From the press release:
Heart Of Darkness: Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska
In January, 1982, Bruce Springsteen recorded a bunch of demos on a four-track in his New Jerseyhome. They were intended as templates for the follow-up to his blockbusting double set, The River. Instead, ten of the songs became Nebraska, a stark soundtrack to an economic downturn in America not seen since the Great Depression, a kind of noir album that evoked the southern gothic literature of Flannery O’Connor and invoked the ghost of fifties’ serial killer Charles Starkweather.
In Heart Of Darkness: Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, published by Cherry Red in October, David Burke evaluates its American folk roots, places it in the context of Springsteen’s entire body of work and hears from a generation of artists who cite it as a huge influence. Rosanne Cash, daughter of the legendary Johnny Cash and herself a renowned singer-songwriter, describes Nebraska as “one of the great documents of American life”. According to Steve Earle, it “completely and totally establishes Bruce Springsteen’s place as the greatest songwriter of that generation”. While for David Gray, the songs represent “storytelling of the highest calibre”.
For Burke, the book involved a journey into Springsteen’s own past in an attempt to identify what made him the writer he became, and a journey through his career, an overview of his entire repertoire.
“Like any journey on which the traveller pays attention, I came to realise that Nebraska is much more than folk music,” says the author.
“It’s blues and country and gospel and rock’n’roll and punk too. It shows an awareness of how Ronald Reagan’s economic policies were affecting Americans not living the dream. It’s a piece of work that resonated artistically and sociologically then, and continues to do so now.”
Published: 03/10/2011
ISBN: 978 1 901447 57 6
RRP: £14.99
Distributed in the UKby Turnaround
David Burke writes about Nebraska:
http://www.extrageographic.org/nebraska-bruce-springsteen-meaning-review/