It’s shaping up to be a year to remember if you’re a Bruce Springsteen fan. The Boss released Tracks Two, no less than seven ‘lost’ albums in June. Now next month comes the double attraction of not only a biopic of the man, but an electric version of his 1982 album Nebraska, which up until recently was thought not to exist.
Nebraska was, of course, recorded on the most basic of equipment, unaccompanied, on a 4-track in his New Jersey home. Up until recently, the rumours that he had earlier recorded the same tracks in a studio were thought to be just that: rumours. “I have no recollection of it, but I can tell you there’s nothing in our vault that would amount to an electric Nebraska,” he told Rolling Stone in June.
However, he later updated the same journalist, saying: “I checked our vault and there is an electric Nebraska record, though it does not have the full album of songs.”
The electric versions are going to be released as part of a new Nebraska box set that comes out on October 17. Among the tracks that now have electric versions are the title track, Atlantic City, Johnny 99, Reason To Believe and Mansion On The Hill. Plus a version of Born In The USA, which is remarkably different from the version originally released in 1984.
Instead of blaring stadium rock, it has more of a country feel, and a slightly different melody. Backed by Max Weinberg and Garry Tallent, in a statement Springsteen has said of this version that: "We threw out the keyboards and played basically as a three-piece. It was kinda like punk rockabilly. We were trying to bring Nebraska into the electric world.”
Meanwhile, the biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere, arrives a week later. Starring Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen, Jeremy Strong as manager Jon Landau and Odessa Young as semi-fictional love interest Faye Romano, it’s set in same timeframe as Nebraska/ Born In The USA.
Springsteen has found mainstream fame with Hungry Heart and The River album, but is unsure where to turn creatively and how to do justice to the songs he has written for his next album.
And if that were not enough, there is the prospect of another tranche of unreleased material in the form of Tracks Three, which, as Springsteen said in the same Rolling Stone interview in June, will be released “when we have time to put that out.”
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