NEBRASKA

Commercially Released: September 20, 1982

Produced by Bruce Springsteen
Recording Engineer: Mike Batlan.

Recorded at THILL HILL EAST (Springsteen’s home studio), Colts Neck, NJ, on or about Jan 3, 1982  - except “My Father’s House” and “The Big Payback” both recorded at the same location circa Mar-Apr 1982. 

PART 1 - NEBRASKA SESSION OVERVIEW

The Nebraska sessions were never conceived to result in a commercially released album. Bruce’s intention was to create a batch of multi-channel, professional sounding, finished solo demos to demonstrate to The E Street Band at sessions for the follow-up to The River LP due to start in New York City in February 1982. By creating professional demos Springsteen felt the band sessions would progress faster than they had for his previous three albums.

To achieve his goal in December 1981 Springsteen asked his guitar technician, Mike Batlan, to set up a no frills “porta-studio” in a spare room of Bruce’s Colt’s Neck, NJ home. Some modification work was done to the room to make it more receptive to achieving a decent sound. Batlan purchased a Teac Tascom (Series 144) 4-track cassette recorder, 2 x SM57’s mics and 2 x Mic stands. The sound was mixed through an old Gibson Echoplex and an old Panasonic boom box acted as the mix-down deck.

Springsteen recorded during the first few days of January, with the bulk of the songs recorded in one all day/night session on January 3, 1982. There were 15 songs recorded and some of them were recorded 2 or 3 times in slightly different arrangements. However two or three months later, with a few of these 15 songs by-then earmarked for coverage by the E Street Band, Springsteen recorded 2 additional songs (“My Father’s House” and “The Big Payback”) at home on the same equipment – thus making a total of 17 different songs seen on the list below.

It was during the E Street Band sessions in March or early April 1982 that it became apparent to Springsteen that a majority of these 17 songs did not lend themselves well to a full band arrangement. According to Toby Scott it was in April 1982 that Bruce handed him the original solo demo tape and said “there’s something about the atmosphere on this tape – can’t we just master off this tape?” In effect Bruce was asking Scott if it was possible to make the sound quality good enough to release some of the 17 songs as a solo album. It took Scott a few weeks to get back to Bruce with a definitive answer. If Scott’s answer had been “no” then there is unlikely to have ever been a Nebraska LP. However Scott said “yes”, so by late May it had been decided to issue the album, ahead of the still-in-progress E Street Band album. The title for the album was narrowed down to three choices “OPEN ALL NIGHT”, “JANUARY 3, 1982” and the ultimate winner, “NEBRASKA”.

The Nebraska album was released with only 10 of these above-mentioned 17 songs on it. “The Big Payback” turned up later in 1982 as a b-side in parts of Europe. Of the 6 “missing” songs – four of them (“Born In The USA”, “Pink Cadillac”, “Downbound Train” and “Johnny Bye Bye”) were re-recorded with multi-instrument arrangements during the 1982-83 “BORN IN THE USA” sessions. The remaining two songs  (“Child Bride” and “The Losin’ Kind”), despite being among the most compelling of all the Nebraska session songs, remain officially unreleased. So to date 12 of the 17 songs from this session have been officially released. Fortunately complete takes of 4 of the 5 other songs are circulating in excellent quality. Only “Johnny Bye Bye” from this session remains uncirculating. The alternate takes of some songs (see Session details) have also yet to surface.

PART 2 - NEBRASKA SESSION DETAILS                                                      

Note: only 1 recording was made. “Child Bride” is often incorrectly noted as being an alternate title for “Working On The Highway”. They are in fact separate songs, as they bear no common melody and merely share a few similar lines of lyric.

Note: only 1 recording was made

Note: only 1 recording was made

Note: only 1 recording was made and it has yet to surface among collectors

Note: only 1 recording was made - the two variants above are merely alternate mixes

Note: only 1 recording was made - the two variants above are merely alternate mixes.

Note: only 1 recording was made - the two variants above are merely alternate mixes. The original title was “Deputy”.

Note: only 1 recording was made - the four variants above are merely alternate mixes.

Note: only 1 recording was made - the three variants above are merely alternate mixes 

Note: 2 different, complete, recordings were made - only 1 has surfaced (two mixes)

Note: 2 different, complete, recordings were made - only 1 has surfaced (two mixes)

Note: 2 different, complete, recordings were made - only 1 has surfaced (two mixes)

Note: 2 different, complete, recordings were made - only 1 has surfaced (two mixes)

Note: 3 different recordings were made - only 1 has surfaced. The work-in-progress title for “The Losin’ Kind” was “The Answer”.

Note: 3 different recordings were made - only 1 has surfaced (two mixes)                                         

Note: 2 different, complete, recordings were made - only 1 has surfaced (three mixes). V1 and V2a do not include any synthesizer (the synthesizer was likely added at The Power Station). V2b includes and additional 28 seconds of synthesizer at the end that was cut from the official release. The master tape for this longer version was accidentally sent to Japan in 1985 and released on the first-ever CD print run of the album, as well as a 2nd pressing of the Japanese CD in 1986-87. The long version was also utilized on original 1986-7 export editions of the Japanese CD sent to Europe and the USA. The mistake was eventually corrected on all versions. The long version has not been officially available anywhere since 1988.

Note: 2 different recordings were made - only 1 has surfaced. 

January 2, 2006

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