BOOKS: Deliver Me from Nowhere: Warren Zanes

May 27—Before Bruce Springsteen released the mega-successful album, "Born in the USA," he released the quieter but far more disturbing and arguably more memorable "Nebraska."

Whereas "Born in the USA" is bold, rocking, powerfully produced, with almost each track a hit, "Nebraska" is stark, intimate, sparsely produced with no track a single intended for radio play.

Author/journalist/musician Warren Zanes charts the creation of the lesser-known recording in his new book, "Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska."

Following the success of "The River," record producers, and especially his management, expected big things from Springsteen and the E Street Band's next album in the early 1980s. They expected what would eventually become "Born in the USA."

But Springsteen was feeling introspective and out of sorts. He withdrew to a small house, to reflect, maybe write some songs, maybe watch some TV.

He saw the Terrence Malick-directed movie "Badlands," about Charles Starkweather, who in the 1950s went on a murder spree, killing 11 people in Nebraska and Wyoming. Starkweather, 19, was accompanied by a 14-year-old girl. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek played the teens in "Badlands."

The movie compelled Springsteen to research them. Then he was inspired to write a slew of songs. Songs that would become "Nebraska" and several songs that would become tracks on "Born in the USA," including the title song.

He wrote these songs, alone, isolated, in the small house. He performed and recorded several of them on a cassette tape using a four-track home recording system.

The recordings were intended to get the songs down, play them, hear them, sort of a demo tape to take back to the band then a professional recording studio.

Springsteen made no copies of the cassette. He carried it around in his pocket, having to pick lint out of it to play it for his inner circle.

He took the songs into the recording studio. Several of the songs he had penned worked with the band in the studio — songs that would become part of "Born in the USA."

But the songs on the cassette. The dark songs about a spree killer, populated with other lost souls, careening down the black-and-white blur of America's highways, the dashing of American dreams. Those songs did not work with a band. They did not work in the professional studio. They did not work with Springsteen re-recording them.

They worked on that cassette tape, recorded while Springsteen played and sang, sitting on the edge of a bed in lonely house. They worked with the mumbled words, the skipped notes. The haunted voice of a lonely man in a lonely room singing lonesome songs became "Nebraska."

The album was released with no press, no interviews, no fanfare ... the artistic triumph of "Nebraska" set the stage for the phenomenon of the more popular "Born in the USA." Many fans and critics argue "Nebraska" is Springsteen's best album. Springsteen agrees, according to "Deliver Me from Nowhere."

Zanes has Springsteen's full involvement in this book. Springsteen sat for interviews which opened the door to interviews with other people who were a part of Springsteen's life at that time.

Given his wish to simply release "Nebraska" and let it speak for itself, Springsteen spoke little about the album for years.

In "Deliver Me from Nowhere," the doors are open for a look inside at the man sitting in that lonely room, singing songs about a troubled soul and its view of a country.