It is fall 1981 and a 31-year-old Bruce Springsteen has just wrapped a wildly successful tour for his latest album, āThe River.ā But instead of returning to the studio to produce new songs ā as was the preference of his label Columbia Records ā the musician retreated to a quiet house in Colts Neck, New Jersey, near where he grew up, to rest and recover.
There, intentionally isolated, but unintentionally reliving childhood trauma and subsequent depression, Springsteen ended up self-recording 10 songs that would form his seminal low-fi album āNebraska.ā
This definitive period in the rock starās life is the background to āSpringsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,ā a new movie directed by filmmaker Scott Cooper, which stars āThe Bearāsā Jeremy Allen White as a convincing Springsteen and Jeremy Strong, of āSuccessionā fame, portraying his longtime manager and friend Jon Landau.
The stylish biopic charts the tumultuous times of Springsteenās early life and their influence on his music. It doesnāt, however, shy away from examining the singerās often painful oscillation between indefatigable global rock god and fragile human, and his search for authenticity and belonging when separated from his working class roots.
Itās a dichotomy also conveyed through Springsteenās clothing ā his eminently familiar blue collar āAmericanaā uniform of Leviās jeans, leather jackets with the collar popped, plaid flannels, white tanks and boots, which the now 76-year-old can still be seen in today.
Continue reading the complete article on the original source