And so, to Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, which comes towards the end of a busy twelve months for Bruce fans.
By Miles Salter
We’ve had Peter Ames Carlin’s excellent Tonight In Jungeland, a book about the making of Born To Run (50 years old this year). There’s also Sean Egan’s Bruce Springsteen and Born to Run: 50 Years. Laura Barton’s Legend: The Bruce Springsteen Story is currently being aired on BBC Radio 4. Last year we had the latest Bruce documentary, Road Diary.
Then – I nearly forgot – there’s the gigs and albums. The latest re-release is the beefed up, five disc boxed set version of Nebraska, cutely timed to land at the same time as the film. If you’re a Boss completist (I adore the guy but there’s plenty of recent stuff I haven’t bothered with), you’re going to need an extension to house it all.
The film, the first feature film biopic about The Boss, is based on a book of the same title by Warren Zanes where he explored Springsteen’s emotional and psychological crisis and the making of Nebraska, released in 1982. Following The River tour, and a taste of the huge success that would come later, the singer plunged into depression.
Mental health was part of his family’s background. Springsteen’s father Douglas, who these days would probably be called bipolar, was a brooding, sometimes dark presence in his son’s life. The film articulates this very well. He doesn’t get a lot of lines, but Stephen Graham makes the most of the beer-swilling, unemotional dad.
At one point, Bruce the boy picks up a baseball bat to try to protect his mother, Adele. The adult Bruce (played quietly by Jeremy Allen White), lingers outside the home in Freehold where he grew up, searching for answers about his dysfunctional background.
Like much of the film, this is based on truth. The exception to this is a composite girlfriend character called Faye Romano (played by Odessa Young), written in to show us that Bruce just can’t seem to get it together when it comes to real-life love.
The real story about Bruce’s childhood is a little more complex. His grandparents lost a child in a terrible accident and doted on their infant grandson. Bruce thought they were his mother and father.
His burgeoning fame is hard to carry, and he tries to resolve this against the small-town New Jersey background he came from.
The album Nebraska is freighted with such darkness. We see Bruce watching Badlands, the ‘70s noir movie about serial killer Charlie Starkweather, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, which was one of the album’s jumping off points. The album was full of folk-country ballads soaked in blood, and several references to fathers and brothers.
Recorded with basic technology in the bedroom of his home, the engineering people have a hard time transferring a cassette (that didn’t even come in a case) onto vinyl.
Bruce heads out to Los Angeles, where his parents have re-located, and at a fairground en route has a sort of emotional crisis (again this is based on what actually happened). Jon Landau, fan-turned-manager, played by Jeremy Strong, realises he can’t deal with the situation, and points his client towards therapy. When Bruce finally sits down to filter through his past wreckage, he crumbles and cries before he can get a word out. The scene cuts.
I enjoyed the cast in this film. Jeremy Strong is a dead ringer for an unfunny Woody Allen, right down to the glasses and accent, even if his faintly obsessive Landau is a little bit one dimensional, with a relentless focus on his client.
In a nice touch of art reflecting life (or is it the other way around), Jimmy Iovine plays, err, Jimmy Iovine, the production whizzkid who laboured long and hard to help bring Born To Run to fruition.
There’s a wonderful cameo by David Krumholtz as Al Teller, a baffled record company executive who can’t quite believe that Nebraska will be released without any singles or press interviews, and without Springsteen’s face on the cover (although the prop people possibly screwed up here: on Landau’s bookshelf is a copy of The Lives Of John Lennon by Albert Goldman, a book that did not come out until 1988. Come on guys!)
Deliver Me From Nowhere is not a terrible film, but neither is it a masterpiece. Like Nebraska itself, it rolls along, intriguing, and momentarily exciting, but not hugely energetic. The script is pretty clunky at times, and a little overwrought. It doesn’t help that in a reversal of the norm in movies; the subject is better looking than the actor.
As with A Complete Unknown, the Dylan biopic, we tend to get a one-sided view of the main character. Timothy Chalomet’s Dylan omitted the humour that Dylan is capable of, and likewise Springsteen is depicted as an introspective and haunted man. The more infectious, energetic, charismatic Bruce is largely left in the wings.
Ultimately, though, there’s something redemptive and powerful here. Like Rocketman, the Elton John biopic, this is a film about courage, facing up to one’s demons, and growing through pain to become a more whole and grounded person. As journalist Tim De Lisle wisely reflected on Radio 4 on 24 October 2025, ‘I think it will make it easier for pent up men…to seek help.’
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is in cinemas now. Laura Barton’s Legend: The Bruce Springsteen Story is on BBC Sounds. Peter Ames Carlin’s book is Tonight In Jungleland: The Making Of Born To Run. The Nebraska box set is in shops.
Miles Salter is a writer and musician based in York, UK. He fronts the band Miles and The Chain Gang.
