Episode #129 | 5.16.23
Bruce Springsteen: Shootouts, Killing Sprees, and the Making of Nebraska
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In this episode
Unprovoked killing sprees. Nightclub gunfights. Mafia assassinations. True crime stories and modern folklore make up the backbone of many of the characters from Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, one of The Boss’s greatest albums. Which ones are real, and which ones are myth? This is the story of those stories: the story of the making of Nebraska.
Sources
Waste Land, by MIchael Newton
Born To Run, by Bruce Springsteen
Heart of Darkness: Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, by David Burke
Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs, by Brian Hiatt
I Heard You Paint Houses, by Charles Brandt
Bruce Springsteen (Wikipedia)
Nebraska (album) (Wikipedia)
Bruce Springsteen on Nebraska, Storytellers (YouTube)
American Outlaw as Storyteller in Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska (American Studies Journal)
The Original Wrecking Ball: Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska (The New Yorker)
Nebraska Review (Rolling Stone)
Charles Starkweather (Wikipedia)
Disgraceland is a podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. It melds music history, true crime and transgressive fiction. Disgraceland is not journalism. Disgraceland is entertainment. Entertainment inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters and names are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
Credits
Hosted and written by Jake Brennan.
Copy editing by James Sullivan.
Additional writing by Taylor Bettinson.
Mixed and engineered by Matt Beaudoin.
Score by Jake Brennan.
Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraker.
Additional music services by Bryce Kanzer.
Ad music composed by the late, great Ian Kennedy.
Disgraceland theme song, “Crenshaw Space Boogie” written and produced by Jake Brennan. Performed by Jake Brennan, Bryce Kanzer, Jay Cannava, and Evan Kenney. Mixed and engineered by Adam Taylor.
*illustrations by Avi Spivak @avispivak