by L.A. Mood Comics and Games

By Dan Brown

As 2025 comes to a close, a belated book review of sorts.

I recently finished reading Deliver Me From Nowhere by Warren Zanes. 

I loved it. 

This book is a commanding piece of music journalism about the making of 1982’s Nebraska, the first solo album from Bruce Springsteen.

It came out in 2023 and was made into a motion picture – with The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White playing the famous singer – which landed in theatres this October.

Got all that?

Deliver Me From Nowhere is an exhaustive account of the emotions Springsteen put into Nebraska, which is a curious album. 

In Springsteen’s discography, it lands between The River and Born in the U.S.A. He was poised for mass success at that moment, and although Nebraska was loved by music purists, it didn’t get much attention from the public even after he became a megastar in 1984.

When Nebraska landed in record stores, the place we all got our music in those days, its release coincided with an emotional breakdown the Boss suffered.

Zanes covers all of this. Springsteen participated in both the writing of the book and the making of the motion picture.

Nebraska remains an oddity for a number of reasons. For one, Springsteen didn’t really know he was making an album – he was just recording demo tracks while living alone in a rented house in New Jersey.

It became a solo project only after he and the E Street Band tried to record full versions of the demos. After many flat takes, Springsteen came to a decision: The demos ARE the album.

That’s why it has a stripped-down sound. 

Like I said, many music diehards consider it the last gasp of acoustic honesty before MTV became the primary pop-music tastemaker in North America. 

Springsteen had recorded the demos on a primitive four-track machine. Even the music snobs who don’t like Bruce’s brand of rock and roll, like Nebraska.

I recommend Deliver Me From Nowhere to anyone with an interest in pop culture. The author, Zanes, is a musician by trade – he was a member of the Del Fuegos in the 1980s and once played with Springsteen on the same stage. 

He has also written a biography of Tom Petty and other volumes on music, and regular readers will know that I love thinkers who take pop culture seriously.

Zanes has a tendency to wax poetic, which I didn't mind because Nebraska is that kind of album. 

But if you’re looking for a scholarly reserve, you won’t find it here. Zanes has mountains of respect and affection for the Boss, which makes sense: Why else would he devote a big chunk of time and effort to chronicling the making of one Springsteen album? 

I have yet to see the movie version of Deliver Me From Nowhere so I can’t tell you if it’s worth the watch. But I will certainly be looking for an excuse to catch it on streaming in the New Year. 

If you are one of those freaky folks like me who devours pop-culture information, you should check out Deliver Me From Nowhere. It’s readable, and Zanes is a wise and funny writer.

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.