Bruce Springsteen to release ‘Electric Nebraska’ — and more — in surprise box set
The box set — released to coincide with the Deliver Me From Nowhere’ movie — combines the long-lost E Street Band versions of most of ‘Nebraska’, a new live performance, and acoustic outtakes
By Brian Hiatt
Bruce Springsteen originally intended the home-recorded, solo-acoustic performances that became Nebraska to be demos for the E Street Band, and at New York City’s Power Station studio in 1982, he and the band laid down versions of most of its songs. The so-called Electric Nebraska tracks have never been heard, even on bootleg — but Springsteen is about to change that with a new box set, Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition, due October 17, a week before the Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere hits theatres.
The Electric Nebraska disc includes seven E Street Band takes on the album’s material, plus a wildcard — a fierce, guitar-dominated electric version of ‘Born in the U.S.A.’, a song originally recorded acoustically as part of the Nebraska sessions. That track, which features Springsteen playing with only drummer Max Weinberg and bassist Garry Tallent, is available for streaming now. “We threw out the keyboards and played basically as a three-piece,” Springsteen said in a press release. “It was kinda like punk rockabilly. We were trying to bring Nebraska into the electric world.”
Over four discs and a Blu-Ray, the set, available to preorder now, also includes acoustic outtakes (among them ‘Child Bride’, which became ‘Working on the Highway’), and audio and video of a brand-new solo live performance of all of Nebraska, recorded at Red Bank, New Jersey’s Count Basie Theatre. The set also includes a new remaster of Nebraska itself. Also among the outtakes are the never-bootlegged songs ‘Gun in Every Home’, and ‘On the Prowl’ — Springsteen did play the latter song live at Jersey Shore club appearances circa ’82.
In a press release, Springsteen said his live performance of the album reminded him of its power. “I think in playing these songs again to be filmed, their weight impressed upon me,” he said. “I’ve written a lot of other narrative records, but there’s just something about that batch of songs on ‘Nebraska’ that holds some sort of magic.”
Even the E Street Band themselves were anxious to hear their full-band takes on Nebraska. “I’m dying to hear the recordings from the studio,” keyboardist Roy Bittan told our Rolling Stone Music Now podcast last year. “It’s eluded us. Maybe, Bruce, at some point, will get into that.”
“I remember recording all of that [Nebraska] material and it was very much in the E Street Band style and very similar to what we do now when we play those songs, and it was great,” Weinberg told the pod last year. “Jon Landau, during the writing, suggested that I listen to John Wesley Harding, the Bob Dylan record. And he said, Bruce seems to be going more in this kind of direction. And there were some takes like that, with brushes, just a bare minimum rhythmic approach. And there were also rock versions of [some of] the Nebraska material. ”
Earlier this year, Springsteen told Rolling Stone‘s Andy Greene in an interview that the Electric Nebraska sessions “didn’t exist,” but a month later, texted him with a correction: “Just wanted to give you a heads up. I checked our vault and there IS an electric Nebraska record, though it does not have the full album of songs.”
October 24’s Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen and Jeremy Strong as his manager Jon Landau, is a cinematic version of the Nebraska story. Springsteen “was drawing inspiration from all these places but he didn’t really know what he was doing for a while with this record,” White recently told the Associated Press. “He didn’t know if it was going to be a record. As an actor, hopefully you’re doing that sort of thing all the time. That artistic curiosity is something I related to.”