Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition’ review: The mystery deepens

Bruce Springsteen will release “Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition” on Oct. 24.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I kind of ignored Nebraska when it came out, in 1982. I had discovered Bruce Springsteen in 1975, and listened to Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River — a lot — and loved them. I was familiar with the Nebraska single “Atlantic City” from the radio and MTV. But for some reason, I thought of the album as a musical experiment — not a major Springsteen statement — that wasn’t really essential listening.

I never even owned a vinyl copy. Years later — some time in the ’90s, I think — I picked up a CD in a used record store, and finally listened to it, in its entirety. And by now, of course, I, like most Springsteen fans, have come to view it as one of his greatest accomplishments.

In 2025, especially, Nebraska is un-ignorable. As I’m sure you’ve heard, “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” a biopic about Springsteen during the time of Nebraska — based on Warren Zanes’ excellent 2023 book “Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska” — will be released on Oct. 24. And on that same day, a boxed set, Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition, comes out. (The original release date was Oct. 17, but it was pushed back a week, due to production delays.)

One of the boxed set’s five discs (note: I will use the word disc in this review, even though the boxed set will be available in vinyl + Blu-ray form, too) is devoted to a remasterered version of the original lo-fi album. Two discs (one CD, one Blu-ray) document an audience-free live performance of the album’s songs by Springsteen at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, earlier this year. One is outtakes, and one is the mythical “Electric Nebraska.”

That’s right, mythical. For decades, the story of the genesis of Nebraska has been well known: Springsteen recorded demos of the songs, then E Street Band versions, but ultimately felt that the demos were more magical, and released them as is. But would we ever get to hear what the E Street Band did with them?

Now we can.

DAVID MICHAEL KENNEDY

Bruce Springsteen during the “Nebraska” era.

The biggest highlight, though, of the “Electric Nebraska” disc — eight performances from sessions in April and May 1982 at the Power Station recording studio in New York — is a song that didn’t come out until the 1984 Born in the USA album: “Downbound Train.” Never before or after have Springsteen and the E Street Band (a stripped-down version of it including only Roy Bittan on piano, Garry Tallent on bass, Stevie Van Zandt on acoustic guitar and Max Weinberg on drums) played with such abandon, in the studio. The tempo is significantly faster than on the Born in the USA version, Springsteen practically yells the lyrics and Bittan bangs the keys — all appropriate for a song in which Springsteen sings about his pounding head, and his fear that his chest will explode. It’s astonishing.

“Johnny 99” (same lineup as “Downbound Train,” though recorded a week earlier) is in a similarly feverish vein, and pretty great, too. And Springsteen reduces the band even further, playing with just Tallent and Weinberg on “Open All Night,” “Reason to Believe” and the Born in the USA title track.

Danny Federici is on hand, though, to add crucial organ and synthesizer to a majestic, almost lush “Mansion on Hill,” and synthesizer to the Nebraska title track. And Van Zandt’s soulful backing vocals are prominently featured on “Atlantic City”; as Erik Flannigan points out in the boxed set’s liner notes, the song’s “potent electric arrangement … largely mirrors the performances of ‘Atlantic City’ done on the Born in the U.S.A. tour and ever since.”

The only other member of the E Street Band circa 1982, Clarence Clemons, is, alas, nowhere to be found on this boxed set.

After listening to the “Electric Nebraska” tracks, I have come to the conclusion that it wasn’t the E Street Band’s performances that kept Springsteen from releasing Nebraska as a band album. They are great, as always. But Springsteen’s vocals on these tracks lack that simple but emotionally direct, almost hypnotizing Nebraska quality. He had to be alone, I guess, to get that.

The nine-track outtakes CD includes songs recorded solo, at home or at the Power Station. One track, “The Big Payback,” has been previously released, as the B-side to the European “Open All Night” single in 1982, and on the bonus disc of the 2003 Essential Bruce Springsteen anthology. Another is Springsteen’s haunting demo for “Born in the USA.,” complete with spine-tingling wails. (There are no previously unreleased Nebraska demos in this boxed set because, remember, the demos became the album.)

DAVID MICHAEL KENNEDY

Bruce Springsteen during the “Nebraska” era.

Four songs on the outtakes CD have not been previously released by Springsteen in any form:

• “Child Bride” is a sad, plainspoken story song, and basically a cousin — lyrically though not musically — to the upbeat Born in the USA track, “Working on the Highway.” (Also, one of its lines, about there being a meanness in the world, got recycled in “Nebraska”). It makes the crux of the story clearer than “Working on the Highway” does: the narrator ran away with an underrage girl (“they said she was too young, she was no younger than I’d been,” Springsteen sings), was tracked down by her family, and now must suffer the consequences.

• “Losin’ Kind” is in a similarly mournful vein, with a bit of Tex-Mex flavor. But it never really ignites, musically; it’s easy to see why Springsteen left this one off Nebraska. It does end with a nice poetic touch, though. After its narrator acts horribly, recklessly, and — again — must suffer the consequences, a highway patrolman tells him he is “lucky to be alive.” He responds: “Well, sir, I’ll think that one over, if you don’t mind/Now luck ain’t much good to you, when it’s the losin’ kind.”

• “On the Prowl” is amazing, evoking the crazed, driven, fast-talking energy of vintage Jerry Lee Lewis (with guitar and harmonica, though, instead of piano).

• There is a lot of violence and crime in this boxed set. The gentle, affecting ballad “Gun in Every Home” looks at it from another perspective. The narrator bemoans “a world gone crazy now … a world that’s gone all wrong.” He lives a peaceful life with his family in the suburbs, but keeps a gun, just in case. “Two cars in each garage, and a gun in every home,” he sings.

Also on the outtakes disc: another fast, desperate-sounding “Downbound Train”; a slow, surprisingly meditative take on “Pink Cadillac”; and a “Working on the Highway” that is pretty much in the vein of what would end up on Born in the USA, with some cool lines that Springsteen, perhaps, was unwise to cut:

Now I don’t even know where this highway is bound
Still I work from early morning till the sun goes down
‘Cause she’s the only thing I’ll ever have in my whole life
Who can turn working on this highway from a prison into paradise

I’m gonna prove to her daddy that my love is pure and true
If I gotta drop a two-lane blacktop from here to Timbuktu

As far as the boxed set’s other discs … The remastered Nebraska sounds fine, though there is a limited amount of tweaking that is even possible when the original recordings were so minimal. The no-frills (i.e., no talking between songs) live-performance recording is similarly okay, but certainly no revelation, despite deft backing work by Larry Campbell (on guitar, mandolin and tambourine) and Charlie Giordano (on synthesizer and celeste). I have to add, though, that I have not seen the boxed set’s video of this performance — I have only heard the audio — and perhaps it makes a bigger impression when experienced visually.

So as a five-disc set, Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition is, perhaps, a bit bloated (a word that certainly was never applied to Nebraska, the first time around). But I can’t imagine any serious Springsteen fan not being delighted by the “Electric Nebraska” and outtakes discs, and relishing the opportunity to explore, in a new way, the unfathomable mysteries of Springsteen’s music in this personally difficult but creatively fruitful time of his life.

It’s all just endlessly fascinating. Even Springsteen has difficulty summing it up. “Most of this stuff,” he tells Flannigan, in the boxed set’s essay, “is pretty mysterious to me.”
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