Curatorial Corner – One Week After ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’

“I’m still surprised that he did it, and I’m still wildly inspired that he did it.”

– Warren Zanes on Nebraska

It’s been one week since the major motion picture Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere—about the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska—hit theaters. In honor of the milestone, we’re sharing an excerpt from, and linking to, our 2024 session of “Conversations with our Curator” with Warren Zanes, author of the 2023 book that inspired the film.

“Conversations with our Curator” is a free, monthly web series that features yours truly in conversation with researchers and writers exploring new perspectives in American music history.

Warren Zanes is an author, musician, and cultural historian known for his insightful explorations of American music. A former guitarist for the Del Fuegos, he has written acclaimed books including Petty: The Biography and Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. Zanes holds a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester and has served as a vice president at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to writing, he teaches, lectures widely, and continues to contribute to the cultural understanding of rock and roll’s enduring legacy.

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Melissa: This book, the one we’re here to talk about today, on the making of Nebraska…. how long did this take you?

Warren: I mean, I could I could answer that in in 10 different ways… one of them would be in 1982, when the record came out—and I think that’s how writing happens, something stays with you, in your head, and if you then become a writer, that thing that stayed in your head, finds its way out. It works its way out; if it’s persistent and it continues to compel you… but another answer would be, you know, I wrote my Tom Petty biography and I needed to follow it up, and I wanted to follow it up with something that, again, compelled me, and Nebraska, I still say, may be the greatest left turn in the history of American popular music. Like if you really look at it—I will have people come up to me and say, “Artists are making records on four tracks, cassette, all the time.” And it’s like, “True! But not Top 10 artists, not artists who just had a number one album.” So—Bruce Springsteen, it’s that he did what he did, when, and in relation to what came before it—that move, to me, still demanded some explanation like—I’m still surprised that he did it, and I’m still wildly inspired that he did it.

Melissa: You say you’re still surprised that he did it, even after having spoken with him yourself and having had the opportunity to interview him—it still surprises you, it still stands out?

Warren: Yes, because if you’re in the music business, you are in business. So the decision he made didn’t make any business sense. And I just—I don’t mean to be cynical, but I think that’s very rare, when someone can turn away from the demands of the marketplace to that degree. I mean, The River was his first number one record, he had been building—forget the business perspective, from the artist who is in business perspective, Born in the USA should have been the next thing. So that moment just stayed with me, I was so excited for the next Bruce Springsteen record. I put it on and I hear Nebraska?! And it just put me in a spot of, I do not understand what this guy is doing. You know? What happened? And it- because I was already so invested in this particular artist I kept putting it back on. Like, I don’t think I would have done that for too many artists but I kept putting it back on until it started to get into me and as a result I was having this different experience of a record than I had had, and it changed me as a listener and it changed, it definitely changed my understanding of him and it changed my understanding of what songs could do to me, how they could work on me.

Melissa: You just said that Bruce was building something, but he was a little uncomfortable with what he was building in some ways, right? You explore that in the book.

Warren: Yeah absolutely—and you know…I really enjoyed…interviewing Jon and Bruce on the topic, and Jon Landau is so good, talking about Bruce’s resistance to singles, and his ambivalence, like true ambivalence, about success. So, he was hovering in that space between like having some sense that he could take it to a larger you know, quote “arena,” unquote, and he was wondering what he might lose there. It was funny—I was down in the archives today, and the number of articles that start pointing to this early on, like, “CAN HE REMAIN TRUE TO HIMSELF?!” It wasn’t just that Bruce had those feelings, he was getting hammered with it. Because the second you position yourself as an authentic voice, everybody’s ready to like see you, you know, sell out; be untrue to yourself…so there was some pressure—it wasn’t just the pressure he put on himself, it was the pressure that was on him as this, you know, quote, “authentic American voice,” and Nebraska took him right out of that game.