Springsteen Biopic and Electric Nebraska Review

This week, I deliver a special double review of Bruce Springsteen's new biopic 'Deliver Me from Nowhere' and the long-anticipated album release 'Electric Nebraska.' I dive deep into the background of the Nebraska sessions, the movie’s portrayal of Bruce's fragile creative period, and evaluate both the film and album for longtime fans and for newcomers alike. Don’t miss my insights on the new arrangements, demo tracks, and the overall impact of these releases on Springsteen's legacy. All this week on The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast!

00:00 Introduction and Overview

01:57 The Backstory of Nebraska

03:29 Movie Review: Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

08:19 Album Review: Electric Nebraska

14:53 Additional Demos and Final Thoughts

The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast Playlist: 
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1T5MBoIns8c264hsEDDD7N?si=16e45e4e8e2340c9
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/nebraska-live/pl.u-5azluqPJPk

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to The Rock-N-Roll Show podcast. I'm your host, Alex Gadd, and I've got another review for you, but it's not a concert review. This week I'm gonna review both a new movie and a new album together because both are related. The movie is Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere, and the album is The Fabled Electric Nebraska album. That's been rumored about for years and finally was released, just a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, it's a double Bruce Springsteen review, which if you follow this podcast or know me at all, will make a ton of sense. So stick around for my joint review of the Springsteen biopic and the Electric Nebraska album coming up right now. Bruce has released more new music in 2025 than in any other year of his career, and yet almost none of it is actually new. First in June, came Tracks 2: the Lost Albums, which was a massive seven album box set of unheard material spanning recordings from 1982 to 2018, and then just a few weeks ago, he dropped Nebraska 82, a newly remastered four album collection built around his haunting 1982 Masterpiece, Nebraska. The new set includes a crisp remaster of the original lo-fi classic, which sounds like a conundrum, but it isn't. Plus three additional albums. First, a treasure trove of additional demos from the same sessions that produced the Nebraska album. Then there's a brand new live rerecording of all 10 songs from Nebraska, stripped down, raw and Intimate, done by Bruce, and just a couple of additional musicians. And finally, as I mentioned, what's long been considered, the Holy Grail among Springsteen fans, the Full E Street Band Electric Nebraska recordings. For those who aren't diehard Bruce fans. Here's the quick backstory. In 1981, coming off the huge success of The River and its sold out tour, Springsteen started sketching songs for his next album at home on a little four track cassette recorder. When he took those demos into the studio with the E Street Band, some of the songs just didn't click for him. The full band takes lost some of the almost haunted quality of his home recordings that Bruce felt were perfect for those dark, living on the margins characters he was writing about in those songs. So in one of the gutsiest moves of his career, he told Columbia Records to release his home demos as they were with tape hiss, weird echo and everything. Nebraska was decidedly uncommercial. He insisted there would be no singles, no tour to support the album, and he would do no press, just 10 stark grim stories from the Heart of America. The label thought he was tanking his own career and yet. They agreed to his request because they knew he was on the cusp of global breakout and they were investing in their artist for the long term. Of course the album went platinum. It sold more than a million copies and got as high as number three on the Billboard album chart. Ultimately it influenced every lo-fi band from the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club to the Black Keys, and it cemented Springsteen as an artist who followed his muse no matter what the cost. That remarkable creative crossroads, the moment when Bruce turned away from super stardom and into the shadows is the focus of the new biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, and since the movie and the Nebraska album are so intertwined, I'm gonna talk about both of them today. Let's start with the movie review. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is not your typical rock biopic. The movie doesn't trace Bruce's career from start to finish ala Bohemian Rhapsody After the initial recreation of a stadium performance of Born to Run from the last show of the 1981 River Tour. There are no more real concert scenes. There are no montages of fame and excess. No scrappy young artist digging his way up through the club scene of New Jersey. In fact, it's almost the opposite. This movie zooms in on a very specific, very fragile moment in Bruce's life. He was 32 years old, living alone in a rented house in Colts Neck, New Jersey, trying to figure out who he was after the whirlwind success of his River album and the subsequent tour. It's the portrait of an artist, stripped of everything but his voice, his stories, and his ghosts. The film captures the quiet desperation and strange beauty of that creative isolation amplified by his descent into anxiety and ultimately depression. I think that in that sense, the film accomplished its primary goal, which was the very challenging task of presenting Bruce's inner struggle in an effective way. Yes, the film uses flashbacks to depict some of the childhood trauma young Bruce experienced in his home, which is cliche in most films, but I forgive it here thanks to the excellent performances of Stephen Graham and Gabby Hoffman as Bruce's parents and Matthew Anthony Pelicano, Jr. as young Bruce. There's also a fictional love interest introduced, a woman named Faye who seems to exist mainly to underscore that Bruce, driven to get the music out exactly as he hears it in his head, and wrestling with mental health issues, wasn't capable of a healthy relationship at that time. It felt like the only reason that storyline was there was to break up the primary arc of Bruce struggling with how to rerecord these intense songs effectively, which again, was a mostly internal struggle. That to me, hints at a script that was kind of under baked. And while I know how hard it is to write a script, believe me, I do, let alone a good one, I can't help but feel that this script needed some additional meat on its bones. It's just too flimsy, and the relationships are really not well developed enough as though writer director Scott Cooper assumed everyone in the audience would understand things like the dynamic between Bruce and his manager, John Landau. Also the lack of any interaction with Bruce's band mates. The E Street band is just weird and it doesn't ring true regardless of whether or not it was during that time. To that end, the biggest concern I have with the film is how it will play for the casual fans. I have no idea how anyone who comes into the theater cold knowing only Springsteen's radio hits and nothing about his backstory will be able to connect with the movie. I'm not saying they won't be able to connect with it, but I'm too close to the subject matter to be an objective judge. And unfortunately for 20th Century Studios, there aren't enough of us diehard fans out there to make this movie a hit by ourselves. I suspect the marketing campaign focused too much on the concert recreation and some of the audiences or at least some of the audience members, will be surprised by how internal and slow burn a movie it is, and that will not help its word of mouth. That's just my guess, but it is struggling so far at the box office. Still, the film succeeded for me if just barely, because it shined a light on a raw, private, vulnerable period of my favorite musician's life. I welcomed the chance to celebrate my guy overcoming a challenge that could have swallowed him whole. The end of the movie got me, I teared up in a good way. I also hope it's frankness about men's mental health lands with people and that it deepens appreciation for the original album Nebraska, which was undoubtedly a strange dark record. Fun side note, every person depicted in the film was played by an actor except for Jimmy Iovine, who was a budding music producer during the period covered by the film, but had started off as an engineer in the studio for both Bruce's Born to Run record and John Lennon's rock and roll album in 19 74, 75 time period. Later on, Jimmy Iovine became one of the most powerful people in the music business. He was the chairman of Interscope Records and then he co-founded Beats Audio with Dr. Dre. And while Iovine doesn't actually appear in the film he provided his own voice for a phone call with John Landau, who is played by Jeremy Strong. The shame of it all is that there really are strong performances all around, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are at least a few award nominations on the horizon for the actors in this movie. As I mentioned, after seeing the box office returns in its first two weeks, it's clear this movie isn't gonna be your chart topper. But by taking a turn away from the now standard musician biopic trope from Ray to Walk The Line to Bohemian Rhapsody, Scott Cooper has made a movie that feels very much like its subject matter. The Nebraska album isn't Bruce's bestselling album or is most popular, but it is considered his most artistically challenging and perhaps his most influential album. And maybe Springsteen: Delivered Me from Nowhere will find its legs over time. And that brings us to the Holy Grail of Bruce Springsteen bootlegs, which is now an official release, the Electric Nebraska album. The morning it was released, my buddy Jeff texted me Alex, I'm gonna need your take on electric Nebraska. Now Jeff is a true music aficionado. So I was flattered he'd wanted my opinion at all. And I spent about 10 minutes sending back random thoughts as I had them, I had only listened to the album twice at that point, but as I spent more time with the new songs over the last two weeks, here's where I've landed. First. It's evident in listening to them that the band recordings that make up the electric Nebraska disc lack any real spark. It's hard to say, but it's true. A few sounded pretty good. Open all night, and reason to believe sounded like electrified versions of the original demos. The title track sounds virtually the same as the demo except with Bruce playing the original acoustic guitar part on an electric guitar. The song Mansion on the Hill, which is one of the best tracks on the original album also sounds very, very similar to the original demo, so at least for me, the differences in the Electric Nebraska album came down to only four songs. The most familiar of those is Born In The USA, which was recorded with two different approaches during those full band studio sessions, including the way it was ultimately released two years later as the title track of Bruce's bestselling album. In fact, the recording of that version was the high point of the film for me. They managed to effectively recreate the excitement of realizing the full potential of a song in real time in the studio, which is no small miracle because we all know what the song sounds like today. What we think it's supposed to sound like, but no one, including Bruce had that sound in his head when he first wrote the song. The act of creating music, like any art form, is often a mystery. Words on a page in a basic melody get fleshed out by a group of human beings who interpret the writer's intent, the producer's direction that they're given in the best ways that they can. Sometimes they create just what the writer had in his or her head. But sometimes they create something different and that difference can be heard as better or worse by the writer, the producer, by the studio's a r people. Only when the right people agree that the result is good enough to release is it released to the public to hear for the first time. Then after millions of people have listened to a song hundreds of times each over many, many years, it becomes part of the culture. And today people can't imagine the song Born In The USA sounding any way other than the way it does. As track one side, one of the album of the same name. But again, not every song takes a linear journey. From written lyrics and basic melody to undeniable top 10 hit and Born In The USA's journey to its first formal release was more complicated. Written as a haunted acoustic blues number in its demo form. The band laid down a straight ahead take that mirrored the demo, but with electric guitar, bass, and drums. That's the one that's included on electric Nebraska, and it's pretty good. It sounds good, but it lacks a desperate anger of that final version that we all know today. Still, it's worth listening to as an example of how a song gets fleshed out, as it comes out of the demo format, and it needs at least one stop before the final definitive version is realized in the studio. Now the other song that worked really well on the Electric Nebraska album is Johnny 99, which got a full band rave up. That sounds fantastic and is basically the way the band has been playing that song live pretty consistently ever since. The final two songs on electric Nebraska. However, really miss the mark for me at least. And they alone suggest why the band versions of these songs probably were tabled in favor of the original demos. The first of those is a take on Downbound Train, which has an uptempo arrangement that leaves the vocal delivery sounding rushed, and then the electric Nebraska version mirrors that just with more instruments helping to rush the song along. The lyrics of this song are depressing, but in a mournful way. And I felt like they needed more space to be heard and absorbed, which is what happened when it finally got rerecorded for the release on Born in the USA interestingly Downbound Train may be the song on Born in the USA that best matches the tone and subject matter of Nebraska, but the demo and the electric Nebraska version are both grading to my ears. Then Finally, the biggest disappointment for me was the version of Atlantic City that the band cut, Atlantic City was the standout track from the original Nebraska album. And while Bruce insisted that there be no singles released from the album, eventually Columbia Records produced a weird music video for the song which MTV happily picked up and played, even though no radio stations were playing the song just because it was new Springsteen music and that made it the defacto single from the album. And yet the band version on electric Nebraska is just dull. Sorry to say it, but true it does have additional lyrics that weren't in the original. That sound pretty interesting. But it has very little energy to it, and I think this crystallizes why Bruce probably wanted to release the original demos instead of the full band versions. The demo he recorded in his bedroom sounds haunted and anxious. The electric Nebraska version sounds dull. Having thought about everything I've just shared with you, it got me thinking maybe Bruce was so connected to the sound of the demos. That he didn't push the band as hard as he had to come up with exciting arrangements for those 10 songs. He had always done that before for previous albums, but he had never recorded demos for his songs before they wrote and recorded right away in the studio. So I have no data to back up this assumption, but looking at how Bruce and the band have brought some of those Nebraska songs to life in concerts in the years since there are great full-band arrangements in these songs, especially Atlantic City. Which by the 1999 reunion tour had become a fully realized powerhouse in the middle of the set list. The movie suggests that the haunted nature of the demos that he originally recorded were the only thing that was making any sense to Bruce at the time. So maybe he held back on rearranging those songs over and over again until he got them figured out with the band. I don't know, but it's an interesting thing to consider. And in the meantime, the Electric Nebraska album was a bit of a letdown. I think that's mostly because it was such a white whale for Bruce fans for so long, and the promise of what might've been was too high to ever be fully realized. If you think about it, had the electric Nebraska recordings really been as exciting as we all assume they would be. They probably would've been released either as part of born in the USA or Nebraska would've been released as a full band album. But overall, the full band versions of these songs are interesting hints at what could have been, and certainly reinforce why Bruce felt so strongly that Nebraska be released as the original demos. That album has only grown in stature and influence over the last 40 plus years. Before I wrap up, let me also recommend some of the other demos that are included from the same sessions that never even got full band recordings on the electric Nebraska disc. They weren't included in the original release. That's disc one of the four album Nebraska 82 box set and that's where you can find the born in the USA initial demo, the Downbound Train demo that I mentioned earlier. But some of the other tracks are fascinating. The one that caught my attention most is a song titled Child Bride, and the lyrics are almost exactly the same as the lyrics to working on the highway that ended up on Born in the USA, except that the chorus is different and the arrangement is different. The arrangement is much slower and mirrors the basic structure and melody of a song Highway Patrolman that did end up on Nebraska also on disc. One of the new collection is a demo Bruce did of working on the highway with the same lyrics as Child Bride and his new chorus and the new arrangement and sound as the final version that was recorded with the E Street band and released on Born in the USA. So those two songs show how Bruce kept tinkering with ideas and trying different approaches even within the same recording cycle. Also on that first disc is an early take on the song Pink Cadillac and a previously released track called The Big Payback, which was on the Ultimate Bruce Springsteen three CD collection, and that's great to listen to. Then there are three totally new songs on that first disc that were never heard from or tried again, the losing kind gun in every home and on the prowl. None of them is great. I get why they didn't try to flesh'em out further. But they're all interesting and worth a listen. So that's it. I give Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere at 2.5 out of five stars for the general public. Three stars for Springsteen fans. Electric Nebraska is a neutral recommendation, but the Nebraska 82 box set overall is totally worth it for the Springsteen fan In your life, or just for music fans who are interested in how a master songwriter works in crafting their songs from start to finish, Speaking of finish, we're all done with this week's episode. Thank you for joining me. If you like what you heard today, I'd appreciate it if you would both like then either subscribe or follow to make sure you get notified about every new episode, and please tell your friends. Also a reminder that I release a playlist for every episode. So look for the Rock and Roll Show podcast playlist on Spotify and Apple Music every week. This week I'm gonna feature a playlist of the great full E Street band, live versions of the Nebraska album songs. So please check that out. And I want to know what you think, so please leave me a comment. I'll try to respond to every one of them. The Rock and Roll Show Podcast is a World Highway Media production. I'm your host, Alex Gadd and, until next time, remember that life is short, so get those concert tickets.