"It was based on Zanes' book Deliver Me from Nowhere, not a traditional career-spanning biography, but a forensically researched history of Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska, which Zanes calls the greatest left-turn performed by someone who is operating at the top of the charts in musical history. Released between Springsteen's first US No 1 album, 1980's The River, and the world-conquering Born in the USA in 1984, it was a stark, lo-fi collection of demo-quality home recordings made in the singer's bedroom while he was battling depression."
"Its songs were haunted by the ghosts of the 1950s teenage serial killer Charles Starkweather and the Italian-American mobster Philip Testa, and by Springsteen's strained relationship with his father, a remote, hard-drinking blue-collar worker, whose paranoid schizophrenia was only diagnosed later in his life. Its echo-laden sound occasionally bore less resemblance to the heartland rock that had made Springsteen famous and more to the notoriously confrontational electronic punk duo Suicide."
"Springsteen's manager Jon Landau's first reaction to the album was to suggest Springsteen seek professional help from a psychiatrist, which he subsequently did. He also declined to promote the album, refusing to give interviews or tour. It was, unexpectedly, a top five hit on both sides of the Atlantic. It's an intriguing story, albeit one fraught with challenges for a film-maker: after all, as Cooper notes, it is essentially the story of someone writing and recording an album alone, in their bedroom."
Two years ago Scott Cooper and Warren Zanes met with Bruce Springsteen after Cooper's screenplay, based on Zanes' Deliver Me from Nowhere, attracted interest. The focus centers on Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska, a radical, lo-fi departure created as demo-quality home recordings during a period of depression. The album drew on dark influences such as Charles Starkweather and Philip Testa and reflected a fraught relationship with Springsteen's father, who later received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Manager Jon Landau urged psychiatric help; Springsteen avoided promotion and touring, yet Nebraska still reached the top five internationally. Filmmaking faces the challenge of dramatizing solitary songwriting and recording.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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