Reviewed by Chris Roberts Released: September 30 1982 Bruce Springsteen Nebraska Genre: Folk Rock Allen's Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Chris’ Rating: 5 out of 5 Highlights: Nebraska Atlantic City Mansion On The Hill Johnny 99 Highway Patrolman State Trooper Used Cars Open All Night My Father’s House Reason To Believe I know The Boss’ Jersey bombast is too much for some folks. “Born In The USA” and “Born To Run” are just a few of Bruce’s unrelenting assaults, and if you’ve ever seen or heard his legendary live shows, you know Bruce and the E-Street band launch all the missiles. He’s the consummate rock star, both exhilarating and exhausting, but if you’re not into it, Bruce can look pretty silly. But Nebraska does not feature the E-Street band, or even Bruce the rock star. He’s not dancing in the dark. This is a dark night of the soul. Bruce the writer, in a rented house by his lonesome self. Nebraska is mostly simple compositions, played on an acoustic guitar, with an occasional harmonica or other small embellishment, home-recorded. While home demo tracks have become de rigueur, and MTV unplugged everyone in the nineties, Nebraska is another thing entirely. [1] Nebraska is about the stories, not the storyteller. In fact, Bruce isn’t even on the cover (a rarity in his discography). Instead, it’s a grainy, black and white photograph—a windshield view of a desolate highway. Aside from snow on the wiper blades, there’s nothing to identify the location. The photo sits between the words BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, printed in big red letters at the top, with NEBRASKA handled the same across the bottom. Words on wide black bands, the kind you see on a letterboxed movie. This is fitting, as Nebraska is cinematic, showing us scenes with characters in conflict. And like a letterboxed movie, this album wants to show us the full picture, including the edges. The first song, “Nebraska,” establishes the album’s grim theme with it’s final verse. When asked why he killed ten innocent people, a death row murderer explains: “Well sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.” This meanness is direct in the stories of a mob hitman, (“Atlantic City”), a cop killer (“Johnny 99”) and a cop who looks the other way when his brother commits a violent crime (“Highway Patrolman”). The meanness is also indirect. It’s wealth, in the stories of outsiders looking in (“Mansion On The Hill” and “Used Cars”), and struggles of conscience (“My Father’s House”) or the lack thereof (“State Trooper”). In the album closer, “Reason To Believe,” Springsteen does not offer faith as a solution to the “meanness in this world” only that it’s “kinda funny” that in spite of dead dogs, runaway lovers, broken promises, and everything else we’ve heard over these ten gloomy tracks, people do find “some reason” to believe. I remember listening to Nebraska in July 1989, speeding home at night on Interstate 5 somewhere between Lost Hills and the Grapevine; nothing but blacktop, scrub brush and a rusted billboard frame or two. Alone in the dashboard light, these songs felt like I’d tuned the radio to a cold, still-of-night broadcast from the central wastelands of the apocalypse. Gone were the Central Valley rancheros and all that was left were these decaying transcriptions from a failed civilization. Bruce described it like this: In the wee wee hours your mind gets hazy Radio relay towers gonna lead me to my baby Every song on Nebraska has at least some mention of driving or the highway, and many are told from the position of the driver’s seat. That specific lyric appears in not one, but two songs. In “State Trooper,” it’s in the thoughts of the unlicensed driver who’s committed some unspeakable crime and doesn’t want Mister State Trooper to pull him over—for the trooper’s sake. In “Open All Night,” the cops have already turned on their flashing lights, but in this case, the driver, on his way to see his girl Wanda, is “hummin’ like a turbojet” in his fully tuned ride and wishes the patrolman “good luck” catching him. Both songs also follow this lyric with the radios being “jammed up,” with “gospel” and “talk show station(s).” But it’s less the context and more the repetition that I find intriguing. These lyrics perfectly capture Nebraska’s dark night of the soul vibe, and the challenges we face finding salvation. Repeating them with different characters reinforces the universality of that challenge. Those same repeated lyrics also capture and compliment Nebraska’s lo-fi sonic texture. Words like “hazy,” “radio relay towers” and “radio jammed up” express the pervasive background hum inherent in Bruce’s demo recording. His original goal was to flesh the songs out with the E-Street Band—but the moments captured in the home recording haunted him. Like the sizzling of sodium lights in a parking lot, or echoes in an abandoned building, it’s both unnerving and sparely atmospheric, spiritually closer to indie rock than classic rock, and worlds apart from Bruce’s later acoustic albums (The Ghost Of Tom Joad and Devils And Dust). Back to that night, listening to Nebraska behind the wheel of my little red pickup, I probably thought of Johnny Cash [2] and the inmates he sang to at Folsom and San Quentin. I was working on my English major, so maybe I should have recognized Bruce was channeling Flannery O’Connor, who once wrote: “You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you. It’s trust, not certainty.’” That’s what’s going on in Nebraska, for sure. Of course, I found that quote Googling “Springsteen Scorsese” because I know movies better than I know books [3] (so much for that B.A.). Terrance Malick’s film Badlands was Springsteen’s inspiration for the song “Nebraska,” and Sean Penn’s film Indian Runner was inspired by “Highway Patrolman.” I can draw parallels to movies by Joel and Ethan Coen (“Blood Simple,” “Fargo” “No Country For Old Men” and “Oh Brother Where Art Thou”) and Martin Scorsese (“Mean Streets” “Taxi Driver” and “Goodfellas”). You probably can too. You know, the more I think about it, the more I’m not actually sure that I listened to Nebraska that night in July 1989. I know I was at a personal crossroads, so it feels right. I sorta wonder if Nebraska captured my “hazy” mindset so perfectly, that I’ve retconned my past. ********** 1. Bon Iver, The Killers and Kelly Clarkson are among the artists who’ve recorded albums inspired by Bruce’s minimalist approach on Nebraska. I could argue there’s probably not a No Depression scene without Nebraska. 2. Cash called his 1983 album Johnny 99, which included covers of “Johnny 99” and “Highway Patrolman.” He also covered “I’m On Fire” (a song which borders Nebraska) on the Nebraska tribute album, Badlands. “Badlands” is also the name of a song on Springsteen’s 1978 album, Darkness On The Edge of Town. 3. I have listened to the audiobook of Born To Run by Christopher McDougall, which is about barefoot running. I have not listened to Born To Run, which is Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography.
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