Bruce is ‘Open All Night’
Who else can make such great rock’n’roll with such spare accompaniment? Filmed at an empty Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, “Open All Night” is our first peek at the upcoming Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition, due October 17 (Sony Music). As Bruce says, “I knew that the way to do it was no audience and no speaking. You just present the record, play it though, then you’re done.”
Bruce never toured for Nebraska, the masterpiece that was originally slated for the E Street Band but whose magic was so profound, he decided to put out his raw demo. The concert film from which “Open All Night” comes is just as spare. In revisiting these songs 40+ years later, it offers “fresh insight through the subtleties of his live performance, while remaining true to the spirit or the original recordings,” according to the Springsteen camp, who goes on to say, “the film is presented without narration, commentary or dialogue.”
“Only the voices of the characters are heard,” adds Bruce, who also says, “the one thing that we didn’t do on the Nebraska album was we didn’t play it live, so my first thought when we were talking about celebrating the record was there’s got to be a performance, singing these songs from top to bottom. What I was concerned about was getting some of the spooky quality the record had. We’re lucky we got the great Larry Campbell and Charlie Giodano to assist in the very minimal instrumentation on the record, and Rob Lebret did a really nice job of mixing and maintaining the record’s integrity on that level.”
The man who shot the show is Thom Zimny, who says, “as a filmmaker, you want to enhance the performance without it being noticeable—to step into that music and really try to be an invisible partner in it, and carry along the presentation. There’s no introduction or explanation. Things just unfold. That’s the beauty of Bruce as a storyteller, of his writing and of this album.” The Oct. 17 five-CD box, as previously reported, will also contain the Electric Nebraska sessions for the first time, solo outtakes, and a brand new remaster of the original album.