How the “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” Sound Team Captured The Boss’s Raw Emotion

The Boss doesn’t just sing into a microphone; he commands attention. His raw charisma and rich baritone were evident when he burst onto the music scene in the mid-1970s at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey, but arguably the strength and comfort of his singing voice became settled on his album “Nebraska.” That was the energy the sound team aimed to bottle in writer-director Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, with Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) portraying the iconic musician as he attempts to record that album during a period of tremendous confusion and pain.

The story pulls back the curtain on Springsteen’s struggles to create the now seminal 1982 album, which the artist recorded at 31 on a 4-track recorder in his home in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Haunted by his childhood and his relationship with his father and grappling with the pressure of success, the soundscape reflects the emotional darkness Springsteen was navigating during that time. It also features a number of electrifying performances, and is shot through with Springsteen’s inimitable songs and, incredibly, nine to be exact, mostly from “Nebraska,” but also his totemic follow-ups “Born in the U.S.A.” and “I’m on Fire,” released after “Nebraska” and the tunes that made him a global superstar.

Tuning the sonic notes fell on production mixer Tod Maitland, supervising sound editor Eric Norris, supervising editor and rerecording mixer David Giammarco, rerecording mixer Paul Massey, and supervising music editor Jason Ruder. We spoke to this quintet of artists and let them riff on creating the music, channeling Springsteen’s past, and collaborating with the legend himself.

From a production sound perspective, what direction did Scott Cooper give in creating the raw feeling of the performances?

Tod Maitland: Scott always wanted this thing to be a haunting mix between Jeremy [Allen White] and Bruce, with Bruce kind of always in the background. Everything that’s on camera, we did go for it live. We’d shoot all the close-ups first and get the live tracks, and then we’d go into playback for the wider shots. But for all the scenes inside the house while recording “Nebraska,” that was a straightforward approach.

Was that the same direction for post?

Jason Ruder: Scott definitely wanted something very grounded in realism. So I think on set, it was trying to retain that very early on. I know Jeremy [Allen White] did an incredible amount of work training with Eric Vetro, his vocal coach, and his guitar coach, J.D. Simo. So there was a lot of work that went into trying to keep things very raw and authentic from the beginning, from an actor’s standpoint, with just a voice and a guitar.

How did the pre-vocal recordings shape the overall direction of the music and sound?

Jason Ruder: Scott always wanted to achieve a very emotional, haunted mix. And I think that’s kind of what works so well at Colts Neck. You have some simple music that’s very live in nature, that was spawned live in nature, and all the wind, everything from the leaves to the subtle sounds at Colts Neck, sort of helped tie into Bruce’s psychology at that point in the story. And I think every little detail helped clock what Bruce was struggling with at the time. And when we transition to flashbacks, when Bruce was a boy, it was such an emotional sound design; it went really hand in hand with the music.

In terms of the production sound mix, how did you mic Jeremy Allen White to transition from dialogue into music?

Tod Maitland: With every musical, I’m always there for the pre-vocal recordings. What I’ll do is sit down with the actors before we start shooting and find a lavalier that matches their voice to the Sennheiser MKH 416 we use for the boom. I’ll take a bunch of different lavaliers and I’ll line them up on a little bar and put it right at their chest height, and then I’ll put the MKH 416 overhead and have them talk and then do some singing and record all those tracks. You’d be shocked at how different each lav sounds. There’s a clear winner 95% of the time, to which mic matches the best. For Jeremey, we used a DPA.

What was your approach to mixing the production tracks?

Tod Maitland: So much of it was the stage microphones that were on-camera, but we did wire him and use an overhead mic. It really was about finding the best match that can transition between any one of the microphones we were using and into the live singing or pre-records, so you don’t hear that difference.

There is a rich and dynamic soundscape happening outside the performances. What went into creating its details?

Eric Norris: Our brief from Scott was really to be realistic and detailed, and not to be over-the-top Hollywood. So, when we first started working on it, we talked with Scott, and we were sort of a little bit over the top. To give you an example, there’s a moment where Bruce’s dad slaps him. And we had initially built that up a little bit too far. And Scott really pulled us back. And that’s a little complicated, because Bruce had a complicated relationship with his dad, but we didn’t want to make his dad a huge evil monster. So we just pulled it back and made that slap pretty realistic. And then the way that the scene was cut, I think, it conveyed the way Scott wanted to convey the relationship between Bruce and his dad. 

Speaking of Springsteen’s youth, how did you want to contrast Freehold, New Jersey, the city where he grew up, and Colts Neck, the farmhouse where he recorded “Nebraska?”

David Giammarco: We researched the town where Bruce Springsteen grew up and what kinds of things were around there, and tried to play those when we could. Because when we got to Colts Neck, it had to be very, very quiet. We were allowed to play with subtle and supportive detail against this very quiet Colts Neck, but then we just let the music come like the wind and take over.

Were you able to visit places like Freehold to record natural sounds, or was the soundscape more built from a library?

Eric Norris: As far as the environmental sounds, we did use our library, although we did search to figure out what birds you would find in Colts Neck and used those birds to try to be authentic about it. We did a little bit of recording of props, like we recorded the TEAC 144 Portastudio. The physical sounds of the motors, the switches, and then we were able to use those accurately in the film.

Can you share how you sonically built the film’s iconic recording of “Born in the USA?”

Paul Massey: We had access to all the multitrack recordings. And when he’s recording at Power Station in New York, it gave us great flexibility to be able to mix that from scratch, essentially, and highlight individual instruments. There was a discussion to intentionally maintain the same perspective when we went in and out of the control room to keep the energy going. And then there were wonderful moments of Jeremy singing and Bruce singing, which Jason handled brilliantly in terms of how we get from one voice to the next voice. So we really had ultimate control over pretty much everything throughout that scene. Many of the other live performances were in a similar position where we had access to all the multitracks.

What kind of support did you receive from Bruce Springsteen during the process?

Jason Ruder: We had so much support from Bruce and [Jon] Landau. They opened up the vault to the multi-tracks, so we had access to those. We also had some different live performances from “Born to Run” that really opened up some key audio for us to help our whole adventure from a music perspective. They were fully invested in everything, and they were on set every day when it came to music. It was really wonderful.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere rocks into theaters on October 24.

Featured image: Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in 20th Century Studios’ DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE. Photo by Macall Polay © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.