Fresh on the heels of Monmouth University’s week-long extravaganza celebrating the 50th anniversary of “Born to Run,” Bruce Springsteen is making headlines yet again with the authorized biopic “Deliver Me from Nowhere” and the long-awaited release of the fabled “Electric Nebraska” album as part of “Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition.” Die-hard fans and music lovers alike will be delighted to discover that, for the most part, neither disappoints.
Based upon Warren Zanes’s “Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska,” the film stars Jeremy Allen White (of episodic TV’s “Shameless” and “The Bear” fame) as the Boss. As with “Born to Run”’s make-or-break release six years earlier, the early 1980s find Springsteen at a crossroads. White turns in a bravura performance, bringing Springsteen vividly to life as a moody musician having achieved success beyond his wildest dreams yet uncomfortable with the international fame he realized with “Hungry Heart” and “The River” in the early 1980s.
In a risky career move, Springsteen turns introspective, digesting the short stories of Flannery O’Connor and Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States.” The result is 1982’s “Nebraska,” the acoustic, lo-fi, homespun record that established Springsteen as an artist for the ages. William Ruhlmann aptly describes the LP as “one of the most challenging albums ever released by a major star on a major label.”
As “Deliver Me from Nowhere” makes indubitably clear, Springsteen’s artistic confidence is buoyed by his career-making partnership with Jon Landau. Jeremy Strong (“Succession“) turns in a muted performance as the Rolling Stone critic cum record producer, imbuing Landau with a brooding intensity that misses out on the enthusiasm and zest inherent in his real-world persona. But this is a minor quibble for a film that, like the “Nebraska” album itself, rightly dares to elevate the making of a solo acoustic record into high art. By contrast, White’s performance is a wonder to behold, carefully walking the tightrope between Springsteen’s bigger-than-life stardom and the deep thinker who brought the rawness of “Nebraska” to fruition.
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And speaking of “Nebraska”: this week marks the release of one of rock ‘n’ roll’s Holy Grails, the so-called “Electric Nebraska” sessions that Springsteen undertook with the E Street Band before retiring to Colts Neck, New Jersey, where he recorded the album as a solo effort on a portable four-track cassette player. “Nebraska ’82,” the 37-track collection, clears the vaults for fans who have been salivating to hear the fabled “electric” recordings with the E Street Band. As with previous releases that attain mythic status, “Nebraska ’82” won’t satisfy everyone. It’s not a track-for-track full-band blueprint for the eventual album.
But in many ways, it’s something better, offering proof positive that Springsteen’s stripped-down version of “Nebraska” was the right artistic choice. At the same time, “Nebraska ’82” offers a powerful nod to the future — in this case, the blockbuster “Born in the USA” album on the not-so-distant horizon. In stark contrast with the album’s bombastic, top-10 title track, the early version of “Born in the USA” featured on “Nebraska ’82” oozes with the pain, heartbreak and disillusion inherent in the song’s lyrics. For this listener, “Nebraska ’82’”s “Born in the USA” is now the standard-bearer.
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