Boy's Handy Book. And Beard
played some role in the origin story of the Boy Scouts.
But I just I just one of the musicians I
was doing a book event with. I just bought that
(31:53):
book for him because he pointed to that same epigraph,
and I said, that's from the American Boy's Handy Book.
I used to look at that thing when I was
growing up. I have my brother's old copy and I
still do. But it was all about different things that
you could do, like you could make your own boat,
learn how to build a fire without matches, you know,
(32:15):
learn how to make a trap for rabbits, you know,
with all this stuff. And I would pore over this
book and I really wanted to build one of these boats.
And I just go out into our barn, you know,
looking for like, can I use this? Can I use this?
Like I never got to a boat, but this book
(32:37):
just filled my imagination. And that quote, it was personal
that I wanted it in there, but it also felt
like just an interesting way to describe Bruce Springsteen there
in his rental and Colt Snack, not knowing what to
do with this free time, and he goes into Nebraska.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah. I love that. It's such a great quote.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
You can still get the American Boys Handy Book. It's
like it's just these you know, reproductions. Mine was a reproduction.
Obviously I'm not I'm all, but I'm not over one hundred.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yes. Well, this book also answers the question I always
wondered if Bruce wanted to use the original Born in
the USA for Nebraska, and he says he did, he wished,
he decided to. There was also a moment when Bruce
considered making it a double album, one side of songs
that sounded like what Born in the USA would sound like,
(33:37):
and then the other side tracks that make up Nebraska.
How come that didn't happen?
Speaker 2 (33:42):
I mean, I speculate, and you know, before this book
went to publication, you know, as I said, already Bruce
read it, and so he had a chance to say,
I know, actually, no, that's not right. But I did
my own speculation. And when you've just on a double album,
you don't want to do one again. Double albums are
(34:06):
often a solution to a problem, not an idea in
and of themselves. So and there's there's more labor, there's
more of a challenge to create cohesion. I think that's
why we celebrate double albums like Exile on Main Street, which, man,
(34:26):
it really works, but I think it's hard to make
it work. Having just done it with the River, that
was not what he wanted to go through again.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Another problem Bruce didn't see coming was getting the mixes
from the tape onto vinyl.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
You were all you know once he you know, they
try to look Nebraska is the only official release of
Bruce Springsteen's that was recorded without him realizing it was
going to be an official release. So there which you're
hearing as an artist who's thinking they're making demos. So
(35:04):
leaving mistakes in and continuing on, you know, not quite
comfortable with the lyrics. You know, they get jammed in
and places, not worrying as much about perfect pitch, tempo, a.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Little overmodulation at times.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, it's like it's it's flawed, beautifully flawed. We need
more flaws if you ask me. And this this is
a testament to that. But they finally get to this
point they try to re record it, Bruce solo, Bruce
with the band, and he feels it's not working. So
(35:41):
that day comes when he makes that decision, let's put
put the cassette out, Let's put this what's on this cassette,
let's put this out as the official release. And the
thought is okay, And it's a whole nother set of
problems because of tape speeds, because the signal wasn't enough
(36:06):
for them to be able to master with they were
getting feedback, i mean distortion in the masters, and it
took four mastering facilities to finally get something that could
become a vinyl record. So it was this odyssey where
(36:27):
these you know, this music that had become attached to
just struggled to find its way into the world.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Hey, guys, we'll get back to the show, but first
I want to tell you about an exclusive deal for
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(37:00):
old glory dot com. Make sure to use the promo code.
Booked on Rock. Also find a link in this episode
show notes, or just go to Booked on Rock dot
com and click on my Deals. After Nebraska was released,
Bruce went on a road trip that he told you
was an epiphany of its own, which he never really
came back from. What was it about that trip that
affected Bruce so much?
Speaker 2 (37:21):
This was really the doorway that Bruce's inadvertently cut in
the wall for me to walk through to write this book,
because it's in his memoir. You know, I was reading
the memoir and Nebraska goes by really pretty quickly, and
then there's right after meaning in the memoir it goes
(37:43):
by pretty quickly, and then there's this road trip West,
which is like the centerpiece of his memoir, and he
talks about having a kind of mental breakdown and needing
to get real therapeutic help. And it happens on this
trip west after Nebraska. And by the time, you know,
(38:06):
he's driving west to go to the first home that
he ever purchased for himself, and it's in Los Angeles,
you know, overlooking Hollywood. You know, before he gets there,
he has this experience that you know, he describes beautifully
and tragically in his memoir. And I just felt like, Wow,
(38:32):
I see a connection between what he went into that
moment in his childhood, at time in his childhood that
he went into, what it shook up inside of him,
and then this breakdown and this gap between Nebraska and
(38:52):
born in the USA, where Bruce is kind of somewhere else.
I just felt like something happened that helps us to
understand Nebraska. And that was you know, that was his
memoir that gave me, really it gave me license to
(39:16):
go deeper. And then the interviews with Bruce were without them,
no book. He's the spine of this book in every way.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
He really felt like he was on the outside looking in.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah, he's feeling radical detachment, just radical detachment and disconnection
from people who are living these simple lives, you know,
raising families, having jobs, and he's recognizing that he can
only observe that. And I think he says that I
(39:52):
was an observer, and you know, it's there's a crisis
there like this, a guy who comes from a family
and wants to have one, and he's going to have to.
You know, it's very hard to I've never experienced it,
but I've been around people who, you know, because of
(40:15):
their success as songwriters, recording artists and performers, their lives
have changed dramatically, you know, and often it's from you know,
rock and roll, a lot of people from lower on
than class ladder who become famous for their contributions to
this story and their lives start to look nothing like
(40:40):
what they come from. And I think that dislocation is
really hard to do, you know. I say that as
an as an observer, and I think he was coming
up against some of that, and I think he was
also coming up against some kind of unpros asked childhood
(41:01):
trauma and it and it slammed into him. But I
feel like making peace with the idea of success comes
after Nebraska, after the road trip, and that's where the
Elvis section in the book to Me is really important.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Ronnie van Zenz said, it's it's not it's not me
that changed, it's the people around me that changed. Yeah,
they thought I changed, You changed, you know.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah, it's becomes very hard too. I mean, look, you'll
see people. I remember talking to Tom Petty about like
a party after a show that the Heartbreakers had, and
he felt like the other guys in the band didn't
want him to be at this party like they and
(41:51):
he was talking about how much it hurt, and he's like,
if I went to this party that everybody was going to,
there would only be one Tom Petty and they would
just be Heartbreakers second I came into the room. So
being Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers kind of put a
wedge between this guy and his childhood friends. But it
(42:14):
was the only way it was going to go down.
So people have lots of experiences like that. If they
experience that type of success, it's hard to know if
what somebody's telling you is how they really feel, or
are they telling you because they feel You want to
hear that, and you navigate that stuff constantly, you know,
(42:38):
like Dylan has been a little you know, you hear
it in the song. It's a little more impatient with that,
you know, like why can't you just be yourself around me?
But I like the Ronnie van sand quote.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
There's an amazing moment in the book when you brought
up Homer's Odyssey to Bruce, and this really got his attention.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
I well, I love the Odyssey. I think Homer's Odyssey
is maybe still the best self help book available because
Odysseus goes through every kind of trial and what he's doing.
It's like it's the end of the Trojan War and
(43:19):
he's trying to get home, and he goes through various temptations,
you know, various like physical challenges, you know, all of
the you know, de vices, gluttony, all the things that
could keep a man from being the man he wants
to be. Odysseus faces them all and it takes him
(43:41):
a long time to get back home. Not to labor this,
but the story really starts when Odysseus uses his cunning
to get out of the cave of the cyclops Polyphemus,
and he tells Polypemous is like keeping him captive with
(44:02):
his men in his cave and wants to kill him
and eat him and Odysseus. When Polyphemous asks him who
he is, Odysseus says, I am nobody, And then they
get the psyclops drunk and they gage out his eye
and escape, And when the other cyclops are going, who
(44:22):
did this to you, Polypemous says, nobody did it? Nobody
did it. You know that was Odysseus's cunning. So everybody's like,
what the hell's he talking about? Nobody did it? But
then Odysseus can't help himself. As he's escaped Polypemous and
he's getting back onto his boats, he declares, who did it?
(44:45):
He goes, it is I the Great Odysseus, so kind
of like ego Hubris makes him state his place as
the hero with that kind of cunning. Now, Polyphemus, who
he really just fucked up pretty good, is the son
(45:07):
of Poseidon. And Poseidon hears Odysseus say this and goes, wow,
you just gouged out the eye of my son and
you will pay now. And so it's Poseidon, because what
Odysseus did to his son, who keeps Odysseus from getting home.
So when Odysseus goes through all these trials and when
(45:30):
he finally gets home, his home is he's been gone
so long. They're all these suitors who want to take
his home and take his wife Penelope, and so his
son is there, but the house is filled with these suitors.
If Odysseus walked in by himself, those guys would just
kill Odysseus off. So he decides to come in as
(45:54):
a beggar, so he gets another chance to be nobody.
He's disguised as a beggar. The suitors just they're like
throwing scraps to him, and he doesn't let his ego
overcome him. He returns to being a hero by being
capable of being nobody. And you know, it's as a
(46:19):
beggar that he comes back to his family and to
his home and kills off these suitors. But had he
done the same thing where he says it is I
the Great Odysseus, he would have been killed. So he's
learned the lesson of being anonymous. Now that story stuck
(46:44):
with me. It was in my head. I'm like, Nebraska
is Springsteen being anonymous? He's being nobody and born in
the USA is the return of the to his home.
But to be that hero, I'm born in the USA,
(47:06):
he had to first be able to be just a beggar.
You know, you don't see him on the record cover,
you don't hear him in perfect fidelity. You know, you
don't hear all the trappings of the heroic rock star.
I was like, this, this maps on to Springsteen's story
(47:29):
right then, So I knew it was like a bold move,
Like when you're doing an interview, you're not supposed to
tell stories to the person you're interviewing. But I was
so convinced that I had something that was at least
worth a thought that I found the shortest version of
(47:50):
it that I could do. Your version was just longer.
But I gave it to Springsteen in that moment when
I'm telling him and I look up and he says,
go on. He's with me, and you know, for me
in what I do, it's one of the greatest moments
in my career as a writer. When he said to me,
(48:12):
go on. It was such a validation that this story
did map on. And there's something crucial about moments in
our lives where we need to be nobody, Like there
are times my biggest regrets in life, like I still am,
(48:37):
like dealing with some heartache that has been with me
for years. And if I could go back in time,
it would be to go back, like six years ago
to be nobody. And I needed to be nobody. And
I don't need to give you the details, but I'll
(48:59):
just say that's what was That's what I needed to
do as a man, and I was not the man
I wanted to be. My ego intruded, and so I
came into the The Nebraska project with this personal story
(49:20):
underneath it, with a kind of heartbreak, and I you know,
these long term projects are funny, like you learn from
them and if you go into them honestly, you can
heal a little bit. But I needed to. There's the
satisfaction of connecting Homer's odyssey to this moment in Springsteen's
(49:45):
career and a story of kind of humility and anonymity.
And then there's another layer beneath it where it's like
I'm learning because I'm I've been learning from Bruce Springsteen
since I was a pre teen, and I'm learning from
him again because he's confirming something that I saw in
(50:05):
Homer's Odyssey. Sometimes a man doesn't need to be the
big man. Sometimes a man needs to be the quietest
person in the room, let other people work their stuff out,
you know. And so that if I were to pick
(50:27):
my moment where the book is crackling more than any
other moment, that's the one for me as a writer.
I've been really lucky in my life and getting to
work with people who I've learned a tremendous amount from,
(50:48):
you know. And that's that's you know, Tom Petty, that's
you know, Jerry Wexler, That's I've been helping Garth Brooks
with the series of books. I've learned a ton from him. Bruce,
the way he showed up for this project, the level
(51:10):
of vulnerability and humility and curiosity and generosity, it's like
it's wild, you know. So again, no Bruce, no book.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Hey guys, thanks so much for checking out the Booked
on Rock podcast. If you've just found the podcast, welcome.
If you've been listening, thank you so much for your support,
and make sure you tell a friend, a family member,
share on social media and let people know about Booked
on Rock. And if you do like the podcast, make
sure you subscribe, give a five star review. Wherever you
listen to the Booked on Rock podcast, Run, Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Spotify, Spreaker,
(51:53):
tune in, and on YouTube music. You can check out
the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
episodes on the Book Rock YouTube channel. Find it at
Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back to
the show. Deliver Me from Nowhere, The making of Bruce
Springsteen's Nebraska. It is out now through Crown Publishing, available
(52:13):
wherever books are sold. Where can people find you online?
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Warren, I got a website. My older son just redid
my website for me. He did it in like a night,
and my contacts on there, and you know, I'd love
to hear from people who've read the book. That's one
of the.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Treats Lawren Zan's. This was great.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Thank you so much. That's it's in the books.
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