Tapes That-Never-Were Finally Released

Bruce Springsteen asked author Warren Zanes to take a picture of him in the room where he recorded Nebraska some 40 years ago

The wait is over! One of the great mysteries of Americana music has finally been resolved. For on October 24, long-lost Bruce Springsteen studio tapes were finally delivered on Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition.

They contain much of the electric version - recorded in a New York studio with Springsteen’s E Street Band – of his acclaimed  acoustic album Nebraska, which was released in 1982, sandwiched between two rock classics, The River (1980) and Born In The USA (1984).

What makes Nebraska so significant – apart from being one of the finest character-driven albums ever produced – is how it was conceived. Springsteen virtually made it by himself when, during a period of personal challenges - bordering on a mental breakdown - he confined himself to his bedroom in a rented home in Colts Neck, New Jersey. All he had with him were various musical instruments and a four-track Japanese Tascam 144 cassette recorder.

He recorded a total of 17 tracks at home and then took them to the studio to record full electric backing with his band. A key reason for the home recordings was that he thought this would jump-start the studio work and be more efficient. But nothing came of the E Street sessions - Bruce deciding what was on the original cassette was the sound he wanted. “On listening, I realized I’d succeeded in doing nothing but damaging what I’d created. We got it to sound cleaner, more hi-fi, but not nearly as atmospheric, as authentic,” he wrote in his 2016 biography Born to Run.

 Ten tracks, from the “bedroom” recordings, were included on what became known as “lo-fi” Nebraska. And this is where the mystery began. There were constant rumours over the years – including suggestions from those involved – that tapes from the electric sessions did indeed exist. But Springsteen always denied this.

However, it all changed in mid-2025 following a bizarre exchange between Springsteen and Rolling Stone in the promotional lead-up to the release on June 27 of  Tracks II: The Lost Albums, his vast compendium of unreleased material recorded between 1983 and 2018. When the magazine asked him whether material from those full-band Nebraska sessions still existed, Springsteen replied: “I can tell you right now, it doesn’t exist.”

He added: “We tried to do a few songs with the band for a few minor electric versions of Nebraska, maybe something else, I’m not sure. But that record simply doesn’t exist. There is no electric Nebraska outside of what you hear us performing on stage.”

When pressed about the rumours, and remarks made by several involved in the studio project, Springsteen replied: “I have no recollection of it,  but I can tell you there’s nothing in our vault that would amount to an electric Nebraska.

But a month later, the Superstar had a sudden turnaround. He texted Rolling Stone journalist Andy Greene with this correction: “Just wanted to give you a heads up. I checked our vaults and there IS an electric Nebraska record, though it does not have the full album of songs.” Springsteen did not tell Greene what Nebraska songs were recorded on electric, nor whether the collection would get a formal release, though he didn’t rule a full live version of the album.

Well now we know the answers . For Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition – a documented, multi-disc box set - covers all bases. The first disc has captivating never-heard-before outtakes and previously-undiscovered recordings from the original 1982 recordings. The second has the much-denied electric versions with the E Street  band. Then there is – as hinted to Rolling Stone –the first-ever live performance of the album in its entirety, though with minimalist accompaniment. A 2025 remastered version of the acoustic original album completes the set.

So why this sudden about-turn after Springsteen’s mid-year denials to Rolling Stone. Well - surprise, surprise – it was all timed to coincide with the worldwide release on the same day as the much-publicised biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. It was directed by Scott Cooper and adapted from Warren Zanes’ book by the same name which chronicles – sometimes in forensic detail – Springsteen’s making of Nebraska. And the movie was done in full consultation between Springsteen and the film-makers, with Springsteen visiting the set during production.

Springsteen has never been shy about his fondness for the songs on what is regarded as an “artistically-daring” album. “I’ve written a lot of other narrative records, but there’s just something about that batch of songs on Nebraska that holds some sort of magic,” he said recently. But in his biography, Springsteen devoted no more than three pages to the album.. He wrote: “I wanted black bedtime stories. I tapped into white gospel, early Appalachian and the blues.” And when once asked by The Late show’s Stephen Colbert to name his five favourite Springsteen songs, Bruce quipped: “Nebraska was a good one.”

Despite the hype about the eventual release of the electric outtakes, most fans have long heard various live electric versions by Springsteen and the E Street Band. All ten Nebraska songs have been dropped into their setlists over the years, perhaps the best is a stunning version of the title track, recorded live on August 6, 1984, in East Rutherford, New Jersey. As might be expected, it gives this bleak ballad more vitality than the sparse original. And his acclaimed 2007 album Live in Dublin, with The Sessions Band, features expansive, multi-instrumental versions of “Highway Patrolman,” “Atlantic City” and “Johnny 99.”

So how then do the 1982 electric versions actually compare to the “lo-fi” recordings and did Springsteen make the right decision to stick with the bedroom versions?

It making any such assessment, it should be acknowledged that many of the songs are about troubled people by a writer, himself in somewhat troubled times. Some –“Nebraska,” “Johnny 99,” “Highway  Patrolman” – explore the under-belly of America, while others – “My Father’s House, “Mansion on the Hill,” “Used Cars” – reflect on his own childhood, especially his, at-times strained, relationship with his father. It has been well documented that at this depressive time Springsteen immersed himself in a variety of media - literature (historical and fiction), movies (American classics) and music (Woody Guthrie & Bob Dylan) – to inspire his own musical story-telling

What he achieved from a lyrical perspective is almost impossible to fault. The narratives may be sparse and somewhat minimal – like the original music. But what he achieved, in amazingly-precise stanzas across all 10 songs, must rank among the best lyrical compositions in modern music:

I saw her standing on her front lawn

Just twirlin’ her baton

Me and her went for a ride sir

And ten innocent people died

“Nebraska”

Well the evidence is clear

Gonna’ let the sentence son fit the crime

Prison for ninety-eight and a year

We’ll call it even Johnny 99

“Johnny 99”

Now the neighbors come from near and far

As we pull up in our brand new used car

I wish he’d just hit the gas and let out a cry

And tell ‘em they can kiss our asses goodbye

“Used Cars”

I walked up the steps and stood on the porch

A woman I didn’t recognize came and spoke to me through a chained door

I told her my story and who I’d come for

She said “I’m sorry son but no one by that name lives here anymore”

“My Father’s House”

So how on earth do you match music with such lines, and, indeed, so-defined characters?

Perhaps all you need is a Gibson guitar and maybe overdub with other instruments - harmonica, percussion, mandolin and glockenspiel? And, of course, this is what happened. But, as we now know, not before an honest effort was made at the Power Station in New York City to provide fully-charged electric support  from the E Street Band - Roy Bittan (piano), Danny Federici (organ), Steve Van Zandt (guitar),  Garry Tallent (bass)  and Max Weinberg (drums). And finally we can now hear and compare both versions.

Springsteen reflected on Jimmy Kimmel Live a week before the release: “In the movie I kinda go about how terrible the band was dealing with the Nebraska material. I was sitting next to Steve Van Zandt the other night, watching the film, and I felt a little bad.” He added: “But when I went back and dug the stuff out I realised they actually played it very well.”

Of the 10 songs from the original album, the Expanded Edition has electric outtakes from six – “Nebraska,” “Atlantic City,” “Mansion on the Hill,” “Johnny 99,” “Open All Night,” “Reason to Believe.”  The other two electric versions in this compilation – “Born in the USA” and “Downbound Train – would end up on Springsteen’s next album.

Trying to compare the acoustic with the electric versions gets somewhat blurred because most Springsteen fans have long heard the E Street Band’s renditions live throughout the years. All have become familiar with the intrusive drumming on “Atlantic City” and the upbeat, full instrumental approach to “Johnny 99.” So it may be excusable to take a “so what” attitude when first hearing these original electric outtakes. But constant switching between bedroom and studio renditions does accentuate the wonderfully-appealing sparseness of the Colts Neck recordings. To be fair to these studio versions, the backing to some songs , especially “Nebraska” and “Mansion on the Hill,” is superbly understated.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this music documentation are the outtakes of the songs  that never made it to the original Nebraska. Some are the subtext of songs that eventually made it to the blockbuster Born in the USA album – like “Downbound Train,” “Child Bride” (morphed into “Working on the Highway”) and the title track. Others  - “The Big Payback and “Pink Cadillac” –would become B-sides on singles from the album.

And then there are the undiscovered songs which went nowhere or, at least, into the long-lost vault. These include “Gun in Every Home,” “Losing Kind” and “On the Prowl.”  All are just as captivating and haunting as the tracks which made the cut. And they again illustrate just how perturbing and socially-insightful these 1982 compositions were – none better than the harmonica-infused “Gun in Every Home”:

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

Springsteen first started to write “Born in the USA”  in 1981, but it was refined and first recorded in the Colts Neck bedroom, though, of course, it would be two years before it would become a Top-Ten single and title-track on a Grammy Hall-of-Fame album. Two versions are included on Nebraska ’82, which opens with a rare trio version featuring Springsteen backed by drummer Max Weinberg and bass-player Garry Tallent. “We threw out keyboard and played basically as a three-piece,” Springsteen said in a promotional release. “It was kinda like punk rockabilly. We were trying to bring Nebraska into the electric world.” Listed here as a “Demo Version,” it actually first surfaced on the 1998 Springsteen compilation Tracks. The second version is the full E Street Band rendition of the classic – the one all are now familiar with. It is listed here on the “Electric Nebraska” disc.

The live start-to-finish rendition of the entire album is a somewhat halfway-house between the original bedroom recordings and the E Street studio sessions, and later concert versions. The somewhat secret live filmed venture took place in an empty Count Basie Theater, New Jersey. The Boss had his original Gibson J-200 and was joined by only two musicians - E Street keyboardist Charlie Giordano and guitarist Larry Campbell, a “musician’s musician” and Bruce’s old friend. “What I was concerned about was getting some of the spooky quality the record had,” Springsteen said in a promotional interview. “We’re lucky we got the great Larry Campbell and Charlie Giordano to assist in the very minimal instrumentation on the record.”

Minimal is a somewhat understatement, as Campbell and Giordano are largely out-of-sight on the video-version of the live show. In fact - noble as the 2025 live version might be - it is somewhat superfluous given that the compilation set ends with a remastering of the 1982 original.

The obvious question to end this saga is, in itself, a very obvious one: Did Springsteen make the right decision to cast aside the electric recordings and release the original lo-fi version? And the answer is an obvious yes! Nothing better supports this conclusion than the Emmylou Harris version of “My Father’s House” which was included on her 1986 album Thirteen. It turned out to be one of Emmy’s finest covers – there have been a few – and the fact that it renders so similar to Springsteen’s memorable original says it all.

Paul Cutler

Editor Crossroads – Americana Music Appreciation