Bruce Springsteen to Issue Deluxe ‘Nebraska’ Set With Electric 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 will 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 some of those songs with early recordings of numbers that later ended up on “Born in the USA.” The E Street Band’s ’82 run-through of the “Born in the USA” title track was released as a single Thursday.

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.

The movie dramatizes events in and out of the studio that fans already well know — namely, how Springsteen recorded acoustic demos for what would become the “Nebraska” album by himself at home, then made failed attempts to come up with suitable electric/full-group versions with the E Street Band in a professional recording studio. In the end, he circled around to putting out the original low-fi solo recordings… while leaving followers curious for the last 40-plus years about whether any of the discarded versions would ever come out of the vault.

Whether or not there was an full album of electric renditions of the “Nebraska” album, or even a majority of the songs, has been up for fervent debate over the years — and Springsteen seemed to be debating it with himself just a few months ago.

When Springsteen released an elaborate boxed set titled “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” in June, many fans were appreciative of what was included but also dismayed that a rumored “electric Nebraska” was not among the offerings. Little was almost anyone aware that he was holding on to the “Nebraska” goods for a subsequent stand-alone set that would be timed to the film release.

In June, Rolling Stone published an interview with Springsteen about “Tracks II” that had writer Andy Greene asking him about a “mythical full-band ‘Nebraska.’” The singer responded: “Well, I can tell you right now, it doesn’t exist. … No, 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 onstage.” However, Greene added that about a month after the interview took place, he got a text from Springsteen that read: “Hey Andy! Bruce Springsteen here. Just wanted to give you a heads-up. I checked our vault and there IS an electric ‘Nebraska’ record though it does not have the full album of songs.”

In 2024, in the preface to interviews with E Street Band members Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg, Rolling Stone reported that Springsteen and the group had recorded full-band versions of eight of the 10 “Nebraska” tracks in 1981, minus only “State Trooper” and “My Father’s House.” “My recollection was that the versions were really fantastic,” said Bittan at the time, though he added, “Of course, I haven’t heard them since, I think, 1981. So I could be totally wrong about that… I’m dying to hear the recordings from the studio … It’s eluded us. Maybe, Bruce, at some point, will get into that.” All of the songs from “Nebraska” have been played live by the group in subsequent years.

Springsteen needing to correct himself after checking the vault in the interview published in June would suggest that this new “Nebraska” set came together rather quickly, with the 20th Century movie looming as the best tie-in any such archival project could possibly have.

The full track list:

“Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition” Tracklist

Disc 1: Nebraska Outtakes

Disc 2: Electric Nebraska

Disc 3: Nebraska (Count Basie Theatre, Red Bank, NJ)

Disc 4: 2025 Remaster

Disc 5 (Blu-Ray): Nebraska (Count Basie Theatre, Red Bank, NJ)