The new biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” follows the Boss — played by Jeremy Allen White (“The Bear”) — as he conceives and records his 1982 album, “Nebraska,” a collection of stark, acoustic songs that has become one of Bruce Springsteen’s most beloved projects.
The film is based on the musician and writer Warren Zanes’s detailed book about “Nebraska,” which is also titled “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” after a lyric that echoes through the album. But what in the film is fact and what was fictionalized? Here is a guide.
Did Springsteen really record “Nebraska” on a cassette tape?
Yes. After finishing a tour, he spent fall 1981 experimenting with a TEAC Tascam 144 Portastudio, an early home-recording machine, which captured four audio tracks on a standard cassette. Working in the bedroom of a rented house in Colts Neck, N.J., Springsteen made raw solo recordings that he intended to flesh out in the studio with his full band. But he grew attached to the performances and to the atmosphere of the tape, and wasn’t satisfied with his attempts at band arrangements. He decided to release a selection of the songs exactly as he had made them on the cassette — a challenge for his producers, since the audio quality of the tape was far below that of a standard studio recording.
Did he actually collapse in tears at a therapist’s office?
According to Springsteen, yes. For years, the star had avoided divulging specifics about the emotional crisis he experienced around the time of “Nebraska.” But in his memoir, “Born to Run” (2016), he detailed a depressive breakdown on a cross-country drive after completing the album, and how Jon Landau, his manager, told him by phone, “You need professional help.” Days later, Springsteen wrote, he entered a therapist’s office in Los Angeles: “I walk in; look into the eyes of a kindly, white-haired, mustached complete stranger; sit down; and burst into tears.” The film follows those details closely.
Was Faye, the girlfriend, a real person?
No. In the film, Faye, a single mom who works in a diner, pushes Springsteen to confront his problems rather than run from them. But she is a fictional creation of Scott Cooper, the film’s director and screenwriter, who in an interview with The New York Times called her “a composite of women that I imagine Bruce had seen over the years during this particular time in his life.” Odessa Young, who plays Faye, said Cooper gave her an extensive character back story, with some details drawn from Springsteen’s memoir. One candidate for being part of that amalgam is an unnamed woman mentioned in the book, whom the singer says he met in Long Branch, N.J., in the early days of the band. She “had a small lovely child and I played Daddy for a little while,” though the relationship didn’t last long; the woman, he wrote, later joined the circus.
Did Springsteen record the final studio version of “Born in the U.S.A.” in the middle of making “Nebraska,” and shelve it?
Yes. He wrote “Born in the U.S.A.” as part of the same batch of songs that became “Nebraska.” In its original form it was acoustic and bluesy, with undisguised bitterness. As with many of the songs from that period, Springsteen also worked on it with his full group. The film captures him and the E Street Band one night in spring 1982 at the Power Station, a Manhattan studio, recording the familiar track, complete with Roy Bittan’s bright synthesizer theme and Max Weinberg’s shotgun snare. As much of a breakthrough as it was, Springsteen decided to hold the song for two years until making it the title track of his megahit next album.
But there’s more: Days earlier, Springsteen had tried a hard-rocking arrangement of the song with just guitar, bass and drums during an aborted session that came to be known as “Electric Nebraska.” That version remained in the vault until its recent release as part of a new “Nebraska” boxed set.
Did he get the title “Born in the U.S.A.” from a film script?
Yes. In 1981, Paul Schrader (“Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull”) sent Springsteen the script for a picture he was working on in hopes that he would contribute music to it. That didn’t happen, but the film’s title — “Born in the U.S.A.” — intrigued Springsteen, and he incorporated it into a song he was writing about a wayward Vietnam vet. When Springsteen sent a working tape of the “Nebraska” songs to Landau, he included a note that mentioned the script and added: “I did not have a chance to read yet but I did whip up this little ditty purloining its title.” (The film was eventually made in 1987 as “Light of Day,” starring Michael J. Fox, and Springsteen wrote the title track, sung by Joan Jett.)
Was the record company really OK with releasing “Nebraska” as is?
For the most part, yes. The film portrays a tense meeting between Landau and Al Teller, the head of Columbia, Springsteen’s label, where Landau plays “Nebraska” for the executive and tells him that Springsteen does not want to go on tour, release any singles or do any interviews to promote the album. “I don’t understand this,” Teller says in the film, and the manager — played by Jeremy Strong, who captures the real Landau’s single-minded intensity — fires back with a speech. “Whether or not you believe in this particular album,” he says, “in this office — my office — we believe in Bruce Springsteen.” Teller (David Krumholtz) agrees to release “Nebraska” as Springsteen wishes.
It’s understandable that Columbia may have had reservations about “Nebraska.” By 1982, Springsteen was one of its biggest stars, and his unconventional new album was a commercial risk. But according to both Landau and Teller, the film is essentially accurate — albeit with some dramatic liberties — about how the label handled the album.
“I was there to protect Bruce’s hell-or-high-water dedication to his creativity, and Al was there to advocate for the interests of the record company,” Landau said in response to questions from The Times. “Ultimately, Al had the wisdom to understand that with this artist and this manager, his arguments for a more commercial record were futile.”
In a phone interview, Teller said he understood and accepted that “Nebraska” represented Springsteen’s artistic statement at that moment, and that he was mostly concerned with crafting an appropriate marketing plan. “This was not the artist against the big bad record company, or anything like that,” Teller said. But he disputed one point: Landau never made any speech like the one in the movie.
One complication to this neat narrative, however, is comments made years later by Teller’s boss, Walter Yetnikoff, the irascible former chief executive of CBS Records. In Fred Goodman’s book “The Mansion on the Hill,” Yetnikoff, who died in 2021, is quoted dismissing “Nebraska” as an album “you made in your garage, thank you. We’ll do the best we can.”
Is that really Jimmy Iovine on the phone?
Yes. In a cameo that will amuse any student of the music business, Iovine, the producer, label boss and former Apple executive, is heard — but not seen — on the other end of a phone conversation with Landau, saying of the “Nebraska” project, “This is nuts, Jon,” in his signature high-pitched tenor. Eagle-eyed rock fans will also recognize Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs playing the part of Weinberg, the E Street Band’s stalwart drummer.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
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