Bruce Springsteen has released 21 studio albums, 23 live albums and racked up sales of more than 150 million in a legendary career that has produced dozens of the most enduring rock anthems in history. So you’d imagine that picking a favorite might be difficult.
But in a chat with CBS Sunday Morning set to air on Sunday (April 30), the Boss tells Jim Axelrod that if he had to pick his most definitive work it would be one of his sparest, most personal LPs, 1982’s Nebraska. Bruce’s sixth studio album was a super stripped-down affair featuring spare demos the singer recorded to guide what was supposed to be the E Street Band’s next rock album. Instead, he released them unadorned, unleashing a series of stark story songs about serial killers (“Nebraska”), conflicted cops (“Highway Patrolman”) and dead-enders spiraling their way into life sentences (“Johnny 99”).
“If I had to pick out one album and say, ‘This is going to represent you 50 years from now’ I’d pick Nebraska,” he tells Axelrod in the interview on the show that airs at 9 a.m. ET on Sundays on CBS.
“I think in your 20s, a lot of things work for you. But in your 30s, your 30s is where you be – where you start to become an adult. And suddenly I looked around and said, ‘Where is everything? Where is my home? Where is my partner? Where are the sons and daughters that I thought I might have someday?,’” he adds about the period 41 years ago when he recorded the album by himself in a farmhouse in Colts Neck, New Jersey at at time when he’d achieved his rock and roll fantasy but was still in search of meaning in his life.
“I realized none of those things are there, none of them,” he says. “So I said, ‘OK, the first thing I’ve gotta do as soon as I get home is remind myself of who I am and where I came from … and what I want to do … And where I’m going.’” That reminder came in the form of the barebones Nebraska, which is the subject of a new book from author Warren Zanes, Deliver Me From Nowhere.
Springsteen returned to the Colts Neck farmhouse where he worked on the album with Alexrod to take a look at the room where he recorded it, which the current owners have left as it was.
“Things are going so well here, you know, that you just assumed, like, ‘Oh yeah, well the rest of your life is going to fall into place.’ No, that’s not how it works,” Springsteen says in a preview of the piece, adding, “You cannot succeed your way outta that pain.”
Springsteen and the E Street Band are in the midst of a world tour, with the group slated to play the first of two gigs at the Estadi Olimpic in Barcelona, Spain on Friday night (April 28).
Watch a preview below.
