A new documentary on Bruce Springsteen with a particular focus on his 1982 album Nebraska is being trailed on PBS.
Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska: A Celebration In Words and Music premieres at the end of this month on PBS. It features a host of musicians, including Eric Church, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Noah Kahan, Lyle Lovett, and the Lumineers talking about what the New Jersey legend means to them. It’s hosted by Warren Zanes, who wrote Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making Of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.
Apparently Harris covers the title track of the album and Price You Pay whilst Noah Kahan takes on Atlantic City. Meanwhile Lucinda Williams provides a cover of Born In The USA, which was written for Nebraska but was, of course, saved for Springsteen’s next multi-million selling album.
In a statement about the documentary, Zanes said: “I wrote a book about Nebraska because the recording stayed with me over decades. Every time there was trouble in my life I reached for Nebraska. When I started doing events around the book’s publication, I quickly realized the best of them had music. When I went to Nashville, I had a remarkable cast of musicians to help me tell this story.”
Nebraska was recorded at a pivotal time in Springsteen’s career. His previous album The River had become his first to reach Number One in the US and the world was now awaiting his next move. Infamously he recorded his next batch of songs on a TEAC 144 four-track: demos that would – in theory – be tarted up with the help of the E Street Band in the studio.
But when he got there he realised that these songs, with their desperate characters living on the margins of US society, were better realised by them remaining in their lo-fi state, with just his voice, a Gibson acoustic and just a little harmonica and mandolin in places. Whilst he carried on recording what would become his 1984 blockbuster album Born In The USA, he released the demos as his next album in September 1982.
Despite its lack of production polish, Nebraska still hit the top five in both the US and the UK and its standing has remained high ever since. It’s the understated acoustic flipside to the stadium-sized bombast of Born In The USA and in any ‘best of’ list of Springsteen albums is usually to be found somewhere near the top.
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