On this day (September 30) in 1982, Bruce Springsteen released Nebraska, a stark departure from his previous releases. Springsteen recorded the songs that would become the album alone in the bedroom of his Colts Neck, New Jersey, home on a four-track recorder.
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When Springsteen wrote and recorded the songs that would become Nebraska, he was coming off the biggest success of his career. His third album, Born to Run (1975), gave him his first hit on the Billboard 200. Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) gave him another when it peaked at No. 5. Then, he released The River (1980), his first No. 1 album. The LP resulted in a massively successful tour. Professionally, the Boss was on top of the world. His personal life, though, was a different story.
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“I just hit some sort of personal wall that I didn’t even know was there,” Springsteen recalled. “It was my first real major depression, where I realized I’ve got to do something about it,” he added. At 32 years old, he was a rock star. However, his life felt empty. “I looked around and said, ‘Where is everything?’ Where’s my home? Where is my partner? Where are the sons or daughters that I thought I might have someday? I realized none of these things are there.”
Bruce Springsteen Taps into the Story of a Killer for Nebraska
While Bruce Springsteen was channel surfing one night, he came across the film Badlands. It’s a fictional retelling of the late 1950s killing spree of Charles Starkweather. The film got the ball rolling on Nebraska and inspired its haunting title track.
Springsteen tracked down the journalist who reported on the crimes and spoke to her about them for a while. This helped him focus on the song’s protagonist. “I tried to locate where their humanity was as best as I could,” he recalled.
“I had planned to write some good songs, teach them to the band, go into the studio, and record them. But every time I tried to improve on the tape that I had made in that little room, it was the old story of if this gets any better, it’s going to be worse,” he said of why he released the ten songs in their rough, stripped-down form.
Featured Image by David Gahr/Getty Images
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