The Boss And Me: Pat McFadden Reviews 'Deliver Me From Nowhere'
Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen | Image by: FlixPix / Alamy
5 min read
With its outstanding lead performance, this biopic transported me back to my teenage years, listening to Bruce Springsteen in a pub on Glasgow’s south side. Go and see it if you can
It’s 1982. I’m 17 years old. I’m sitting in a pub on the south side of Glasgow called The Madeira. And I’m talking to my friends about the new Bruce Springsteen album I’ve just bought – Nebraska. Not too many 17-year-olds in Glasgow were listening to Bruce Springsteen at that time. But I was already hooked. I had bought every other album Springsteen had recorded over the preceding years. And I was eager to buy this one.
These were the early years of my 40-plus-year fanship, song after song, album after album, eventually raising my children with “the Boss” as the soundtrack, giving thanks for the music and for those periodic three magical hours in the ‘promised land’ that make every other live music experience pale by comparison. Not to mention the conversations with my family about which Springsteen songs to play at my funeral.
I still have that 43-year-old vinyl copy of Nebraska in the attic. And it’s the making of this album that is at the centre of the new Springsteen biopic, Deliver Me from Nowhere.
Jeremy Allen White plays the Boss, with Jeremy Strong playing his manager Jon Landau. Theirs has been a 40-plus-year partnership and friendship, and Strong is superb at showing the mixture of devotion and sometimes bewilderment that such a relationship involves.
It’s no secret that the Boss has some dad issues and Stephen Graham plays the father whose love Bruce sought but could never quite obtain. Yet in all the distance there is still affection, and certainly inspiration for much of what Springsteen has written about over the years.
Image by: Collection Christophel / Alamy
The film focuses on a particular year in Springsteen’s life around 1981. He was already famous through Born to Run and The River, but not yet the superstar that Born in the USA would make him. He hires a house in New Jersey and retreats there with nothing more than a guitar, a harmonica and some home recording equipment. There’s no E Street band, no Clarence Clemons, no Miami Steve. Just Bruce and an old tape recorder that had fallen in a lake.
Those expecting the… greatest hits might be left disappointed but this film is a snapshot in time
Who knows how the muse works but from that time in the house comes a series of haunting and unforgettable songs about childhood, outlaws and the darker side of the American dream. My own favourites are My Father’s House and Used Cars about the bittersweet memories of childhood:
My little sister’s in the front seat, with an ice cream cone
My ma’s in the backseat sittin’ all alone
These songs were only ever intended to be demos, but once in the studio Springsteen decided the sound of the E Street Band, which was such a mark of his music, smothered them. So instead he released an album exactly as the songs sounded on the cassette tape of him in his bedroom. No promo interviews, no tour and no picture of himself on the cover. Just as it was.
That isn’t just a musical interlude, a detour on the road to stadium mania. It’s a statement of confidence, of control. To do it you have to believe in what you are doing.
In the film this has more comedy than it sounds. “He’s putting out a f***ing folk album?” screams one executive at Landau. But in the end, whatever the commercial risks, Landau presses ahead. “In this office, we believe in Bruce Springsteen,” he says to cheers from the cinema audience.
Bruce’s girlfriend, a composite character called Faye Romano played by Odessa Young, tries to reach a man always running – not from her but from himself. Can he stay with her? Can he build a family? He can’t stay with anyone until he faces his own demons. In his autobiography, Springsteen chronicles the depression that has dogged him for much of his life and in running from Faye we see him seek proper professional help for the first time. And he’s clear that while there are temptations in the life of a rock star, they are not big enough for a life story.
Jeremy Allen White is outstanding as Bruce. His performance is, as the Boss himself says, an interpretation not an imitation. There is more than enough there. Those expecting the big shows and the greatest hits might be left disappointed but this film is a snapshot in time. Much was yet to come.
Sometimes I think I know what I’ll do when politics is over. I muse about opening a shop that sells t-shirts with nothing but Springsteen lyrics on them. A different rack for each album (I’ve maybe thought too much about this). The Nebraska rack will have some good ones. See the film if you can.
Pat McFadden is Labour MP for Wolverhampton South East
Deliver Me from Nowhere
Directed by: Scott Cooper
Venue: General cinema release
