Born in the U.S.A.\u2019s <\/em>seething \u201cDownbound Train\u201d speak to Springsteen\u2019s admiration of The Clash.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tBut a pair of never-issued songs on the outtakes set are the set\u2019s standouts. \u201cChild Bride\u201d is a disturbing draft of what would transform into Born in the U.S.A.<\/em>\u2019s \u201cWorking on the Highway,\u201d which turned the narrative\u2019s moral thicket, presumably involving an underage girl, into a sort of landlocked sea shanty that, like the album\u2019s title track, drowns out its own narrative. (An early version of \u201cHighway\u201d here obfuscates the narrator\u2019s transgression.) As America attempts to reclaim its pride by whitewashing its unflattering histories, Springsteen\u2019s struggle to balance light and dark on these pointedly American recordings is tremendously poignant. \u201cGun in Every Home\u201d is another balancing act, a striking outtake that ended up shelved. \u201cI moved to the suburbs yeah, just me and my family\/ On the block I live, you got everything that a man would need to want\/ Two cars in each garage and a gun in every home,\u201d Springsteen sings flatly. (\u201cWhen I wrote it, I thought it was a little hysterical,\u201d he admits in the liner notes. \u201cNow of course it seems totally natural.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n
\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tThe third and fourth discs \u2014 audio and video, respectively \u2014 document a (mostly) solo acoustic full-album performance of Nebraska<\/em>, recorded this past summer sans audience at the Count Basie Theatre, Red Bank, NJ. The film, by Thom Zimny, is about what you\u2019d expect: b&w, moody lighting, the artist striding in slo-mo onto the stage of the empty theater (trigger warning: may spur Covid lockdown flashbacks), then sitting down to play the songs straight through. There\u2019s no attempt to hide the staging, although the accompanying musicians are mostly unseen. You can catch a fleeting glimpse of Larry Campbell in the wings offstage during \u201cAtlantic City,\u201d playing mandolin in the shadows; on \u201cUsed Cars,\u201d Charlie Giordano adds glockenspiel fireflies in silhouette.<\/p>\n\n\tIn the liner notes, Springsteen says he came to this latter-day performance fairly cold, and was struck anew by the songs, by how \u201ctheir weight impressed upon me.\u201d It\u2019s a powerful performance, though 40-plus years on, as a dude in his 70s, he delivers them as a storyteller outside the story \u2014 a bit like Springsteen performing Springsteen on Broadway. On the original Nebraska <\/em>LP, remastered for the set\u2019s final disc, the performances felt more like method acting by a man possessed, physically inhabited by the stories he told.<\/p>\n\n\n
\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tSpringsteen has said Nebraska <\/em>is his greatest work, and it\u2019s interesting that, in surveying the original LP and the other vault recordings included here, he seems amazed at what his young self was channeling back then. He uses the word \u201cshocked\u201d more than once in the liner notes. He says \u201cI don\u2019t know where I was coming from for those arrangements,\u201d and \u201cI don\u2019t know what was influencing me at the time.\u201d He concludes: \u201cMost of this stuff is pretty mysterious to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tIndeed, mystery is at the core of Nebraska<\/em>\u2019s magic \u2014 the mystery of what drives human beings toward darkness and self-destruction, the mystery of a rich country disrespecting its people, the mystery of an artist reinventing himself with a coal-hot songwriting hand, whispering in his own ear to make the mystery manifest. It did, and when you hear the final Nebraska<\/em>, the set\u2019s early takes and re-recordings, even the good ones here, are blown away like leaves in a punishing autumn wind. The falsetto howls at the end of \u201cAtlantic City\u201d become ghostly again, not vocal effects deployed variously across the sessions. Many of Nebraska<\/em>\u2019s songs would become American classics, and it says a lot that Levon Helm\u2019s \u201cAtlantic City\u201d is one of his greatest performances, ditto Emmylou Harris\u2019 version of \u201cMy Father\u2019s House.\u201d It says a lot, too, that their versions hewed close to those on the finished Nebraska<\/em> album. Because Bruce got them dead right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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