Springsteen’s Nebraska album

[Goat Mick]

Nebraska is definitely one of my all time favorite albums and it shaped my songwriting quite a bit. Funny thing, my gigging partner is a huge Springsteen fan and he doesn't think Nebraska is one of Springsteen's best. His favorite is Darkness.

[Looburst]

Originally Posted by MikeInBethesda

Hmmm, so it was a Gibson almost certainly (either the Southern Jumbo or J-200), sounds like you heard it directly from the source. Very cool that you were able to meet him and ask him directly.

Yeah, it was a fluke thing. The Boss and his wife and Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson were both there together for the show on that particular night. I talked to Tom about antique typewriters. My wife has quite a collection and we were talking about Underwood typewriters from the 1940s. Tom said he had never seen any with the original beveled glass still in them. I told him my wife had one and it's her favorite. He said so she wouldn't sell it? I said I don't think so.

[Everton FC]

Originally Posted by GCWaters

Two great albums...I think “men...” was the album many of us were expecting from Bruce at that time....

I agree.

Crazy time in NY music scene, back then; Plasmatics Jean Beauvoir played bass on Men Without Women, same time he was playing live on "Fridays" w/the Plasmatics!

[GCWaters]

Originally Posted by Goat Whiskey Picks

Nebraska is definitely one of my all time favorite albums and it shaped my songwriting quite a bit. Funny thing, my gigging partner is a huge Springsteen fan and he doesn't think Nebraska is one of Springsteen's best. His favorite is Darkness.

Darkness is my favorite, too, with Nebraska second...

[Napman41]

Originally Posted by Everton FC

I agree.



Crazy time in NY music scene, back then; Plasmatics Jean Beauvoir played bass on Men Without Women, same time he was playing live on "Fridays" w/the Plasmatics!

Your post brought back some long lost memories. One of my first electric guitars was a Frankenstein like assembly of spare parts. The neck was from a guitar that Wendy chainsawed at a show that was either at CB’s or A7. She destroyed the guitar and then throw it at my then girlfriend who is now my wife. It was truly another lifetime ago, all those crazy lost nights are bit of a blur. Thanks for shaking the cobwebs loose for me.

[DissonantTimbre]

Originally Posted by fitness1

Apparently a J-200

You are correct. This is the guitar in all the pics from the Nebraska shoots. It appears to be either a Gibson J-200 or SJ-200.

Originally Posted by BT55

I recently saw Bruce on Broadway. He played two Takamine guitars for that performance. It's interesting that he has Gibsons and is using Takamines for the show. Even Patti who was on stage for a few songs played a Takamine. Another interesting observation was that it appeared that he didn't have a sound tech. He controlled guitar volume from his pre-amp and when he walked away from his stand mounted mike the sound fell off.

The reason for those Takamines is no doubt because the onboard preamp (with the tube) is great for live applications and cuts down on the noise and feedback inherent in a traditional acoustic guitar pickup.

Nebraska is one of my favorite albums of all time.
As for the laid back mix most of that attributes to the album being recorded in a spare room of Springsteen's house on a 4 track tascam cassette portastudio. It was very difficult, thought near impossible for the engineers to master it properly from a cassette for a release on vinyl which is why several songs, most notably the title track are out of tune a little bit.

This explains it well.


My favorite thing about Nebraska is how aside from the blues shuffle songs (Johnny 99, State Trooper, Reason to Believe, Open All Night) most of the fingerpicked songs hover around the D, G, and A chords. The notable exception being Atlantic City.

[Everton FC]

Originally Posted by Napman41

Your post brought back some long lost memories. One of my first electric guitars was a Frankenstein like assembly of spare parts. The neck was from a guitar that Wendy chainsawed at a show that was either at CB’s or A7. She destroyed the guitar and then throw it at my then girlfriend who is now my wife. It was truly another lifetime ago, all those crazy lost nights are bit of a blur. Thanks for shaking the cobwebs loose for me.

Maybe I shouldn't have shuck those cobwebs loose, hey?!

A7. Now there's a memory! Throw in the Ukrainian National Home! I saw shows at both places. Not to mention CBs (Thunders and the Heartbreakers, others) and the Ritz (Thunders solo, others...) Crazy times, in "The City", late
70's/early 80's. I actually was at Roseland Ballroom for the pre-Christmas show featuring Bush Tetras/Bad Brains/Gang of Four. A week or so later, it was a either a Stones or Beatles tribute at Roseland (think it was the Stones Tribute - never much liked them, but loved the Beatles). So much was happening back then, musically, in NYC. (If you only had a photo of "Frankenstein"!

As for Springsteen... I still think The River was his "epic", and "Nebraska", his "opus". Little Steve's "Men Without Women", to my ear, is still one of the best albums of the 80s.