Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / "Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska"/Warren Zanes [Episode 133]

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"Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska"/Warren Zanes [Episode 133] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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Oh, we're totally I mean, I'll leave you do you're reading Little Hands,
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It's time to run and roll. We are totally booked. Welcome back
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to Booked on Rock, the podcast for those about to read and rock.
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Make sure you subscribe and follow on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
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and TikTok, where you get exclusive videos, weekly links to all the social
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media sites at booked on rock dot com. I'm real excited to have this
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episode's guest. It's Warren Zanes. He is here to talk about his new
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book, Deliver Me from Nowhere, the making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. It's
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a fascinating story behind the making of Bruce's most surprising album, Nebraska, released
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September thirtieth, nineteen eighty two. Head over to the show notes page to
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hear all of Nebraska. But first here is Warren Zanes. Warren, Welcome
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to the podcast. Thank you so much. When did you first hear Nebraska?
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What was your reaction? I first heard it when it came out.
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You know, we were we were already among the converted, and you know
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that probably I'm the youngest of three, so there was the trickle down effect
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from you know, music that both my brother brought into the house, and
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my mother already had she had a She had a good record collection that included,
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you know, everything from Aretha Franklin to Pete Seeger, Josh White,
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the Band, the Stones, Van Morris, and my uncle listened to oldies
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radio. So we got our Chuck Berry, our Buddy Holly, Little Richard,
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and so my brother was set up to be able to identify Bruce as
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something good in the world. And I was the younger brother that it was
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all filtering down too. Yeah, it's when I teach. I teach at
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MU and you know, with my students, it's either parents or siblings who
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are the determining factor that give you know, in my classes, give them
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a huge advantage if they've kind of gotten that transmission. But while the invacent
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in the street shuffle, we were, we were on board in a complete
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way by that time. And then, as I mentioned in the book,
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when my brother was in a conquered high school in New Hampshire, he covered
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his school books with the Time and newsweek covers when Bruce was at his big
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media week as a young man. So by the time Nebraska comes, we're
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just waiting with open arms. So not surprised at what you heard. Then
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I don't really believe anybody who says they weren't surprised. So, yes,
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we were surprised, but we were we were committed, and I think this
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describes the majority of you know, Bruce fans. We were committed enough to
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this guy to go will follow you. We don't know where you're taking us,
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but we will follow you. Bruce told you that without Nebraska, there's
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no Born in the USA. What did he mean by that, Well,
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there, the two albums come into the world at the same time, and
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then it's just a matter of kind of differentiating between them. But he had
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two thirds of Born in the USA in the can before Nebraska was officially released,
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So it's not that you know, when we go into a record store,
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we see everything kind of sequential terms. You know, there's the fourth
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record, there's the fifth record. But behind the scenes it's much sloppier for
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many artists. But the incredible thing to me is that he had the strength
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of Born in the USA right there, but he had some personal need to
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follow Nebraska through and he did it despite what it would mean for his career
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trajectory, because he was on this upward movement and Nebraska, you know,
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both in terms of the marketplace and just spiritually it went way downward. And
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credit you go to John Landau, Bruce's manager and producer, right because he
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supported Bruce. I don't know if you know that that book mentioned on the
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Hill. To me, it's like the worst part of the art commerce dichotomy.
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You know, the label guys, the managers, they're kind of the
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bad guys. They're only in it for the money. They're ruining the art.
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And it's just sometimes that dichotomy holds true, but often it's way too
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simplistic. And in the case of John Landau, look, he stood by
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an artist who was making one of the strangest career moves in the history of
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popular music. You know, we've had muddy, unfinished, very dark records,
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but not from artists who just had their first number one album. It's
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just not what anyone would expect, from the fans, to the label,
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to the management. And John Landau was right there supporting his artist. And
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when he heard the songs, he was a little concerned for Bruce, right,
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Yeah, when he first heard the songs his response was, you know,
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what he told me was that he was quote concerned on a friendship level,
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so he was hearing something happening with the songwriter, but he was seeing
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some kind of trouble with the man. And then after Nebraska was released and
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Bruce took that strip west that he talks about it in his memoir, it
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was Landau who said, you need professional help. So he's been He's like,
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you know, I talk about John Landau's timing in the book, like
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he knew when it was time to be a friend, he knew when it
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was time to be a manager. And that takes a kind of sophistication that
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I know I couldn't do it. If I were a manager. Being completely
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honest, I'd say, we definitely are not doing Nebraska. You know,
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It's just again, it's such a left turn. It can't be overstated.
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God, the way it worked. And I'll tell you when I first looked
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at it, I was I had a suspicion, and my suspicion was this,
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it's all strategy. It's all strategy. Because Nebraska gets all the critics
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on board, it's a kind of declaration of this deep authenticity. And then
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Born in the USA comes and it's just like, let's go deep into the
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world of hits and the commercial bidd it and that's not the case. But
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it worked out so perfectly. It was hard not to project strategy in hindsight,
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but it wasn't the strategy. It was like one man following a kind
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of deep need. There was someplace he had to go that was more important
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than career considerations, and in the end it happened to benefit that career.
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There is an absence of melody on Nebraska, which was intentional on Bruce's part.
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This leads us to a band called Suicide. Who is Suicide and what
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influence do they have on this album? So Suicide, you know, they
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get a good amount of space in the book because you can't understand Nebraska without
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them, So Bruce, they were duo thrum Machine, the electronic it was
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really like the father of electronic music. But you know, for listeners,
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the song I recommend people go to is Frankie Tear Drop, which is a
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very long song, around ten minutes, but it involves a guy coming home
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from a factory job, you know, and at that point you're close to
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some things we've seen in Springsteen's world. But then he comes home, murders
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his wife, murders his child kills himself, and it's so dark and so
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not what you expect of popular music. And Ellen Vega, who's in suicide,
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he's just on a microphone, is not playing an instrument, but he
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does the screams of that moment of infanticide, and it's it's just you had
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to kind of strap your seatbelt on just to listen to this stuff. And
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spring Stein felt this deep connection with it. And when he described it to
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me, he said his word was he heard a kind of unforgivingness in suicide
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and he didn't know that music could go that far out, and so it
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gave him a kind of license. And on the song State Trooper, you
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hear Springsteen do these screams that are almost like him signing Alan Vega's name to
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that song. So their presence is keenly felt, but it's they were the
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ones who kind of gave him permission to go that low, and they didn't
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have an influence on just that song, right, it's the whole album.
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I think, like musically, you hear it the most in State Trooper,
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but I think it's across It's spread across Nebraska in the sense of these things
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can happen in popular music. These things can you know in a way that
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I would trans later to mean the whole of life, it's absolute worst can
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be there represented in the stories we tell through song, and you know,
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the bulk of what you hear on you know, think think back in nineteen
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eighty two, look at the Look at the top one hundred. You're going
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to see songs of romance, songs of longing, songs of loss. That's
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always in American popular music, taking up the greatest amount of the kind of
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geography of it all. But life itself has these tragedies, It has this
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desperation, and Springsteen, because of suicide, says I can bring that into
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the music. The complex characters too. You know, bad person can do
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good things, a good person can do bad things. It's not all black
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and white, the absence of redemption. You know, there are a lot
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of people in Springsteen songs prior to Nebraska who are in really hard places.
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But there's some like Sliver of Hope I think, you know he talks about
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you know, he mentioned to me like stolen car off the river that could
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have been on Nebraska. You can see him like stepping toward these songs that
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don't resolve with that trace of hope. You know, they go into a
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hopeless place, which is where we sometimes go in our lives. So why
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can't the music go with us. That's when I think connects the fans so
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much to his music. It just feels like there's a little bit of you
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in his songs, in the characters that make up his songs. There's just
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something so deep. What was it the julia to him when you first heard
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his music? It was it was the full package, you know. I
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think because you know again time about my mother's record collection and the things that
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were coming in that into the house through my brother. Van Morrison was there
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Pastoral weeks, you know, moon Dance, and then we got we went
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back to them and we knew that had done. Here comes the Night Gloria,
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like okay. You know, Van Morrison is a singer songwriter from rock
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and roll, and I think if you're listening to that kind of artist at
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that level, you're ready for Bruce Springsteen. And you know, we loved,
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we did. We were we were too young to kind of see Dylan
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go electric. He was electric by the time we came out of the womb,
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and so Dylan possed for that, and and but Springsteen felt like somehow
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he belonged to us and not to our mother or our uncle. Yes,
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and that matters. Bruce. He gives you a great description of what it
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was like recording the songs. This is chapter eleven. He uses a t
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E a CE four four track recorder. Is that it looks kind of like
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what I'm recording my podcast. I was like a little in any mixture.
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I went to fall on eBay. Um, I just I found a broken
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one. And when I do book events, I bring it with me just
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because it's good to make contact with the material history and to see this thing.
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You know, it's it was ahead of its time at that point,
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right ahead of its time, and now it looks like just this artifact of
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deep funkiness and it's cool for people to see it. When we did the
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CBS Sunday Morning piece, I brought it out there and you know, it's
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beautiful. Bruce kind of put his hands on it, you know, but
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both his hands just like feel of things, like yeah, yeah, but
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it's recording on a cassette that you could buy. You know, at the
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time, you could go buy them that CVS and you know, little kids
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would use them to tape their voices and play it back. The difference with
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the TAC one forty four was that it's four track recording, and so that
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was the revolution. It had been there for a couple of years, been
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out on the market for a couple of years, but to put it really
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simply, it was the first consumer multi track machine. Now, multi track
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recording is a mundane thing. It's on everybody's laptop, you know, if
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you choose to do it. But then it was like whoa multi track recording?
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And pretty soon you see that shift where people are starting to take it
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home. And in that respect, Spring Scene's move was very prophetic of what
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was coming. But he took it home and it was still cassette recording.
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Yeah. Well, also it's where he recorded it too. Where is this
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house that he records it in? And it's just in the bedroom, right
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yeah. Yeah. I mean I'll tell you, um if I'm maybe getting
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ahead of things. But when I finished the book, I sent it to
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John Landau first, and you know, John got back and it was you
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know, we had a call that was really rich, deep memorable for me,
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and you know, at the end he said, so you know,
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I want to send it on to Bruce, but I'm not going to tell
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him anything. I'm not going to tell him how I feel. Let's get
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a cold read off of Bruce and he sends it. And then a couple
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of days later, I got an email from Bruce, and you know,
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at the end of it, he said, how can I help you?
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And I said, I wrote back, I can't find this house. You
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know I'm not I'm not a great there there. Bruce fans too are better
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at this kind of research than I am. But it was you can find
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a lot of Bruce's homes, couldn't find this one. And a few days
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later Bruce, I get an undisclosed number on my phone and it's Bruce calling
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from the bedroom where he recorded in Nebraska. And you know, he says,
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Hey, Lauren, it's I'm in the room where forty years ago I
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made Nebraska and I haven't been here since. And the guy who rented it
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to me still rents it, and he said, I can bring you out.
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And so Bruce gave me this last stop in my pilgrimage, and I'll
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tell you to be working on a book over a period of years, and
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then walk with the artist into the bedroom where the record was made is as
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you know, moving and experience as I've had. And I think, just
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like I said that tet to buy one on eBay, just to have the
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material history in front of me. Bruce did a few things along the way,
17:08
like bringing me to that room. It really helped me as a writer.
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Like when you're standing in the room and there's some history breathing in those
17:19
walls and it relates to a project you've been working on for a couple of
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years, it just matters. It does something. And I think he knows
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that, you know he and so he made as much physical contact possible for
17:36
me, you know, with the the guitar that he used, with the
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portrait of his aunt who died when she was six. Like he put these
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things in front of me, and it's hard to say exactly what that means
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to a writing project, but I know it means something, you know.
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So when he knew it, he knew Yeah, Yeah, he's he's like
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bald a producer at that point, he's getting the most out of you.
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Yeah, that's that's actually, that's a good way of putting it, because
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then you know, when we got into the room, that. You know,
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there were a few minutes of like I probably he probably saw my feet
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slightly off the ground. And after a few minutes of quiet, he just
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handed me his cell phone and said, take my picture, and that pictures
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in the book. Um, and then he just started going, Okay,
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my bed was here, it was turned this way, and then I had
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a wooden table over there, and he just created a picture. You know.
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The room was a lot the same, but he wanted to give me
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exactly how it was set up. And just like a writer can't ask for
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more, the shag rug was still there, wasn't it. Yeah. I
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wanted people to turn their backs so I could cut a piece of that orange
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shag give it to my sons. Yes, oh man, is it a
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small house. Well, it's different than it was because they did some They
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put a second story edition and they kind of blew out the kitchens. So
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the house you see now from the front doesn't look the same. But the
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room where he made Nebraska, it's not just those orange shag rugs. It's
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like mostly intact. So it's this corner as you're looking at the house,
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it's the rear left corner looking out on the reservoir, and it's like it
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was wild. It's colts Neck, right. Yeah, how did it come
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about that he chose that house. It's some of his his road crew were
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living in another place rented by the fellow who owns this. So he's a
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real tur he's you know, a man wears a few different hats. But
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this was rented for Bruce when he got kind of not evicted, but imagine
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they were selling the house he had been renting, so somebody just got him
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a place so that he could, you know, in his words, it
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was an emergency landing. Yeah, the end of the river tour. So
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Mansion on the Hill, that's the first song that came to Bruce, as
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far as he recalls, there was a song with that title recorded by Hank
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Williams from nineteen forty eight, Fred Rose credited as co writer. Rose's theme
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is of a woman leaving the one she truly loves to marry a man with
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money. Far from Bruce's version. His version is absent of judgment. Yeah.
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The Hank Williams version is a little bit like the Eagles lionize same theme,
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and Bruce's is much more you know it when he introduced it, live.
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Sometimes he'd talk about taking drives with his father around Freehold and he was
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like, we were like tourists in our own town, like looking at the
21:07
big homes, you know, driving by them. You know, he was
21:11
young enough that it kind of filled him with wonder. It didn't give him
21:15
a sense of you know, class difference or anything. It was more how
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a child would see it. And his mansion on the hill really is it's
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not about life's better if you have the mansion, or better if you don't.
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You know, as you just said, it's it's it suspends judgment,
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and it's more just about a child's wonder. And you know that that time
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when you're young enough and you know, as I say in the book,
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romance and class haven't yet organized life, and you're kind of open in a
21:52
particular way. And you know that that point of view in that song brought
22:00
Bruce to this young age. That was the same age he was when he
22:06
was living with his grandparents, which was roughly until he was aged six.
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And you know, he said in different ways, Nebraska is about that time
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of his life and that time with his grandparents in that house. But this
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is when things go from mystical to Dark and Troubled. According to Bruce,
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the next song is the title track. It's based on a true story.
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Can you talk about the film bad Lands from nineteen seventy three and the nineteen
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fifty eight Starkweather murder spree, because that is a major influence on Bruce.
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It's kind of incredible to me still, you know. So he sees Terrence
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Malick's bad Lands on TV. You know, he's spending quite a lot of
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time alone. Max Weinberg is quoted in the focus saying, you know,
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for a while there, we didn't know where he lived. So Bruce is
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kind of cut off from his band after being you know, very close on
23:10
tour for over a year. And he's there watching TV TV by himself one
23:17
night and he sees Terrence Mallock's bad Lands and bad Lands is it's Martin Sheen
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and Sissy SpaceX their first big feature jobs. So there are these actors who
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are having they're having a moment, and it's Mallock's first real it's it's a
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Warner ber Brothers project, so it's a significant outing. And the subject is
23:41
these nineteen fifty eight serial murders associated with Charles Starkweather. And his you know,
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accomplice whose role is you know, depends on your interpretation. But Carol
23:56
Ann Fugate and they killed eleven pe Bolts, and Malick makes this film that
24:03
kind of drifts between an account of those killings and then there's fantasy in it
24:10
too, almost like a Swiss family Robinson moment where Stark Weather and if you
24:15
gave build this place in the forest, and you're completely untethered from the historical
24:22
account. But I feel like what you're really seeing is when everyday life just
24:30
erupts with this pure violence and a kind of violence that stands beyond reason.
24:38
You can't explain it. And I think that's something that Springsteam was connecting to
24:47
it. But he just says he saw this film and somehow the story of
24:52
these killings reminded him of his childhood, which is just a really on paper,
25:02
a wild statement, and it's not a one for one correspondence. You
25:07
know, there's something he only he like saw that connection. But you know
25:12
he's so he helps me, you know, in his interviews, he helped
25:17
me to make the connections. But the interesting thing that happens is he watches
25:22
it, he wakes up thinking about it still and goes to the library to
25:29
look for books on the stark Weather killings, and he finds the book Carol,
25:33
written by Nanette Beaver and two other authors. And Nnette Beaver was working
25:40
in the Omaha television and radio station that first reported the serial murders. And
25:48
he reads this book and then he calls that Omaha television station and Nnette Beaver
25:53
is still working there, so, you know, at that time, it's
25:57
what nineteen eighty one, it's been since nineteen fifty eight, and she's still
26:03
there, and he gets her on the phone, and you know, I
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said to Springsteen, like, what were you up to? Like what was
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what were you doing? And he said, well, you know, I
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researched my songs in a number of cases like that. That's not that odd
26:22
for me. But I was onto something else, and I'm you know,
26:26
I'm not entirely sure what I was doing. But he felt like, you
26:30
know, he needed to get this right, and when Nebraska came, he
26:37
saw it as this this kind of entry point into the album as a whole,
26:44
like Mansion on the Hill could have led to a number of different albums,
26:48
but Nebraska, that song led to this album, and that opening line
26:53
about the girl twirling the baton. That's actually from the movie, right,
26:57
That's a scene with Sissy Space Basic that comes from the movie. And it
27:02
was just by chance that Terrence Malick, I don't know where they were,
27:07
but there was a baton and she started twirling it, and he didn't know
27:11
she could twirl a baton, and he just kind of sewed the thing into
27:17
the narrative through line of the movie. So it has nothing to do with
27:22
Carolyn Fugate. It only has to do with bad Lands. But you know,
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Springstein migrated it in and I feel like that's he exposes his source materials
27:33
and really interesting ways. That's one of them. Booked on Rot podcast will
27:38
return after this. Warren Zanes is here to talk about his brand new book,
27:45
Deliver Me from Nowhere, the making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, which is
27:48
out now. One thing I noticed about the book is it's not a track
27:52
by track analysis. I don't I don't do a kind of song by a
27:56
song, you know. I maybe that that's the songwriter part of me that
28:03
I feel like that's a you gotta not go too far into the listener's business,
28:11
and so I don't do a song by songs. So I feel like
28:14
you can read my book and there's still all the mystery you want, the
28:18
left intact with Nebraska. But I think sometimes if his childhood, when he
28:26
was living in his grandparents Hong was kind of the personal source material that he
28:30
was drawing on. You can't find easy one to one correspondences in the stories,
28:37
but I feel it's that part of his child that is the engine it
28:42
fuels these stories. But the characters in those stories don't derive directly from his
28:49
childhood. These are stories he's telling the thing, the thing I felt with
28:55
Nebraska, and I felt this pretty early on when I got it, you
28:59
know, I picked it up in eighty two and I brought it back to
29:02
boarding school. But he's telling really really complex stories with a new level of
29:11
the economy. So like highway patrolment, to me, is still a wonder
29:18
in terms the sophistication of just the narrative strategies. There. You know those
29:26
two brothers, you know, both of them dancing with the same woman,
29:30
and then the you know, the brother who's a policeman letting the other brother
29:36
go, though as a policeman representing the law, he should be bringing his
29:40
brother in but as a brother he lets him go. That's such a complex
29:45
move because he's both because he loves that brother, he's letting him go free
29:51
at the same time he's getting his brother out of his life. It's it's
29:56
not some neat you know, story of love between brothers. It's like,
30:00
you can't be in my life anymore. And I feel like man to get
30:04
all that done in a three or whatever minute song is a writer working at
30:12
the height of his powers. One track that I always find interesting lyrically is
30:18
reason to Believe. Is Bruce making a statement or is he asking how do
30:22
you find a reason to believe when all this stuff goes wrong in life?
30:26
Or is it that he himself is saying you got to find a reason to
30:30
believe? Like he's encouraging the listener. I mean, you said to me,
30:33
I don't see how anybody finds anything hopeful in that song, he said,
30:38
I guess. I guess it's just the density of that title takes people
30:44
down that road. But I see no reason for it. But he's seen
30:48
this effect to take place in his career at many times where people they see
30:55
the title, you know, whether it's you know, born in the USA,
30:59
or Hungry Heart, Michael. They see the titles, they feel the
31:03
song, and they misinterpret it. Look at Hungry Heart, like hungry Heart,
31:10
it's like a guy's leaving his family forever. There's a quote in the
31:17
book I want to ask you about. It's from author DC Beard, and
31:21
you use it to start chapter eight. It's from eighteen eighty two, and
31:23
the quote is, there will frequently occur gaps in the long winter evenings that
31:27
are hard to fill up satisfactorily. Hours when tired of reading or study,
31:33
a boy does not know what to do. How did you come up with
31:36
that quote and what led you to using it for the book. That might
31:40
be my favorite epigraph in the whole book, because that's from the American Boys
31:47
Handy Book, and Beard played some role in the origin story of the Boy
31:53
Scouts. But I just I just one of the musicians I was doing a
31:59
book event with. I just bought that book for him because he pointed to
32:02
that same epigraph, and I said, that's from the American Boy's Handy Book.
32:07
And I used to look at that thing when I was growing up.
32:10
I had my brother's old copy and I still do. But it was all
32:15
about different things. That you could do, like you could make your own
32:17
boat, learn how to build a fire without matches, you know, learn
32:22
how to make a trap for rabbits, you know all this stuff. And
32:28
I would pour over this book and I really wanted to build one of these
32:34
boats. And I just go out into our barn, you know, looking
32:37
for like, can I use this? Can I use this? Like I
32:40
never got to a boat, but this book just filled my imagination. And
32:46
that quote it was personal that I wanted and in there, but it also
32:52
felt like just an interesting way to describe Bruce Springsteen there and his rental and
33:00
Colt Snack, not knowing what to do with this free time, and he
33:06
goes into Nebraska. Yeah, I love that. It's such a great quote.
33:10
You can still get the American Boys Handy Book. It's like it's just
33:15
these old reproductions. Mine was a reproduction. Obviously I'm not I'm all,
33:20
but I'm not over a hundred. Yes. Well, this book also answers
33:25
the question I always wondered if Bruce wanted to use the original Born in the
33:30
USA for Nebraska, and he says he did, he wished, he decided
33:35
to. There was also a moment when Bruce considered making it a double album,
33:39
one side of songs that sounded like what Born in the USA would sound
33:44
like, and then the other side tracks that make up Nebraska. How come
33:47
that didn't happen? I mean, I speculate, and you know, before
33:53
this book went to publication, you know, as I said, already Bruce
33:59
read it, so he had a chance to say, I know, actually,
34:02
no, that's not right. But I did my own speculation. And
34:06
when you've just done a double album, you don't want to do one again.
34:12
Double albums are often a solution to a problem, not an idea in
34:17
and of themselves, so there's more labor, there's more of a challenge to
34:25
create cohesion. I think that's why we celebrate double albums like Exile on Main
34:31
Street, which, man, it really works, but I think it's hard
34:37
to make it work. Having just done it with the River, that was
34:42
not what he wanted to go through again. Another problem Bruce didn't see coming
34:45
was getting the mixes from the tape onto vinyl. You were all you know
34:51
once he you know, they try to look Nebraska is the only official release
34:59
of Bruce Ringstein's that was recorded without him realizing it was going to be an
35:05
official release. So there, what you're hearing is an artist who's thinking they're
35:09
making demos, so leaving mistakes in and continuing on, you know, not
35:15
quite comfortable with the lyrics. You know, they get jammed in and places,
35:21
not worrying as much about perfect pitch, tempo, little overmodulation at times.
35:28
Yeah, it's like it's it's flawed, beautifully flawed. We need more
35:34
flaws, if you ask me, and this this is a testament to that.
35:38
But they finally get to this point they try to rerecord it, Bruce
35:44
solo, Bruce with the band, and he feels it's not working. So
35:49
that day comes when he makes that decision, let's put put the cassette out,
35:54
Let's put this what's on this cassette, let's put this out as official
36:00
release. And the thought is okay, And it's a whole other set of
36:07
problems because of tape speeds, because the signal wasn't enough for them to be
36:15
able to master with they were getting feedback, I mean distortion in the masters,
36:22
and it took four mastering facilities to finally get something that could become a
36:29
vinyl record. So it was this odyssey where these you know, this music
36:36
that had become attached to just struggled to find its way into the world.
36:43
After Nebraska was released, Bruce went on a road trip that he told you
36:47
it wasn't epiphany of its own, which he never really came back from.
36:51
What was it about that trip that affected Bruce so much? This was really
36:54
the doorway that was inadvertently cut in the wall for me to walk through to
37:04
write this book, because it's in his memoir. You know, I was
37:07
reading the memoir and Nebraska goes by really pretty quickly, and then there's right
37:14
after, meaning in the memoir, it goes by it pretty quickly. And
37:17
then there's this road trip west, which is like the centerpiece of his memoir,
37:23
and he talks about having a kind of mental breakdown and needing to get
37:30
real therapeutic help. And it happens on this trip west after Nebraska. And
37:38
by the time, you know, he's driving west to go to the first
37:43
home that he ever purchased for himself, and it's in Los Angeles, you
37:47
know, overlooking Hollywood. You know, before he gets there, he has
37:52
this experience that you know, he describes beautifully and tragically in his memoir,
38:00
and I just felt like, wow, I see a connection between what he
38:07
went into at moment in his childhood, at time in his childhood that he
38:14
went into, what it shook up inside of him. And then this breakdown
38:21
and this gap between Nebraska and born in the USA, where Bruce is kind
38:29
of somewhere else. I just felt like something happened that helps us to understand
38:38
Nebraska. And that was you know, that was his memoir that gave me,
38:46
really it gave me license to go deeper. And then the interviews with
38:52
Bruce were without them, no book. He's the spine of this book in
39:00
every way. He really felt like he was on the outside looking in.
39:05
Yeah, he's feeling radical detachment, just radical detachment and disconnection from people who
39:14
are living these simple lives, you know, raising families, having jobs,
39:20
and he's recognizing that he can only observe that. And I think he says
39:24
that I was an observer, and you know, it's there's a crisis there,
39:31
like this is a guy who comes from a family and wants to have
39:37
one and he's going to have to. You know, it's very hard to
39:42
I've never experienced it, but I've been around people who, you know,
39:46
because of their success as songwriters, recording artists and performers. Their lives have
39:55
changed dramatically, you know, and often it's from you know, rock and
40:00
roll. A lot of people from lower on the class ladder who become famous
40:06
for their contributions to this story, and their lives start to look nothing like
40:13
what they come from. And I think that dislocation is really hard to do,
40:21
you know. I say that as as an observer, and I think
40:24
he was coming up against some of that, and I think he was also
40:29
coming up against some kind of unprocessed childhood trauma and it and it slammed into
40:37
him. But I feel like making peace with the idea of success comes after
40:45
Nebraska, after the road trip, and that's where the Elvis section in the
40:50
book to Me is really important. Ronnie Van Den said, it's it's not
40:55
it's not me that changed, it's the people around me that changed. Yeah,
41:00
they thought I changed, you changed, you know. Yeah, it
41:04
becomes very hard to you'll, I mean, look, you'll see people.
41:08
I remember talking to Tom Petty about like a party after a show that the
41:15
Heartbreakers had, and he felt like the other guys in the band didn't want
41:22
him to be at this party like they and you're talking about how much it
41:24
hurt, and He's like, if I went to this party that everybody was
41:30
gone to, there would only be one Tom Petty and they would just be
41:34
heartbreakers second I came into the room. So being Tom Petty and the heartbreakers
41:40
kind of put it a wedge between this guy and his childhood friends. But
41:47
it was the only way it was going to go down. So people have
41:51
lots of experiences like that, if they experienced that type of success. It's
41:57
hard to know if what's some he's telling you is how they really feel,
42:02
or are they telling you because they feel You want to hear that, and
42:07
you navigate that stuff constantly, you know, like Dylan has been a little
42:15
you know, you hear it in the song. It's a little more impatient
42:17
with that, you know, like why can't you just beat yourself around me?
42:22
But I like the Ronnie Van saying quote. There's an amazing moment in
42:25
the book when you brought up Homer's Odyssey to Bruce, and this really got
42:30
his attention. I well, I love the Odyssey. I think Homer's Odyssey
42:37
is maybe still the best self help book available because oh Denyseus goes through every
42:46
kind of trial and what he's doing. It's like it's the end of the
42:51
Trojan war and he's trying to get home, and he goes through various temptations
42:59
in a various like physical challenges, you know, all of the you know,
43:05
the vices, gluttony, all the things that could keep a man from
43:08
being the man he wants to be. Odysseus faces them all and it takes
43:14
him a long time to get back calm. Not to be labor this,
43:19
but the story really starts when Odysseus uses his cunning to get out of the
43:28
cave of the cyclops Polyphemus, and he tells Polyphemus is like keeping him captive
43:36
with his men in his cave and wants to kill him and eat him and
43:39
Odysseus and Polyphemus asks him who he is. Odysseus says, I am nobody.
43:46
And then they get the cyclops drunk and they gage out his eye and
43:52
escape, And when the other cyclops are going, who did this to you,
43:58
Polyphemus says nobody, He did it. Nobody did it? You know?
44:01
That was Odysseus is cunning. So everybody's like, what the hell's he
44:06
talking about? Nobody he did it. But then Odysseus can't help himself.
44:13
As he's escaped Polyphemus and he's getting back onto his boats, he declares,
44:17
who did it? He goes, it is I, the great Odysseus,
44:23
So kind of like ego Hubris makes him state his place as the hero with
44:31
that kind of cunning. Now Polyphemus, who he really just fucked up pretty
44:38
good, is the son of Poseidon. And Poseidon here's Odysseus say this and
44:45
goes, wow, you just gauged out the eye of my son, and
44:50
you will pay now. And so it's Poseidon, because what Odysseus did to
44:55
his son, who keeps Odysseus from getting home. So when Odysseus goes through
45:01
all these trials and when he finally gets home his home, he's been gone
45:07
solonge. They are all these suitors who want to take his home and take
45:12
his wife Penelope, and so his son is there, but the house is
45:16
filled with these suitors. If Odyssey has walked in by himself, those guys
45:21
would just kill Odysseus off. So he decides to come in as a beggar,
45:29
so he gets another chance to be nobody he's disguised as a beggar.
45:36
The suitors just they're like throwing scraps to him, and he doesn't let his
45:42
ego overcome him. He returns to being a hero by being capable of being
45:49
nobody, and that you know, it's as a beggar that he comes back
45:55
to his family and to his home and kills off these suitors. But had
46:01
he done the same thing where he says it is I the Great Odysseus,
46:06
he would have been killed. So he's learned the lesson of being anonymous.
46:13
Now that story stuck with me. It was in my head. I'm like,
46:20
Nebraska is Springsteen being anonymous. He's being nobody and born in the USA
46:30
is the return of the hero to his home. But to be that hero,
46:37
I'm born in the USA, he had to first be able to be
46:42
just a beggar. No, you know you don't see him on the record
46:46
cover, you don't hear him in perfect fidelity. You know you don't hear
46:52
all the trappings of the heroic rock star. I was like this, this
47:00
maps onto Springsteen story right then, So I knew it was like a bold
47:07
move, Like when you're doing an interview, you're not supposed to tell stories
47:12
to the person you're interviewing. But I was so convinced that I had something
47:19
that was at least worth a thought that I found the shortest version of it
47:23
that I could do. Your version was just longer. But I gave it
47:28
to Springsteen in that moment when I'm telling him and I look up and he
47:30
says, gone, He's with me, and you know, for me in
47:36
what I do, it's one of the greatest moments in my career as a
47:42
writer, and he said to me, go on. It was such a
47:47
validation that this story did map on. And there's something crucial about moments in
47:58
our lives where we need to be nobody. Like there are times my biggest
48:06
regrets in life, like I still am, like dealing with some heartache that
48:15
has been with me for years. And if I could go back in time,
48:20
it would be to go back, like six years ago, to be
48:25
nobody. And I needed to be nobody. And I don't need to give
48:30
you the details, but I'll just say that's what was That's what I needed
48:36
to do as a man, and I was not the man I wanted to
48:40
be. My ego intruded, and so I came into the the Nebraska project
48:51
with this personal story underneath. It was a kind of heartbreak and I you
48:58
know, these long term projects are funny, like you learn from them and
49:04
if you go into them honestly, you can heal a little bit. But
49:09
I needed to. There's the satisfaction of connecting Homer's Odyssey to this moment in
49:16
Springsteen's career and a story of kind of humility and anonymity. And then there's
49:24
another layer beneath it where it's like I'm learning because I've been learning from Bruce
49:30
Springsteen since i was a preteen, and I'm learning from him again because he's
49:36
confirming something that I saw in Homer's Odyssey. Sometimes a man doesn't need to
49:43
be the big man. Sometimes a man needs to be the quietest person in
49:49
the room at other people work their stuff out, you know. And so
49:58
that if I were to I pick my moment where the book is crackling more
50:07
than any other moment, that's the one for me as a writer. I've
50:13
been really lucky in in my life and getting to work with people who I've
50:20
learned a tremendous amount from, you know, And that's that's you know,
50:24
Tom Petty that's you know, Jerry Wexler. That's I've been helping Garth Brooks
50:32
with a series of books. I've learned a ton from him. Bruce,
50:37
the way he showed up for this project, the level of vulnerability and humility
50:47
and curiosity and generosity, it's like it's wild. You know, so again,
50:55
No Bruce, no book. Deliver Me from No Are the Making of
51:00
Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. It is out now through Crown Publishing, available wherever books
51:06
are sold. Where can people find John Lynwarden? I got a website.
51:09
My older son just redid my website for me. He did it in like
51:16
a night, and my contacts on there, and you know, I'd love
51:21
to hear from people who who've read the book. It's that's one of the
51:24
treats. Lauren Zaynes, this was great, Thank you so much. That's
51:37
it's in the books.