When I started this blog, I knew there would be certain songs that would be tough to write about. “Nebraska” is one of them.
Not because it’s cryptic or inaccessible or a bad song–it’s none of those things–but because so much as already been written about it. In any book (and there are many) on Bruce and his work, you’re guaranteed to find a chapter on at least the Nebraska album if not its title track.
So I won’t delve into the song’s historical and theatrical inspiration–you can easily find that if you want to, by authors more knowledgeable and stylistic.
But I will focus on its theme of isolation and Bruce’s innate ability to walk in another’s shoes, because both will increasingly become hallmarks of his work in subsequent years.
It’s impossible to listen to the Nebraska album without feeling haunted by it. The songs all have a raw, unrehearsed sound (in “Atlantic City,” Bruce even trips over his own vocals but leaves it in), and the songs marinate in the silence of his home studio. Listen to “Nebraska” with your eyes closed, and you’ll feel like you’re in the room with him. You’ll hear his intake of breath, and his harmonica is almost three-dimensional.
Bruce’s early attempts at recording the song are even more intimate. You can hear him feeling his way through the vocals and the music, trying to figure out where to add emphasis or adornment.
Much has been made–deservedly so–of Bruce’s ability to embody a character as amoral as Starkweather without either glorifying or condemning him. It’s one of the earliest and best examples of Bruce’s ability (that would only grow over time) to connect and empathize with people from all walks of life, and to bring them to life in song. Yet there’s also an overwhelming sense of isolation, estrangement, and nostalgia (itself a form of disconnection) not just in the title track, but in almost every song on the album.
Bruce’s attraction to disconnected characters is a theme of his work in the 1980s, and I suspect most fans chalked it up (I certainly did) as a reaction to his exhausting, worldwide River Tour that he’d just completed. Today, however, informed by Bruce’s recent revelation of his lifelong battle with depression, it’s impossible to listen to “Nebraska” without wondering if he was in the throes of a depressive episode. How alone must he have felt during those months of solitude, as he wrote and recorded some of his most indelible and exalted work.
Now, when I listen to “Nebraska,” I simultaneously hear the rationalization and societal isolation of a sociopathic killer as well as the emotional isolation of one of my heroes, and the result is a chaotic and powerful surge of feeling that I cannot easily untangle.
Bruce has played “Nebraska” often during his acoustic shows, but almost never (since 1985, at least) during a full-band show. Even in an acoustic show, it’s a tough song to perform–it requires Bruce to momentarily break the connection with his audience in order for the song to work, and that’s not easy to do. I saw Bruce try it once, in Oakland in 2005, and I was too aware of my fellow fans for “Nebraska” to bring its true power to bear.
I listen to “Nebraska” often, but only when I’m in a place of quiet and solitude.
I listen intently every time, noticing a different catch in his voice, feeling a different cry in his harp.
And I never, ever sing along.
Nebraska
Recorded: December 1981-January 1982
Released: Nebraska (1982), The Essential Bruce Springsteen (2003)
First performed: July 1, 1984 (St. Paul, MN)
Last performed: October 27, 2020 (Colts Neck, NJ)
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