Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Here are a couple of things you should have on your radar this week. Early voting is underway here in New York and New Jersey. The big race for the city is the mayor. In New Jersey, it's for the next governor. If you're registered to vote, you don't have to wait for Election Day to cast your ballot. You can do it right now. We have two live events this week.

Our Get Lit with All Of It book club meets tomorrow at 6:00 PM. We'll be speaking with SA Cosby, the author of King of Ashes. Special musical guest is Yaya Bey. There might be a ticket or two left, so head to WNYC.org/getlit to grab yours right now. I'll see you tomorrow night. On Thursday, the cast and creative team behind the hit Broadway musical Hadestown join us live in the WNYC Greene Space, that is sold out, but you can follow along on the live stream. Head to wnyc.org/events to learn how. That's in the future. Now, let's get this hour started with Warren Zanes, the author of Deliver Me From Nowhere.

[music]

Alison Stewart: The story goes that Bruce Springsteen recorded the album Nebraska in his New Jersey bedroom, recordings he hadn't planned to release to the world. It was the early '80s, and after the success of Born to Run and The River, the Boss was in a difficult period in his life. Was he going to be famous, was or a truth teller, or could it be both? Today, Nebraska stands out in the Springsteen catalog, its intimacy, its rawness and darkness, but also for what it represents about what makes Bruce a generational songwriter. Let's listen to an example. This is the title track.

[MUSIC - Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska]

I saw her standing on her front lawn

Just a-twirling her baton

Me and her went for a ride, sir

And ten innocent people died

Alison Stewart: A new movie about the making of Nebraska was released in theaters over the weekend, starring Jeremy Allen White. It's based on a book by my next guest, Warren Zanes. Both are titled Deliver Me from Nowhere. Warren, welcome to WNYC.

Warren Zanes: Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: You start your book with your band, my favorites from college, the Del Fuegos,-

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: -and Bruce sitting in on a session.

Warren Zanes: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn about him as a musician during that period?

Warren Zanes: Learning about Bruce Springsteen started with me being the youngest of three and the records coming down to me. It was the second record, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, that really caught my attention. I think the thing in particular was the sense of place. We were living in New Hampshire. I didn't know what a boardwalk was, but somehow I felt like I belonged there.

He established scenes, he established characters in a way that if literature was your love, you could really sink into these songs. I learned first and foremost how much life there could be in a song. Following that, like you say, it was Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town. These things were just breathing for me. Then he released Nebraska, and I was confused.

Alison Stewart: You're confused, yes.

Warren Zanes: Honestly, first reaction was disappointment, because there was this sense of a build happening. The River, his fifth record, was his first number-one record. Had his first top 10 single with Hungry Heart. Then Nebraska was a completely different direction. Even as a young person, I understood he was taking a hard left turn. It didn't make sense in the context. It was only because I already loved Bruce so much that I stuck with it, and the album just got into my system and became my favorite. Of the lessons I learned, there were many, but the Nebraska lesson was you can take that left turn, and eventually, people might go with you.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because you're a musician, you also have a PhD, you've written books, you teach. This brings me to my next question, which is a little bit what you were talking about. What is a teachable moment from Nebraska?

Warren Zanes: There are many. One is, what is this record? It's a record that Bruce Springsteen made not knowing he was making a record. There he is in his bedroom, thinking he's making demos that maybe the band will hear, they're just references, so that he can go re-record the material. When you hear Nebraska, you're hearing something he didn't think you would be hearing. It is the only record where you are alone in the room with Bruce Springsteen. There's a power to that. Put an artist in a commercial recording studio, there's a level of self-consciousness.

Alison Stewart: He knows people are going to hear it.

Warren Zanes: Right.

Alison Stewart: Right?

Warren Zanes: You're seeing yourself being seen, you're hearing yourself being heard. Put a person alone in a bedroom thinking that no one will hear this. Things will happen that wouldn't otherwise. I think that's a big part of the mystery and the magic, and what makes this strange record 40 years later still resonate, still have this power that I think even Bruce doesn't totally understand.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we'd like to get you in on this conversation. What does the album Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen mean to you? Was it a big album for you growing up? Give us a call or text us now at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. What do you remember about the first time you heard Nebraska? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. When it was first released, what did the critics say?

Warren Zanes: It's interesting. I often cite a review in The San Francisco Chronicle where there's a line of it's surprising he would play this for anyone at all. It was a five star review. Critics were understanding that they were seeing something that was a total anomaly. When you looked at the charts, artists who were having number one records, top 40 hits, there was nothing that sounded like that.

The critics were both acknowledging it and admiring it. Rolling Stone magazine described it as a shock. This was right across the board. Then there was the musician community, where there was a similar lack of comprehension that I experienced, yet this growing admiration for witnessing an artist who just had a number one work in defiance of the marketplace logics.

Alison Stewart: What did fans think? It was '82.

Warren Zanes: Yes, '82. We're right on the cusp of the digital. Things are getting clean, things are getting clear and perfect, and here's this confusing record. For those who hung in there-- Not all of them did. A lot of people, they came back later. There was this slow burn.

Alison Stewart: I was one of those, I have to admit.

Warren Zanes: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: I was 16 at the time. I was like, "I don't know about this--"

Warren Zanes: I'll tell you, I'm almost a bit suspicious of those-

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Warren Zanes: -who said they were early adopters. If you were a believer in Bruce, you put the time in. I just think it was the characters in the songs. These were so much short stories that you could have a relationship with the characters who were people without hope. They were despairing people. They were out on the edge. There was no sense, for the first time in a Bruce Springsteen record, that redemption was possible. We all go through those passages in our life. I think what happened is people started identifying with the hopelessness, which is an act of hope, but the hope is not in the songs.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Warren Zanes. He's the author of the book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, which was the inspiration for a new biopic that was released over the weekend. Let's listen to some songs. You picked out a couple for us. State Trooper, what's this about to you?

Warren Zanes: Can I first say I sent Bruce a clip of the 2026 Christian Dior fashion show, the summer collection? I think it's in Paris. It was a massive hall. Walls painted white, light pine stain on the floor. Very bright. Two still life paintings on the walls by Chardin, one from the Louvre, one from another major collection. The show starts with the male collection and State Trooper comes on.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Warren Zanes: They did a re-edit on it so that Bruce's screams are at the top. You hear Bruce Springsteen doing these screams, this rough recording, and these male models walking toward you. I sent it to Bruce. My reaction to it was Nebraska seems like such a particular narrow thing, yet its applicability goes as wide as that. It was the perfect choice for a fashion show. How did that happen?

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Let's listen.

[MUSIC - Bruce Springsteen: State Trooper]

New Jersey turnpike

Ridin' on a wet night

'Neath the refinery's glow

Out where the great black rivers flow

License, registration

I ain't got none

But I got a clear conscience

'Bout the things that I done

Mister State Trooper

Please don't stop me

Please don't stop me

Please don't stop me

Maybe you got a kid

Maybe you got a pretty wife

The only thing that I got's

Been botherin' me my whole life

Mister State Trooper

Please don't stop me

Please don't stop me

Please don't stop me

Alison Stewart: Let's take Julia from Cape Cod Who's calling in. Hi, Julia, thanks for calling All Of It. You're on the air.

Julia: Hi. I had a similar experience growing up to Warren Zanes. I'm the youngest sister of Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run, Greetings from Asbury Park. I graduated from high school in '81. When Nebraska came out, it was a pretty earth-shattering moment. To this day, it is my favorite songs. I love Atlantic City. I love the way he talks about the chicken man and all of that. To me, Nebraska is what allowed me to stay a Bruce Springsteen fan versus spinning off into other places.

It really centered me at Bruce Springsteen for my entire life, so much so that when he came to New Jersey a couple years ago, I brought my family, and my youngest kid knows Thunder Road as a lullaby. He was sitting next to me at the age of 17 because I used to sing it to him as a lullaby. He hugged me as he listened to Bruce Springsteen sing it live because it meant so much to him to have been able to be there. Nebraska was what made me a Bruce Springsteen fan for life.

Alison Stewart: Julia, thank you so much for calling. We got this text that says, "His genius is the ability to touch our souls through his writing. Then these songs, thankfully, never leave us."

Warren Zanes: Can I-

Alison Stewart: Of course.

Warren Zanes: -talk about State Trooper? Just hearing it now, I still have this experience where I'm hearing it differently each time, which I think is an earmark of the best recordings. Those spaces where all you're hearing is that throbbing acoustic guitar, there are no flourishes. This is the most basic carpentry. Within it, there's this voice. Is he paranoid? Is he so far out on the margins of society that he's not coming back? This song is a little different in narrative structure than some of the other material. It's really a character study.

Alison Stewart: Exactly.

Warren Zanes: The raging interiority, the only thing that I got been bothering me my whole life, the way he's just leaving that throbbing guitar, and then gives us a space to take that in. It's amazing to me that as a songwriter, he understood what we needed as listeners to be with this very difficult character, because popular music is mostly love, loss, longing, romance. Here he is going out to the margins where those characters live, but he's giving us the space we need to take them in.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Warren Zanes. He's the author of the book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. Listeners, call in and tell us what Nebraska means to you. What do you remember about the first time you heard the album? Our number is 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. What do we know about the equipment that Bruce used to record it?

Warren Zanes: We know that at the time it came out-- The TEAC 144 is a four-track recorder that uses cassette tape. There's no way it's going to sound that good. The Beatles did four-track recording, but not on cassette tapes. They were linking two, four tracks that, I think, had one-inch tape. Completely different. It's only the track number that's the same. There he was recording on a cassette. It's a consumer model. It was around $1,000, so he likes to say, "By far the cheapest record I ever made." It was just meant to take the music maker into a slightly more complicated situation where they could do some overdubs, but it really wasn't meant for a whole lot beyond that. It was a great tool.

I think it's significant in that it marked a turn that combined that home technology. With the turn toward the digital, more and more people started taking it home. On some level, Bruce was an emblem of that. It was primitive gear. He mixed it all through an Echoplex, which is a short echo that's similar to Elvis Presley's early Sun recordings. I think he fell in love with that because it situated it in another time altogether. There's this effect of distance, this effect of, where is this coming from? Where does it belong? That's the same way we saw the characters in the songs. Where did they come from? Where do they belong? Is this the '50s? Is this the '80s? Who are they?

Alison Stewart: Where was the E Street Band during this time?

Warren Zanes: Bruce, in talking to him, he said, "It was really Nebraska that brought me to a crossroads, where whatever's coming next could be an East Street Band project, or it could be a solo project." This defined that trajectory that was coming. On some level, he acknowledges that that's what kept the E Street Band together, that he could come in and out. Here they are at the top of their game in 2025. Talking to Max Weinberg, his drummer, Max said, "We came off The River tour. I didn't know where he lived."

Alison Stewart: That's very interesting, because we talked to Steven Van Zandt last week, and we asked about Nebraska and about the film. Here's a little bit of a condensed version of what he had to say.

Steven Van Zandt: In his mind, at the time, it was demos for the Born in the USA album. The minute I heard it, I was like, "Man, these ain't no demos. I'm sorry. This is something extraordinary." He was really quite surprised. It took them months to realize it was an album, but-

[laughter]

Steven Van Zandt: -I knew it right away. The movie is just terrific. It's an absolutely wonderful, a masterful work of art. I mean that sincerely. If you're not crying at the end of this movie, you're a zombie. I'm sorry.

[laughter]

Steven Van Zandt: I don't think you have to even be a Bruce Springsteen fan or know anything about his work.

Alison Stewart: What do you think about that?

Warren Zanes: I love hearing Stephen talk about the effect of this film, because like Nebraska took some risks-- It could have gone wrong. It could have really been the left turn that didn't help Bruce Springsteen. The movie takes some risks. We do not live in an age of the quiet narrative that builds in the way this film does. Hearing Steven reflect on that and on the emotion that it carries-- For me, yes, I wrote the book. That's very meaningful, but the summit for me was watching this movie with my sons and being in the emotion.

Both my boys know that I didn't know my father. I met him a handful of times. He lived 30 minutes away, and I didn't see him for a 20 year period. They met him once when I forged the whole thing. We gave him our address. We never heard from him. Yet there I am in the theater with my sons watching a story that's many things, but among them, a father, son story.

It's not a happily ever after, but it's just enough of an increase in understanding between that father and son, that you know something more becomes possible in their relationship. There I am seeing that story with my sons, and there's just some healing that becomes possible, I believe, in the emotions. It's got to be a quiet movie. It's got to be the take the risk of having that slow build in order to have that end.

Alison Stewart: When I saw the movie, I almost forgot that it was about Bruce Springsteen. I saw that it was like an artist in pain trying to figure his way out of the pain.

Warren Zanes: Yes. It's funny, biopics tends to involve big hits in some fashion. Seeing Bob Dylan, I love that movie. Like Rolling Stones in there. The Times, they are changing. Not to compare the two, but choosing Nebraska, it's a very Bruce move to sign off on this one because it's not about a hit. It's about someone coming apart and knowing enough to ask for help in the rebuilding process so that he could become that guy capable of having the hits. That means living through it. Elvis is so often the model for these guys of that generation. Elvis was a cautionary tale. Bruce did that rebuilding post-Nebraska, and then he came up. It's very much the phoenix rising from the ashes, but this story is the ashes story.

Alison Stewart: We'll have more with my guest, Warren Zanes, and take more of your calls. This is All Of It.