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It's no surprise that, as Hollywood prepares to tell the story of Bruce Springsteen's most striking solo release, a box set is coming to tell the tale of the (literal) tape.
On October 17, Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings will release Nebraska '82, a new box set showcasing the start-to-finish journey of Bruce's most stark collection of songs and the attempts to record them in a way befitting of their haunting qualities. The set - four CDs or four LPs and a Blu-ray - will offer two discs of almost entirely unreleased outtakes, both from that legendary home recording in Colts Neck, NJ as well as the now-mythic "electric" run-throughs of the songs with The E Street Band. Nebraska '82 will also include a new solo performance of the album filmed by Thom Zimny earlier this year at the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, NJ and will close with that classic original album, newly remastered.
Coming off the hot streak of 1980's double album The River (featuring "Hungry Heart," his first Top 10 hit), Springsteen was unsurprisingly uneasy about his newfound burst of popularity, even after years of rapturous critical acclaim. Retreating to a ranch in Colts Neck, Springsteen gorged himself on books by Flannery O'Connor, history texts from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States to Ron Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July, and films like Terence Malick's Badlands. From these readings came stories of haunted outlaws, drifters and lost souls, with little of the fundamental uplift Springsteen's songbook was known for. He decided to demo the songs in the bedroom of that ranch as 1981 turned into 1982, working with engineer Mike Batlan and a four-track TEAC 1440 Portastudio; he mostly accompanied himself on acoustic guitar, with minimal overdubs - a harmonica here, a glockenspiel there - and even "mixed" the recordings with some tape delay effects and a water-damaged Panasonic boombox, dubbing them onto a tape that he began carrying with him.
Springsteen and The E Street Band convened at The Power Station in New York City to turn these tracks (and plenty of others from the ever-prolific bandleader) into an album. Despite the spread of electric material, Bruce kept finding himself drawn to those original recordings, and by the summertime decided to release them exactly as he recorded them. Columbia carefully mastered to vinyl straight off Bruce's tape copy, picking 10 tracks and releasing them as Nebraska - no interviews, no tour, and little single activity (beyond a black-and-white travelogue video for "Atlantic City," in which Bruce did not appear, and a few single releases in Europe). While sales were modest compared to The River, the album did reach the Top 5 of the Billboard charts and was rapturously received by critics for its striking songcraft and unusual recording.
Even as Springsteen returned to a full-band setting in a major way - including a few of those band recordings on his next album, 1984's commercial juggernaut Born in the U.S.A. (including the title track, which was seriously misunderstood as a result of its rafter-shaking arrangement) - Nebraska's legend only grew in two directions. The 1998 outtakes box set Tracks included "Born in the U.S.A." in its original cassette version, and a bonus disc of 2003's The Essential Bruce Springsteen gave a wider release to "The Big Payback," one of the original tracks on the tape released overseas as a B-side. Fans wanted to hear more from that tape, but particularly had a bead on the "electric Nebraska" sessions. E Street Band members added fuel to the fire, suggesting they thought they were better than their bandleader did over the years. Warren Zanes covered the period in exhaustive detail in his 2023 book Deliver Me from Nowhere, and a biopic based on the book will be released just a week after the Nebraska box, starring The Bear's Jeremy Allen White as The Boss and Succession's Jeremy Strong as his longtime manager Jon Landau. (Ever the fabulist, Bruce himself, while promoting this year's exhaustive vault-clearing Tracks II, claimed to Rolling Stone he wasn't sure if an "electric Nebraska" even existed, only to check and text writer Andy Greene before the story went to print that the Thrill Hill vault indeed had some outtakes. He had, of course, already recorded the performance included on this new set.)
The first track from Nebraska '82 is streaming above: an early, electric run-through of "Born in the U.S.A." cut by just Springsteen, bassist Garry Tallent, and drummer Max Weinberg that hews closer to the original cassette arrangement than the keyboard-driven anthem of its titular album. Both formats of the set will be available October 17 and can be pre-ordered now. (As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.) The full track list is below.
Nebraska '82 (Expanded Edition) (Columbia/Legacy, 2025)
4CD/Blu-ray: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
4LP/Blu-ray: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
CD/LP 1: Outtakes (previously unreleased except where noted)
- Born in the U.S.A. (released on Tracks - Columbia CXK 69475, 1998)
- Losin' Kind
- Downbound Train
- Child Bride
- Pink Cadillac
- The Big Payback (released on "Open All Night" U.K. single - CBS A 2969, 1982)
- Working on the Highway
- On the Prowl
- Gun in Every Home
CD/LP 2: Electric Nebraska (previously unreleased)
- Nebraska
- Atlantic City
- Mansion on the Hill
- Johnny 99
- Downbound Train
- Open All Night
- Born in the U.S.A.
- Reason to Believe
Alternate full band versions of Disc 2, Track 3 and Disc 3, Tracks 5 and 7 released on Born in the U.S.A. - Columbia QC 38653, 1984
Full band version of Disc 2, Track 5 released on "Dancing in the Dark" single - Columbia 38-04463, 1984
CD/LP 3/Blu-ray: Nebraska Live at the Count Basie Center for the Arts, Red Bank, NJ - 4/22/2025 (previously unreleased)
- Nebraska
- Atlantic City
- Mansion on the Hill
- Johnny 99
- Highway Patrolman
- State Trooper
- Used Cars
- Open All Night
- My Father's House
- Reason to Believe
Blu-ray includes audio in Atmos, 5.1 Dolby TrueHD surround and uncompressed PCM stereo. Includes an instrumental version of "Nebraska" over end credits.
CD/LP 4: Original album (2025 remaster) (released as Columbia QC 38358, 1982 - same track list as CD/LP 3/Blu-ray)
The Weekend Stream: August 23, 2025
Release Round-Up: Week of June 27
My favorite Bruce album but I was hoping there was more in the vaults. This is a little skimpy.
I'll stream it and I'm thankful that Bruce is one of the artists that puts the entire contents of his box sets on the streaming services.
Yeah, it's simultaneously skimpy *and* bloated. The outtakes disc and the electric disc are all I'm interested in, and I feel like maybe those could've fit on a single disc.
There's also the perennial question of whether he was able to resist tinkering with the original recordings.
On the bright side, it looks like it's not a physically oversized package.
I agree, I only want those two. Hoping they'll be available somehow somewhere as mp3 downloads. But so far the full set of 5 CDs is only $80, which, I'll have to think about, but I might do it
It is currently $105 on Amazon Canada. Hopefully there might be a less expensive two disc version.
After the grotesque pricing of the Tracks II set, it's a relief that this collection doesn't cost what "no honest man could pay."
Strange that until recently Springsteen was denying that an "electric" Nebraska existed yet recorded a live version for the box set back in April?
I keep thinking back to the line in Springsteen on Broadway, said only partly in jest, where he casts aspersions on his image as a hero of the working man who’s not really held such a job in his life. His history, as he writes it, has more than a pinch of trickster energy. Sometimes it’s a bummer (I don’t need to hear overdubs on vintage outtakes, ever); sometimes, like here, I can forgive him, Jersey boy to Jersey boy. 😉
It seemed pretty clear to me when reading that interview that BS was engaging in some BS. Dave Marsh wrote about those shelved electric Nebraska sessions in his second Bruce bio way back in the late 80s. Unless they were absolutely no good, there was no way they wouldn't eventually appear on some special Nebraska release. Most likely he needed some permission from Sony to make mention of a pending product they weren't ready to publicize, and he didn't want to derail the interview over it.
What i find odd is the inconsistency of recent Bruce releases...first the albums box #2 only on CD in Japan, then the 40th "Born In The USA" vinyl only (and not a box & should be a box or a 2CD at least), then the overpriced "Tracks II" & now the "Nebraska '82" box...kinda frustrating really, but it is what it is & i will get it all over time...perhaps Bruce WAS caught in a pickle over Nebraska, but just happy such a set IS coming out at all...