2025 has been quite a year for retro rock movies with the late 2024 release of the biopic A Complete Unknown about three years in the early career of Bob Dylan and the documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin in February also covering the early years of a rock music legend.
The third part of what might be seen as a mid-2020’s trilogy is slightly different. Yes, it’s a biopic, like A Complete Unknown and yes, the subject is a major rockstar. However, the film Deliver Me from Nowhere doesn’t chronicle the early career of the Boss, but rather a turning point, the early eighties, when Springsteen went lo-fi and opted to bring out a completely acoustic album.
As filmmakers 20th Century Studios put it, the film tells the story of the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 “Nebraska” album when he was “a young musician on the cusp of global superstardom, struggling to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past”.
The album Nebraska, recorded in Springsteen’s New Jersey bedroom on a 4-track recorder, marked a key time in his life and is thought by many to be one of his most enduring works—a haunting and emotionally raw, non-electric record “populated by lost souls searching for a reason to believe”.
The film
In 1973 The Who released their classic album Quadrophenia, about a Mod called Jimmy and his personality issues. Having watched Deliver me from Nowhere. I am reminded of the opening track of that album ‘Can you see the real me’, about Jimmy desperately asking the world to see who he really is. This film seemed to be about Springsteen not only making the album Nebraska, but also searching for and telling us who he really is.
The film begins by going back to Springsteen’s childhood in 1957, when he was seven or eight years old as he and his mother looked for his dad Douglas in various bars. When the family get home the situation soon descends into a huge row, with the young Bruce sitting on his bed, looking nervously at the bedroom door, wondering if and when his father would come into the room.
The movie then takes us to 1981 and Springsteen and the East Street Band performing Born to Run at the end of the highly successful River tour, which had included a magnificent performance at Newcastle City Hall, that I was fortunate enough to attend.
Bruce then goes to a small, rented house by a lake in an attempt to wind down from the tour and to link with his own small town past. In doing so he begins searching for who he is.
Looking into his past
Springsteen buys a new car and interestingly turns off his own hit Hungry Heart, when it comes on the radio, while his search for his roots takes him back to onstage at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park.
Watching films and TV, he gets ideas and begins to put songs together in the search for himself and starts to write his own painful memories into the songs about others, replacing third person characters with himself.
We see the influence of childhood memories on songs like Mansion Hill about the winners in society, who did not include his family.
Springsteen finds that the new songs seem like they are from the past.., and he likes that. While he is under pressure to produce another commercial hit album to follow the River, he instead starts to come across and think about stories that chime with his life. A much darker and more personal album is produced instead.
Springsteen tries many of the Nebraska songs without the band, but they don’t work and takes the momentous decision to shelve those like Born in the USA, for a later album and bring out Nebraska instead as recorded with just his voice, his guitar, his harmonica on a four-track in his bedroom of the rented house.
This causes consternation with the record company. Meanwhile his manager Jon Landau believes that the songs are about Springsteen feeling guilty about leaving his old world behind as he becomes a superstar.
In writing the songs, Springsteen begins to face up to demons from his childhood, especially in relation to his relationship with his father who suffered from undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia.
The film, which features excellent performances from a number of the cast, especially Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong as Springsteen and his manager Jon Landau respectively, gives the viewer the opportunity to see behind the glitter and the clichés of rock music to see both the artist and crucially the human behind the music and how the songs for Nebraska came about at a time when Springsteen was grappling with the pressures of huge fame and success.
Cast and other information
Deliver me from Nowhere stars Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen, with Jeremy Strong playing Springsteen’s long-time confidant and manager, Jon Landau. Paul Walter Hauser plays the Boss’ guitar tech Mike Batlan, Stephen Graham is Springsteen’s father, Doug, Odessa Young is love interest, Faye and Gaby Hoffman plays Springsteen’s mother, Adele.
The film is based on the book “Deliver Me from Nowhere.” by Warren Zanes and is directed and written for the screen by Scott Cooper.
Deliver me from Nowhere is at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle until Thursday 6 November and is also at other cinemas in the region.
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