← All Of It with Alison Stewart
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A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Here are a couple of things you should have on your radar this week. Early voting is underway here in New York and New Jersey. The big race for the city is the mayor in New Jersey. It's for the next governor. So if you're registered to vote, you don't have to wait for election day to cast your ballot. You can do it right now. And we have two live events this week. Our get lit with Olivet Book Club meets tomorrow at 6pm we'll be speaking with SA Cosby, the author of King of Ashes. And special musical guest is Yaya Bae. There might be a ticket or two left, so head to wnyc.org getlit to grab yours right now. I'll see you tomorrow night. And on Thursday, the cast and creative team behind the hit Broadway musical Hadestown join us live in the WNYC green space that is sold out. But you can follow along on the live stream. Head to WNYC to learn how that's in the future. Now let's get this hour started with Warren Zanes, the author of Deliver Me From Nowhere. The story goes that Bruce Springsteen recorded the album Nebraska in his New Jersey bedroom recordings he hadn't planned to release to the world. It was the early 80s, and after the success of Born to Run and the river, the Boss was in a difficult period in his life. Was he going to be a famous?
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Was he going?
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Or a truth teller? Or could it be both? Today, Nebraska stands out in the Springsteen catalog, its intimacy, its rawness and darkness, but also for what it represents about what makes Bruce a generational songwriter. Let's listen to an example. This is the title track.
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Standing on her front lawn, just a twirl in her baton, Me and her wind Ferrati and 10 incent people down.
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A new movie about the making of Nebraska was released in theaters over the weekend starring Jeremy Allen. And it's based on a book by my next guest, Warren Zanes. Both are titled Deliver Me from Nowhere. Warren, welcome to wnyc.
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Thank you for having me.
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A
Okay, you start your book with your band. My favorites from college, the Del Fuegos and Bruce sitting in on a session.
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Yes.
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What did you learn about him as a musician during that period?
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Learning about Bruce Springsteen started with me being the youngest of three and the records coming down to me. Yeah. And so it was the second record, the Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, that really caught my attention. And I think the thing in particular was the sense of place we were living in New Hampshire. I didn't know what a boardwalk was, but somehow I felt like I belonged there. He established scenes, he established characters in a way that if literature was your love, you could really sink into these songs. So I learned first and foremost how much life there could be in a song. You know, following that, like you say, it was Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and these things were just breathing for me. And then he released Nebraska, and I was confused.
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You were confused?
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Yeah.
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Honestly, first reaction was disappointment because there was this sense of a build happening. And The river, his fifth record, was his first number one record. Had his first top 10 single, with Hungry Heart, and then Nebraska was a completely different direction. And even as a young person, I understood he was taking a hard left turn. And it didn't make sense, you in the context. And it was only because I already loved Bruce so much that I stuck with it. And the album just got into my system and became my favorite. So of the lessons I learned, there were many. But the Nebraska lesson was you can take that left turn and eventually people might go with you.
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It's interesting because you're a musician. You also have a PhD, you've written books, you teach.
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And this brings me to my next.
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Question, which is a little bit what you were talking about. A teachable moment from Nebraska.
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The teachable moment is. Well, there are many. One is, what is this record? It's a record that Bruce Springsteen made, not knowing he was making a record. So there he is in his bedroom thinking he's making demos that maybe the band will hear. They're just references so that he can go rerecord the material. So when you hear Nebraska, you're hearing something he didn't think you would be hearing. It is the only record where you are alone in the room with Bruce Springsteen. And there's a power to that, because put an artist in a commercial recording studio, there's a level of self consciousness.
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He knows people are going to hear it.
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Right?
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Right.
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So you're seeing yourself being seen. You're hearing yourself being heard. Put a person alone in a bedroom thinking that no one will hear this. Things will happen that wouldn't otherwise. And I think that's a big part of the mystery and the magic. And what makes this strange record 40 years later still resonate, still have this kind of power that I think even Bruce doesn't totally understand.
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Listeners, we'd like to get you in on this conversation. What does the album Nebraska by Bruce Spreenstein mean to you? Was It a big album for you growing up. Give us a call or text us now at 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. What do you remember? Remember about the first time you heard Nebraska 212-433-WNYC 212-43396 when it was first released? What did the critics say?
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The critics, it's interesting. Like, I often cite a review in the San Francisco Chronicle where there's a line of it's surprising he would play this for anyone at all. And it was a five star review. So critics were understanding that they were seeing something that was a total anomaly when you looked at the charts. Artists who were having number one records, top 40 hits, there was nothing that sounded like that. And so the critics were both acknowledging it and admiring it. Rolling Stone magazine described it as a shock. And this was kind of right across the board. And then there was the musician community where there was a similar lack of comprehension that I experienced. Yet this growing admiration for witnessing an artist who just had a number one kind of work in defiance of the marketplace logics.
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What did fans think?
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You know fans.
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It was 82.
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Yeah, 82. We're right on the cusp of the digital. Things are getting clean, things are getting clear and perfect. And here's this confusing record. And for those who hung in there, and not all of them did, you know, a lot of people, they came back later. So there was this slow.
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I was one of those. I have to Admit, I was 16 at the time. I was like, I don't know about this.
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I mean, I'll tell you, I'm almost a bit suspicious of those who said they were early adopters. But if you were a believer in Bruce, you kind of put the time in. And I just think it was the characters in the songs. These were so much like short stories that you could have a relationship with the characters who were people without hope. They were despairing people. They were out on the edge. And there was no sense for the first time in a Bruce Springsteen record that redemption was possible. We all go through those passages in our life. And I think what happened is people started identifying with the hopelessness, which is an act of hope. But the hope is not in the songs.
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My guest is Warren Zanes. He's the author of the book Deliver Me from the Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, which was the inspiration for a new biopic that was released over the weekend. Let's listen to some songs. You picked out a couple for us State Trooper, what's this about to you?
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Well, can I, can I first say I sent Bruce a clip of the 2026 Christian Dior fashion show, the summer collection and this takes, I think it's in Paris. It was a massive hall walls painted white, light pine stain on the floor very bright. Two still life paintings on the walls by Chardin, one from the Louvre, one from another major collection. The show starts with the male collection and state trooper comes on and they did a re edit on it so that Bruce's screams are at the top. So you hear Bruce Springsteen doing these screams, this rough recording and these male models walking toward you. I sent it to Bruce and you know my reaction to it was Nebraska seems like this such a particular narrow thing, yet its applicability goes as wide as that. Like it was the perfect choice for a fashion show. Like how did that happen?
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Listen.
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New Jersey turnpike riding on a wet night Neath the refinery's gloom out where the great black rivers pool License registration I ain't got none but I got a clear consciousness Bad things that.
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I.
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Mistake Trooper, please don't stop me Please don't stop me Please don't stop me maybe you got a kid maybe you got a pretty wife the only thing that I got been bothering me my whole life Mr. Stick Trooper, please don't stop me Please don't stop me Please don't disturb me.
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Let'S take Julia from Cape Cod. Who's calling in? Hi Julia, thanks for calling all of it. You're on the air. Hi.
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I had a similar experience growing up to Warren Zanes. I'm the youngest daughter, youngest sister of, you know, Bruce Springsteen, born to Ron. Greetings from Asbury park and I graduated from high school in 81. So when Nebraska came out it was a, it was a pretty earth shattering moment and I to this day it's some of my, it is my favorite songs. I love Atlantic City. I love the way he talks about the chicken man and all of that. So to me Nebraska is what allowed me to stay a Bruce Springsteen fan versus like spinning off into other places. Really centered me as Bruce Springsteen for my entire life. So much so that when he came to New Jersey a couple of years ago, I brought my family and my youngest kid know underwrote as a, as a lullaby. And he was sitting next to me at the age of 17 because I used to sing it to him as a lullaby and he hugged me as he listened to Bruce Springsteen sing it live because it meant so much to him to have been able to be there so Nebraska was what made me a Bruce Springsteen fan for life.
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Julia, thank you so much for calling. We got this text that says his genius is the ability to touch our souls through his writing. And then the songs, thankfully, never leave us.
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Can. Can I, of course, talk about State Trooper? Just hearing it now. I mean, I still have this experience where I'm hearing it differently each time, which I think is an earmark of the. The best recordings. But those spaces where all you're hearing is that throbbing acoustic guitar, there are no flourishes. This is like the most basic carpentry, but within it there's this voice. Is he paranoid? Is he so far on the margins, so far out on the margins of society that he's not coming back? This song is a little different in narrative structure than some of the other material. It's really a character study.
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Exactly.
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And the raging interiority, you know, the only thing that I got been bothering me my whole life, the way he's just leaving that throbbing guitar and then gives us a space to take that in. It's amazing to me that as a songwriter, he understood what we needed as listeners to be with this very difficult character. Because popular music is mostly love, loss, longing, romance. And here he is going out to the margins where those characters live. But he's giving us the space we need to take them in.
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My guest is Warren Zanes. He's the author of the book Deliver Me from the Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. Listeners, call in and tell us what Nebraska means to you. What do you remember about the first time you heard the album? Our number is 212-433-WNYC, 239,692. What do we know about the equipment that Bruce used to record it?
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We know that at the time it came out. So the TEAC 144 is a four track recorder that uses cassette tape. There's no way it's going to sound that good. There are people. The Beatles did four track recording, but not on cassette tapes. And they were linking two, four tracks that I think had one inch tape. Completely different. It's only the track number that's the same. So there he was recording on a cassette. It's a consumer model. It was around $1,000. So he likes to say, by far the cheapest record I ever made. But it was just meant to take the music maker into a slightly more complicated situation where they could do some overdubs. But it really wasn't meant for a whole lot beyond that. It was a great tool. But I think it's significant in that it marked a turn that combined that home technology with the turn toward the digital. More and more people started taking it home, and on some level, Bruce was an emblem of that, but it was primitive gear. And then he attached it. He mixed it all through an echoplex, which is a short echo that's similar to Elvis Presley's early Sun recordings. And I think he fell in love with that because it situated it in another time altogether. So there's this effective of distance, this. This effect of, where is this coming from? Where does it belong? And that's the same way we saw the characters in the songs. Where did they come from? Where do they belong? Is this the 50s? Is this the 80s? Who are they?
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Where was the E Street Band during this time?
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This, you know, Bruce, in talking to him, he said, you know, it was really Nebraska that brought me to a crossroads, where, you know, whatever's coming next could be an east street band project or it could be a solo project. And this defined that trajectory that was coming. And on some level, he acknowledges that that's what kept the E Street Band together, that he could come in and out, and here they are at the top of their game in 2025. But talking to Max Weinberg, his drummer, Max said, you know, we came off the river tour. I didn't know where he lived.
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Hmm.
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That's very interesting, because we talked to.
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Steve Van Zant last week, and we asked about Nebraska and about the film. And here's a little bit of a condensed version of what he had to.
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Say in his mind at the time. It was demos for the Born in the USA album. And the minute I heard it, I was like, man, these ain't no demos. I'm sorry. You know, this is like, something extraordinary. And he was quite surprised. It took them months to realize it was an album, but I knew it right away. But the movie is just terrific. It's an absolutely wonderful, masterful work of art. And I mean that sincerely. I mean, if you're not crying at the end of this movie, you're a zombie. I'm sorry. And I don't think you have to even be a Bruce Springsteen fan or know anything about his work.
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What do you think about that?
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Well, I love hearing Stephen talk about the effect of this film because, like, Nebraska took some risks. It could have gone wrong. It could have really been the left turn that didn't help Bruce Springsteen. The movie takes some risks. We do not live in an age of the quiet narrative that builds in the way this film does and hearing Stephen reflect on that and on the emotion that it carries for me. Yes, I wrote the book. That's very meaningful. But the summit for me was watching this movie with my sons and being in the emotion. And both my boys know that I didn't know my father. I met him a handful of times. He lived 30 minutes away and I didn't see him for like a 20 year period. They met him once when I forged the whole thing. We gave him our address. We never heard from him. And yet there I am in the theater with my sons watching a story that's many things, but among them a father son story. And it's not a happily ever after, but it's just enough of an increase in understanding between that father and son that, you know, something more becomes possible in their relationship. And there I am seeing that story with my sons and there's just some healing that becomes possible. I believe in the emotions. So it's gotta be a quiet movie. It's gotta be the take the risk of having that slow build in order to have that end.
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When I saw the movie, I thought.
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I almost forgot that it was about Bruce Springsteen. I saw that. It was like an artist in pain trying to figure his way out of the pain.
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Yeah. And it's funny, like, you know, biopics tends to involve big hits in some fashion. You know, it's, you know, seeing Bob Dylan, I love that movie like a Rolling stone's in there. The times, they are changing. And not to compare the two, but choosing Nebraska, it's a very Bruce move to sign off on this one because it's not about a hit. It's about someone coming apart and knowing enough to ask for help in the rebuilding process so that he could become that guy capable of having the hits. And that means living through it. Because it's, you know, Elvis is so often the model for these guys of that generation. And Elvis was a cautionary tale, you know, but Bruce did that rebuilding post Nebraska, and then he came up, you know, it's very much the Phoenix rising from the ashes, but this story is the ashes story.
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We'll have more with my guest Warren Zanes and take more of your calls. This is all of it.
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