The elusive white whale of dad rock is real. Bruce Springsteen texted(???) Rolling Stone to confirm that there are, in fact, full band electric recordings of what would eventually become the album Nebraska.
For decades, it’s been unclear what remained of the recording sessions Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band had in 1982 as they tried to record songs such as “Highway Patrolman” and “Mansion on the Hill.” Eventually Springsteen scrapped the full band and released Nebraska as an acoustic solo bolo. There’s been debate between Springsteen and members of the E Street Band such as Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan about how many songs they did, whether the recordings survive, and if they’ll ever see the light of day. Weinberg is big on camp Release the Tapes. “It was all very hard-edged,” he said. “As great as it was, it wasn’t what Bruce wanted to release.” Springsteen, on the other hand, maintained that there were no tapes. “I can tell you right now, it doesn’t exist,” he said when asked about the fabled tapes earlier this year while promoting Tracks II. “We tried to do a few songs with the band for a few minor electric versions of ‘Nebraska,’ maybe something else, I’m not sure. But that record simply doesn’t exist. There is no electric Nebraska outside of what you hear us performing on stage.”
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After getting grilled by RS, Springsteen checked the vault, and by gum if there weren’t a few electric jams in there! “Just wanted to give you a heads up,” he wrote. “I checked our vault and there IS an electric Nebraska record, though it does not have the full album of songs.” So we all know that the electric Nebraska tapes don’t exist. But what Springsteen’s recent texts to Rolling Stone presuppose is, maybe they do?
