[BluBonnet]

Bruce Springsteen Announces ‘Nebraska ’82: Expanded Editiion’ to Coincide With ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’ Film, Including Long-Sought ‘Electric Nebraska’ Sessions

Bruce Springsteen has announced plans to release a deluxe edition of his classic 1982 album “Nebraska,” complete with the unreleased “electric” versions of the songs that fans have hoped to hear for decades. The collection, titled “Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition,” will arrive Oct. 17.

The five-disc boxed set will include a newly shot performance film of “Nebraska” being played through in its entirety for the first time ever, recently filmed at New Jersey’s Count Basie Theatre by director Thom Zimny and issued on Blu-Ray.

But the biggest attraction for fans may be an eight-song “Electric Nebraska” disc. It is not an alternate version of the entire “Nebraska” album, but augments E Street Band versions of six of those songs with two 1982 band recordings of “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Downbound Train,” numbers that later ended up being re-recorded for 1984’s “Born in the U.S.A.”

The E Street Band’s initial ’82 run-through of what would later become the “Born in the U.S.A.” title track was released as a streaming single Thursday. It features part of the E Street Band, at least: As Springsteen explained in a press release, this first stab at the song found him accompanied only by drummer Max Weinberg and bassist Garry Tallent in a trio format. “We threw out the keyboards and played basically as a three-piece,” Springsteen said. “It was kinda like punk rockabilly. We were trying to bring ‘Nebraska’ into the electric world.”

The set also includes a disc of acoustic outtakes, featuring eight songs from the solo “Nebraska” sessions that did not make it onto the ’82 album, even though they fit the stripped-down format. Some of them found release in a band format later on the “Born in the U.S.A.” album, but some have never been released on an album at all, like “On the Prowl,” “Gun in Every Home” and “Child Bride.”

The final component in the set is a 2025 remastered version of the original “Nebraska” album.

The release will come at an opportune and hardly coincidental time, hitting the market just a week before a dramatic film about the making of the album, “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” hits theaters on Oct. 24. The movie, which stars Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen, premiered at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend to mostly positive notices.