The tragic history behind Springsteen’s darkest album that inspired new biopic

TeaHere is an appropriate cycle of the fact that the new Bruce Springsteen biopic, rescue me from nowhereFocuses on the production of his 1982 record nebraskaAfter all, the album begins with a scene straight from a movie. In the haunting opening lines of the title track, Springsteen sings, “I saw him standing on my front lawn / Just swinging his stick.” “He and I went for a walk, sir/and 10 innocent people died.”

new jersey rock icon look and write those words Terrence Malick’s 1973 neo-noir bad soilWhich features a scene where Martin Sheen’s troubled greaser first encounters Sissy Spacek’s character who is swinging a stick on his front lawn. What was this film loosely based on? Real life murders that occurred in 1958 in Nebraska and Wyoming It was carried out by 19-year-old Charles Starkweather, who had eloped with his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caryl Ann Fugate.

Springsteen’s subsequent fascination with the Starkweather case is dramatized rescue me from nowhereStarring Bear Actor Jeremy Allen White as the Boss in his early thirties, In one scene, White depicts the musician reading an old newspaper clipping describing the murders and writing in black marker: “Why???”

Charles Starkweather murder spree

The question of how and why Starkweather became a murderer has worried criminologists and psychologists for generations. He was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the fourth of seven children in a working-class family. His father was a carpenter who often found himself unemployed due to a variety of ailments, including rheumatoid arthritis in his hands. He admitted at his son’s trial that he had abused the boy, and his wife later divorced him on the grounds of extreme cruelty.

When Starkweather was 17, he met Caryl Ann Fugate, who was only 13 at the time. He decided that he wanted to marry her, but he feared that her life would be as difficult and unfulfilling as his father’s. He left school, where he claimed he was bullied because of his bowed legs, speech impediment, and his family’s financial situation, and decided to turn to a life of crime. In December 1957, shortly after turning 19, he committed his first murder when he robbed a gas station and killed the attendant.

The following January, Starkweather went to Fugate’s home, but her mother and stepfather refused to let him see their daughter and told him to stay away. Starkweather shot and killed Fugate’s two-year-old half-sister, Betty Jean, before strangling her to death. He hid the bodies in an outhouse and posted a note on the front door stating that the family had influenza, and that visitors should stay away.

By the time police entered the house three days later, Starkweather and Fugate were on the street. They first went to a rural farm in Bennett, Nebraska, owned by Starkweather family friend August Meyer. Starkweather killed the mayor with a shotgun blast and also killed his dog. The young couple hid outside for a few days before setting out on foot. He was raised by a pair of teenagers, Robert Jensen and Carol King, who were eventually killed by Starkweather.

He and Fugate took Jensen’s car back to an affluent area of ​​Lincoln, where they broke into the home of industrialist Chester Laurier Ward. There, he killed Ward, Ward’s wife Clara, and their maid Lillian Fencl before escaping again. While looking for a replacement car in Douglas, Wyoming, he shot and killed traveling salesman Merle Collison.

The sheriffs of Natrona County, Wyoming finally caught Starkweather and Fugate when they were unable to operate the parking brake on Collison’s car. He was arrested and taken into custody on January 29, 1958, having murdered 10 people in just eight days.

During his trial, when Starkweather was asked if he felt any remorse for the brutal murders, he refused to answer. In a letter to his parents, he wrote: “But Dad, I don’t regret what happened between me and Caryl the first time.” [sic] More fun.” She initially said that she had kidnapped Fugate, but later testified that she had willingly participated in his crimes.

Ultimately, they were both found guilty, and Starkweather was executed by electric chair in June 1959. Fugate received a life sentence and was released on parole in 1976 after serving more than 17 years in prison. In 2020, Nebraska officials refused to pardon him for his crimes.

‘Nebraska’ inspired by Starkweather’s vision

In Springsteen’s bleak, sparse murder song “Nebraska”, sung from Starkweather’s point of view, he recasts the killer’s words as he declares: “I can’t say I’m sorry / For the things we did / At least for a little while, sir / Me and her, we had some fun.” The lyricist offers no neat explanations for his crimes, concluding with the words: “They wanna know why I did what I did / Well, sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.”

Real-life crimes while recording as well nebraska, Springsteen was deeply influenced by the Southern Gothic stories of Flannery O’Connor. Those last lines seem to echo a character from his 1953 short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, which he wrote about a family who is murdered by a convict who calls himself a misfit.

The Misfit claims that there is “no joy but vileness” in life and if Jesus can’t save him, “there’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes left in the best way possible – by killing someone, or burning down his house for doing some other vile thing to him.”

when springsteen made nebraskaHe was at a turning point in his career. They released their most commercially successful album to date, 1980’s chart-topping RiverWhich produced hit singles such as “Hungry Heart”. Many people around him expected him to try to capitalize on that success by releasing another album. Riverwill capture A rapturous crowd to the live sound of the E Street Band.

Instead, he found himself struggling with depression and looking for a new direction. As Springsteen told Warren Zanes for his 2023 book rescue me from nowhereIn what has been adapted for the new biopic, he was “dealing with conflicting feelings about being so different from the people I grew up around and about whom I wrote.”

In the bedroom of his home in Colts Neck, New Jersey, he turned on a portable 4-track recorder and began writing and recording a series of songs about down-and-out characters living outside the law. effects like bad soil And O’Connor’s stories permeate the music, performed with harmonica, guitar and Springsteen’s own gravelly voice.

These songs…were restrained, yet on the surface, there was a world of moral ambiguity and unease beneath.

Bruce Springsteen

Although they re-recorded nebraska With a full band at Power Station Studios in New York, Springsteen ultimately opted to release his original home demo. Unexpectedly, despite Springsteen’s decision not to tour or promote it, the raw, thrilling album became a chart hit. Electric Power Station Sessions is finally set to be released this month as part of a wider nebraska ’82 box sets, and they offer a fascinating contrast with the original recordings that still exhibit their unique, unrepeatable magic.

In the liner notes of the new reissue, Springsteen says that he made the initial tapes without thinking about releasing them, but that he now considers the album to be his best work. “I was largely singing for myself,” he says. “I didn’t think many other people would ever hear it. The work was experimental, and that was all right with me.”

The simplicity of recording would prove hugely influential and inspired generations of lo-fi, DIY home recording to come. In Zanes’s book, The National’s Matt Berninger called the album “a big blast of indie rock that was all about making someone s*** alone in your bedroom”.

In his 2016 memoir born to RunSpringsteen also explained bad soil And O’Connor, he was musically inspired by gospel, early Appalachian music and the blues. “I wanted the audience to hear my characters thinking, to feel their thoughts, their choices…” he wrote. “These songs… were restrained, yet on the surface, there was a world of moral ambiguity and unease beneath.”

The creation of a dark, introspective album born from a period of internal conflict and uncertainty may not seem like rich material for a traditional music biopic, but that’s what makes it. rescue me from nowhere An interesting possibility. Like nebraska Itself, it’s not about the glitz and pomp of Springsteen’s glory days, but a quieter, more personal story that can sometimes be overlooked.

“I’ve written a lot of other narrative records,” Springsteen says in the liner notes. nebraska ’82“But there’s just something about that batch of songs nebraska There is some kind of magic in it.”

Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is in theaters October 24th. The Nebraska ’82 Expanded Edition box set will be released the same day.