Meet Warren Zanes, the Author and Rocker Behind the Springsteen Movie | Better in Person

When he joined the Del Fuegos, his big brother’s band, all Warren knew how to play was a record player. Things went great for a while — and then it all fell apart. So how did he wind up writing definitive books on Springsteen and Tom Petty? If you'd like to see the video version of Better in Person, you can watch it on YouTube or Apple Podcasts.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  This episode of Better in Person is presented by ChatGPT. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today.

• 0:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. And this bonus episode comes from our new TV talk show called Better in Person. To get the full video experience, go to the Freakonomics YouTube channel, or you can look for Better in Person on Apple Podcasts. Our guest this week is Warren Zanes. Don't worry if you've never heard of him. By the time you're finished, you will feel like you've known Warren your whole life. As always, thanks for listening.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  I knew never self-reference.

• 0:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Ever. So my first.

• 0:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's all I got, Warren. That's all I got.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  This is Better in Person with Stephen Dubner and Warren Zanes.

• 1:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  If you've ever chased a dream, the kind of dream that would rearrange your life, you may have wondered, what if it comes true? But also, what happens if it falls apart? Warren Zanes has lived both sides of that dream. In the 1980s, he joined the Del Fuegos, a Boston rock and roll band that was started by his big brother Dan. They put out a few good records. For Warren especially, things did not end well. But over time, he would mount an amazing comeback as a rock and roll scholar. He wrote an intimate biography of Tom Petty and an even more intimate book about Bruce Springsteen that was recently turned into a film. I knew Warren and his band way back when because I was in my own band, The Right Profile.

• 1:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  For a good while, it was really the only thing I cared about. And there was this one night in Greensboro, North Carolina. The Del Fuegos were playing two sets in a bar. I went to see them. Between sets, we were hanging out in the back room, and in walks Bruce Springsteen.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  When Bruce came to the Rhinoceros Club in 85.

• 2:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're still touring your first record?

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Yep, touring the first. We were coming down from Boston, going down the eastern seaboard, and then across the southwest to LA. So it was, for us, the biggest tour yet.

• 2:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Biggest tour, still small spaces, but a moment of great promise. You know, it's your first record. You're seeing things you haven't seen before.

• 2:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  How were you feeling about that record at that moment?

• 2:32Speaker 01

  One part of us felt like we just made beggars banquet. You know, another part of us worried that we made something terrible. You know, flip flopping between the extremes.

• 2:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  This night, it was a night off for Bruce Springsteen, the E Street Band. And we knew that.

• 2:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  How'd you know that?

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Because we listened to the radio. You're touring, you're listening to rock radio. At that point in time, Born in the USA is on its third single. He is a global superstar. It's Madonna, Prince, Bruce in that moment, just huge acts. And we were in the dressing room, you were there, and Nils Lofgren came in.

• 3:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  And it was like, wow, you know, a member of the E Street Band.

• 3:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did he have a guitar?

• 3:26Speaker 01

  He didn't have a guitar. We got a backup guitar to it very quickly, though. And we were talking about what songs he could do on stage. Dressing room door opens, Bruce Springsteen comes in. And he said, I got your album. Backseat Nothing is my favorite song. And we were speechless and.

• 3:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  You were also probably super high, though, right, to be fair?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  That we, I mean, that probably from 10:00 AM that day through the time we went to bed.

• 3:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  That's the kind of, the kind of shape we were in. But we had a lot of youthful energy where it was, you know, I'm not going to advocate for that particular chemical mix.

• 4:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  But it was working for us right then.

• 4:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Also, just to, just to say, you've been sober for like 30 some years now.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, 32 years.

• 4:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Congratulations.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Not drinking and drugging. Some of my kids have never seen me.

• 4:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Like you saw me that night Bruce Springsteen came to play with us.

• 4:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, yeah. So Bruce walks in. I recall that he was actually singing the song or humming the song. Do you recall that or no?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  I love that detail. I'm going to use it from here on out.

• 4:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can I tell you, I am, when you were, when you guys had your first record out, we were, we had maybe just signed with your management group. That's how I knew you guys.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  We hadn't played together.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  I don't think you'd signed with them just yet.

• 4:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Maybe not.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  So you were just coming and hanging out with us?

• 4:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  I was just coming to.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  And we hadn't done shows together yet?

• 4:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  I don't think so.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 4:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm not sure, honestly. But I also wrote for the local, like, The Village Voice of Greensboro.

• 5:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, so this is me reviewing Bruce's Coliseum show.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  All right.

• 5:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right? Arriving in Greensboro the day before the first of his two sold out Coliseum concerts, Bruce Springsteen sauntered into the back room of downtown's Rhinoceros Club, shuffling his feet and singing his favorite Del Fuego song, Backseat Nothing. And it goes on there.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Well, you just, obviously, memory is a kind of pliable medium. So I'm going to add that to my.

• 5:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  It's all yours.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Memory, yeah.

• 5:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  So now let's go back to your memory from there. You're a kid, you're what, 19?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, late teens.

• 5:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you got Nils Lofgren coming in. Now you got Bruce Springsteen coming in, apparently singing one of your songs. And what are you thinking now?

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Well, we knew that the next step was to get him on stage with us. So that, that was going to happen.

• 6:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  And that's a thing that he liked to do with bands.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  He is like the Johnny Appleseed of rock and roll. He is, orchards grow as he walks past. No doubt, giving us something that he felt he'd been given many times in his life. He is aware of the people who extended a hand.

• 6:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you remember the songs he played that night?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  It was Hang On Sloopy and Stand By Me.

• 6:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, right.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  And when I got up to the stage,

• 6:39Speaker 01

  it was such a thing, I mean, he does have an aura. And I look and like, there's Nils has a guitar, my brother's got a guitar, Bruce has a guitar. I'm like, I'm turning my amp all the way down. And I just turned it to zero.

• 6:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  No, you did not, really?

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Yes, I did.

• 6:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Really?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Completely off. Nobody would have noticed one way or the other. And I knew, like implicitly, a memory is going to form. And if you're not playing guitar, it's going to be a bigger, fuller memory.

• 7:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Seriously, you had that realization in the moment? That strikes me as remarkably astute, like, especially considering you're.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Maybe it's, maybe it's a kid who's watched a lot of men leave. You know, and there's a pretty great one right there. I'm taking this in because he's going to leave too. You know, there's, there are complicated mechanics within every being. You know, at that point in time, I don't know if you remember this, but I had a chipped front tooth. Like, half of it was missing. It had been knocked off on someone's beer bottle. And I left it that way for like a year. So when I met Bruce, I was a teenage kid with a chipped tooth in a rock and roll band. And at the end of that tour routing, we met Petty for the first time.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  And, you know, once again, I was that kid. And he came down to a show and, you know, both these guys first saw me in that moment. And I can assure you that neither of them said, there's my future biographer.

• 8:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  I don't blame them.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  And I, but I think they nonetheless did an accounting. And that did matter later on, just as much as it mattered that I evolved from that.

• 8:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  You loved the band?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  I loved the band. I had nothing else.

• 8:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Let me, let me say this, you know, growing up in Concord, New Hampshire, my uncle lived above us and listened to oldies radio. So that was Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry. My mother had a great record collection, Stones, Beatles, Dylan, you know, Pete Seeger, Aretha Franklin. When Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen came along, it was like all that music was fused in artists who we could call our own.

• 9:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  And you, you felt that even as a kid? You knew that as a kid, yeah?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny how like the fight for identities, I think it starts earlier than we think.

• 9:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you mean, the fight for identity starts earlier?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  You want to show up at school with some sense of who you are. And when you can find music that feels like yours, I think nothing serves that identity building quite like music does.

• 9:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I've heard you talk about your family a little bit, and it sounds like it was one of those kind of cool Yankee, New England, arty, ragged at the edges families. But then years later, I heard you mention that you felt like an unparented creature.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, my father I met like 10 times. I don't know, I didn't count them. He is, he's like, I don't know, eight years. But that absence was a formative absence in the home I grew up in. So, you know, my mother was a single parent, three kids. There was a lot that wasn't going to happen. Some needs weren't going to be met. And so we got, we got filled up on the culture side. On the emotional development side, it wasn't always as abundant.

• 10:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so how did you end up in a band with your brother then?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  My mother encouraged the three of us to apply to boarding schools, you know, to go after a better education than Concord, New Hampshire could provide. But we would need to get scholarships. And we all did that. So I went to Phillips Andover Academy. And two times, the school asked me not to return by formal letter.

• 10:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  And I was like a boomerang, I kept coming back. And I graduated. In my senior year, though, the Del Fuegos were playing quite a lot of shows in Boston. And I had a black ski mask and black pants and a long-sleeved black shirt. So I could evade campus security. So I'd go out, meet a townie, drive into Boston, stay up all night, creep back in the morning, and go to class.

• 11:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you play any music at this point?

• 11:20Speaker 01

  I played the record player. I'm not even sure that qualifies as an instrument.

• 11:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think it doesn't, actually, yeah. But did you play it well?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  I think I played it well enough for Dan to ask me to join his band.

• 11:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  It's a very generous, brotherly thing to do in retrospect. I know that you and your brother went through many phases. I think you're in a good phase now, right? So it's a little easier?

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, check in next week.

• 11:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  But can I just tell you, like, I think if you look back at the history of bands, that the number of brothers who want to keep a brother out of the band is way more than ones who want to let one in.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the ones who let one in, then they want to keep the brother out.

• 11:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. Also, to want a brother in who doesn't really play music, yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Well...

• 12:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  I must say, I'm just saying, you must have been a real badass. Like, they need you in the band even though...

• 12:11Speaker 01

  I've thought about this for decades. So I did have something that I think the others didn't have, and it was just in the spirit department. Not to say they didn't have a spirit of their own. But if anyone was gonna burn the house down, it was gonna be Warren. And that's good for rock and roll.

• 12:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  It is good for rock and roll, yeah. So what kind of guitar player were you in the first year, let's say?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Not much of one. I mean, and I've been consistent with that. You know, when Dan said, he asked me to join, I said yes, and then I asked what instrument? And he said guitar. So we went shopping, I bought a Guild Semi-Hollow, a Silvertone amp.

• 12:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  Like, you're one of the first boy bands. You're just assembled by some outer intelligence. You're like Menudo, you're like the...

• 13:06Speaker 01

  I like to think more like the Sex Pistols, who were a boy band.

• 13:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Exactly. Put together by Malcolm, right?

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. But we went out, we shopped, we got a guitar, and then we went to the record store, and he got the Rolling Stones now and said, "Go listen to this and try to play it." And there was really, that two guitar sound was what we were after.

• 13:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Who'd you like more in that band, Keith or Brian?

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Brian was such a tragic figure that I didn't want that. I already felt like a nascent tragic figure, and I didn't want to attach myself to that, but I had blonde hair, and it kept happening that I was associated with that. But Brian was so much more than a guitar player that I didn't identify with that.

• 13:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  What did you guys fight about in your band? Because that's kind of what bands...

• 14:01Speaker 01

  We didn't fight at that time. I mean, we really didn't. Something was unfolding. They put out a single before I joined the band, and, you know, 2,000 copies. And Robert Plant got one, he talked about the band and Rolling Stone. Sam Phillips got a copy, he also talked about it in Rolling Stone. And we were all watching it unfold. And that bound us as a unit. And our point of view on it was a shared point of view. We ate the same food, we used the same bong, you know, we listened to the same records, we definitely drove in the same shitty vehicles.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  You were a part of a gang, and it was the best time.

• 14:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  I liked hanging out with your band. You guys were a fun band to hang out with. I think we played with you, I don't know, four, five, 10 times.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 14:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  I was really impressed by how hard you lived and how well you played, because we couldn't do that. We were relatively...

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, we recognized that you guys were lightweights.

• 15:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  I do remember, I liked swapping music. I remember I got some really good music from your brother Dan. Did you listen to Sill Johnson?

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sill Johnson, I remember absolutely. Yeah, no, there was a lot of, you could still forage in record stores. So there's a lot, yeah.

• 15:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  I feel like there was a lot of trading going on.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Well, your cassettes, and we didn't know what underworld you went to to find this stuff.

• 15:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, Rolling Stones stuff.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Well, you gave us, there were Petty outtakes? And when we went to Petty and said, "We love Parade of Loons." He looked at us like, "Where did you find that?" And then, of course, the Keith Richards tape of him playing in his hotel room after he'd been busted for heroin in Toronto, I think it was. That one never left me, and I went and I learned a couple songs from it, but...

• 16:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  What'd you learn?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  I learned Apartment Number Nine and We Had It All. And We Had It All was the one. And that song, you know, it's been covered by Tina Turner, Dolly Parton.

• 16:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Waylon Jennings.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Waylon, it's incredible.

• 16:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Willie and Keith played it not long ago.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Warren Zane's played in the Del Fuegos for five years. They had a minor hit with a song called "I Still Want You" from their second record. They made it to MTV, they made a beer commercial, and they toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  He sang on one of our records. Wasn't too much after that that I quit the band.

• 17:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Want to talk about quitting?

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a simple story, and I think older siblings sometimes have a hard time seeing younger siblings as something other than a younger sibling. And I think my brother, though he recognized my spirit and wanted that in the band, didn't want to share the creative work.

• 17:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  You wanted to get songs on the album and stuff like that?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I was writing. I showed him things, and, you know, his last comment to me before I quit was, "You know, I think you're there, I think the songs are equal to mine, and you gotta go form your own band." And I felt so betrayed. And that's all he needed to say for me, to say, "I'm done, I'm gone. If you can send me back to square one and not see the investment I made in this band and how it served you, I'm out of here." And what I wasn't thinking was, I was going to nothing.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  You know, it was really, psychically, for a young person, it was brutal. And I was still out in Los Angeles, and it was right in that time where Tom Petty and his family had a Christmas party. Their home had been burned down, it was an arson case, and they were living in Charo's house in Beverly Hills. True story, and...

• 18:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  I don't know why that's funny, it just is.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  There's something about the cultural mix.

• 18:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  Also, just the idea of Charo having a house. I imagined her, like, floating down in a cloud of something awesome.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  I always remember there was, like, a Picasso print of Don Quixote and Sancho Ponz up, and that just always stayed with me. But at that party, Tom and his wife Jane gave me this Beatles magazine as a Christmas present.

• 19:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, that's nice. Oh, Meet the Beatles?

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's from the year I was born, and I have so few artifacts from my life, but I went to Jane Petty and I said, "Jane, you gave me a Beatles magazine for Christmas, and I know there's a Beatle in this building." Because the second he came in the front door, whether you saw it or not, it's the Beatle power, you know?

• 19:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Come on.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  People are like, "George, George Harrison, just shut up, George, George." And so I knew it, and I went to Jane, and she said, "Come to here." Took me down this hallway, opened the door, kind of prodded me in the family of a push. And I'm holding this magazine, and she said, "Warren's got something impending."

• 19:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Impending.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  That was the word. And she shut the door, and I'm suddenly in a room, and it's Tom's office, and behind the desk is George Harrison playing a guitar, and to one side, there's Tom playing guitar, there's Jeff Lynne, you got three of the Traveling Wilburys, weeks before they became a band, and then Mike Campbell, Tom Petty's guitar player. And it almost appears that I've run into the room.

• 20:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  With a Beatles magazine? And George Harrison sitting there playing guitar?

• 20:31Speaker 01

  And it was the 80s, and there was some overindulgence going on in the territory of fashion, and I embodied it.

• 20:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yours? Oh, I thought you were saying them. I thought you were saying they were overindulging in drugs. You're saying you were overindulging in...

• 20:48Speaker 01

  In fashion.

• 20:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  What are you wearing here?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  I had this embroidered jacket that was very floral, you know, I was wearing a...

• 20:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is it all the way down to your boots?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't even need to go into it, just imagine the worst. But long hair, you know, long blonde hair. They stop playing, and George Harrison says, "It's Brian Jones, back from the dead." And then he starts playing a song about a dandy, and everybody's laughing. And I'm standing there, holding this Beatles magazine, as a Beatle makes other people laugh at me. He gets to the end of the song, and I just put the magazine forward, he takes it, and he signs it for every Beatle, because they learned one another's signature.

• 21:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's what I'm looking at here?

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he did each person...

• 21:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Walk me through that.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  It says to Warren, "You have something impending."

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Good luck in the future. I do appreciate it. George Harrison. And then after he did it, I'm like, he's signing for the others.

• 21:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. And he just signs their name? Or does he write a note from John and Paul?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  No, no, he just signs their names. And then he gives it back to me.

• 22:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  And what do you, what's his affect now? Is he?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  He is.

• 22:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Does he, does he know that you're a young person to be respected?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  No. He is making his pals laugh. And he, how many things has he signed? Let alone, you know, how many has he signed for Ringo Starr? But after he handed it back, I was, I was standing there with it and, and Tom Petty was beginning to end really kind to me. And he, he, he saw my social discomfort. And said, it's okay, you know, you, you can hang out. Like, and I said, no, I can't. And then I left the room with my Beatles magazine that I treasure.

• 22:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  And you saved.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Today.

• 22:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Amazing. It's amazing. I mean, I can't imagine what that feels like for you because it's like going from inside to outside to inside to outside, back and forth.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, you consider yourself in a band, some fundamental part of that organism. And then suddenly you're told it can function just as well without you. And if you're young, um, this is, this is, this is a psychic rug being pulled out from underneath you.

• 23:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  And it wasn't, it wasn't a happy landing. I remember going to, a little bit after this Christmas party, going over to Petty's house and I'm sitting in his office with him. And we were just smoking some of my mother's pot and.

• 23:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Which is called what?

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Conquered Grape.

• 23:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Just for home use? She didn't, she wasn't a dealer?

• 23:52Speaker 01

  No, she, she wasn't a dealer, but when we were on tour with Tom Petty, he finally said to us, I can't keep coming to your dressing room to smoke your pot. Can you connect me with your dealer? And we said, well, it's our mother.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  And he said, next time she's in Los Angeles, please have her come out to the house.

• 24:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh huh.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  And she did that.

• 24:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  She did.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he, he knew kind of what we came from, but, but that afternoon at his house, it was just the two of us in his office and there I was, a guy who was no longer in a band. And he was asking me like, well, what are you gonna do next? And I was, I still had some bravado in me, enough bravado to say, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put a band together and I'm gonna show him, meaning my brother. And Petty looked at me and said, Los Angeles isn't where bands come from. This is where they come to. But they come from other places and you gotta go back home. And it was not what I wanted to hear. And

• 25:03Speaker 01

  he was right.

• 25:10Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 25:54Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 26:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  I remember being shocked and thrilled years ago to hear that Warren Zanes was still alive. Because if I'd had to put money on it, when I knew you, when we were kids playing in bands, I didn't really know how you ended with your band. I left my band.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  But the Warren I knew then was a raw nerve, kind of, is the way I would think of you.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  And so I was thrilled to learn that not only were you alive, but you'd gotten a PhD.

• 26:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  And were working at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a VP of something impressive sounding? So how did that happen briefly?

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Well, I'm still in touch with that kid. He's still alive. He's here with us today. But yes, I was walking close to the edge of the cliff, not knowing I was close to the edge of the cliff. And I don't even know how to describe the trouble I was in, but I was in trouble. And, uh, not through my own good planning. I eventually pivoted from music to college with the intention of only going for two classes.

• 27:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  You get four degrees, I think. You get a bachelor's degree, two masters and a PhD, correct?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  Seems like a little overkill, but okay.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  I liked school.

• 27:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, you did.

• 27:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you think it would save you? What, what did you see in college?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  I was in, living in New Orleans and I was repairing bicycles. And so, you know, there I was repairing a Schwinn and it had only been a year since we'd played Madison Square Garden with Tom Petty. And I'm listening to the radio and the first single from Full Moon Fever came on and it was, I Won't Back Down. And it just was the sound of a man who had reinvented himself again. Yeah. He obviously hadn't settled into anyone's idea of who Tom Petty was. He went exploring for the next version.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  And it, the message to me was, you damn well better go explore for the next version of yourself.

• 28:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  In 2015, Warren Zanes published Petty, the biography. Eight years later, he published Deliver Me From Nowhere, The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. In the 2025 film version of that book, Jeremy Allen White played Bruce. I asked Warren what it was about Nebraska that captured his attention.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, Nebraska, can I pull out my copy?

• 28:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  I mean, this is the copy that I got at Pitchfork Records in Concord, New Hampshire in, in 82. And I, and I took it back to boarding school. And I was, I was listening to it the night I got busted with pot that my mother had grown and a case of beer on a Monday night. I'm listening to Nebraska and, and the house counselor comes in and I still graduated. But I formed this relationship with Nebraska that was, uh, it was slow. My first response to the record was disappointment. I was a Bruce Springsteen fan.

• 29:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  What kind of fan were you? What were your favorite?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  It was album number two that like penetrated our household.

• 29:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wild and Innocent, yes.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Wild and Innocent, the East Street Shuffle. And, uh, there was something about the sense of place. But you know, you listen to Fourth of July, Asbury Park and you, it's like the band on their second record. There's such a strong sense of place and that's what hooked me. You know, there are characters, there were conflicts, but it was the sense of place.

• 30:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. So this, this record, Nebraska, sounds very much like a place, but such a different, dark, unusual place. So how did you receive that?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Well, it, it was so.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  You know, in reviews, Rolling Stone used the word "shock" to describe this. And that was the right word. It felt like a shock. It felt, um, it felt like what it is. Unfinished, raw, imperfect. Uh, there were lyrics repeated in songs, like he hadn't finished writing. And it just didn't make sense. You know, this guy had just had his first number one record. It had his first top 10 single. And then he made something that couldn't even be played on the radio. And so, I didn't get it. But, I got him. So I stuck with it until it became my favorite record.

• 31:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you really, seriously?

• 31:07Speaker 01

  It just took time. And I think, you know, there I was in school, like my first meaningful writing teacher.

• 31:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  But when you say "stuck with it," until it became your favorite record, that's years and years, I gather. Yes?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Uh, well, I, so I had a writing teacher named Ward Just.

• 31:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, Ward Just, great novelist.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, uh, he--

• 31:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  He was your high school writing teacher?

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Short story and novella.

• 31:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's pretty good.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty good. And, and he was like, "You gotta read Raymond Carver." So, it's like trying to understand short fiction. And then you're listening to Highway Patrolman? And it's like, "That's some of the best short fiction I've ever read." Like, this guy is a storyteller. I started to kinda get it. And it informed my listening retroactively. I went back to earlier records to kinda watch the writer emerge.

• 32:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  It's one thing to write a book about the most intense Bruce Springsteen record. It's even more intense to do it with Bruce. So, how did that happen? This goes back to how Warren rehabilitated himself after getting pushed out of Del Fuego's.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  I took a lot of art history classes for all the wrong reasons. Which was, I just, I didn't wanna be in another museum standing next to an attractive young woman with nothing to say in front of a painting or a sculpture.

• 32:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  That sounds like a great reason to me, but--

• 32:36Speaker 01

  You can, you can stop at one art history class and it'll help you. I took a lot more. I had a double major without knowing it. And, and then that, that knowledge base just kind of settled in me. Uh, and, and yes, I liked going to museums a lot more. My sister's a painter, I understood her better. But years later, I'm going to have my first interview for the Deliver Me From Nowhere book, and it's at John Landau's house.

• 33:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  John Landau, we should say, is Bruce's longtime manager. What's a word to describe his relationship with Bruce?

• 33:11Speaker 01

  He, you know, he came in the door as, you know, he was, he was a journalist at Rolling Stone. But he started producing records, which, that is a leap few make.

• 33:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  But just tell me the story of you going to Landau's house and how your art education stood you well.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I knock on the door. John comes. And as I'm taking off my Carhartt jacket, I see a painting and I point at it and I said, "Is that Caro?" And John looked at me and said, "That is Caro." And I'm in the foyer. I get the jacket off, I come a few steps in. I pointed at another painting and I said, "Is that Corbe?" And at that point, John yelled to his wife and said, "Come down here. There's someone from the music business who knows what's on the walls." So we first just looked at art for like an hour.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  We just walked through his collection, which is, I've never seen anything like it in a private residence.

• 34:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  What makes John John is, his esteem for Donatello and Gobertie uh, is equal to his esteem for Heatwave. He can listen to a Motown record and say--

• 34:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  It's a good record.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  This is, this has everything the Sistine ceiling has.

• 34:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  It's something that plays on the emotion, plays on the intellect, and has the capacity to change you as a person. I feel like those are the measures when you're looking at art. And that's how John walks through the world.

• 34:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so tell us how the Bruce Springsteen book comes to be. And why it's a book about Nebraska. I, I don't know if that's because of you or him. I assume it's you. I assume you came to Bruce and explained your relationship with that unusual record. And he heard there an acknowledgement that most people wouldn't have really been able to have. And that that appealed to him. That's the way I reckon it, but tell me what actually happened.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Well, I think his, his memoir, Born to Run, is one of the great rock books. But in it, Nebraska goes by in just a couple pages. And then much more space is given to this breakdown. To something that happens after Nebraska. And my deeper feeling was there was some connection between the making of Nebraska and that breakdown. And when I went into the interview, that's what I wanted to talk to him about was, yeah, I didn't want a strict causal relationship, but I wanted to see how the one led to the next.

• 36:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you float this idea, how does he respond?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  God, it was just so interesting how he responded. Cause it wasn't a simple sign-off. Like, he thought about this and he, he's like, he, he knew where he was at when he came off the River Tour. He knew that he was in some kind of trouble. He knew that this record was about a time of trouble in his life that was affecting his adult experiences. He was having trouble staying in relationships. He was worried that he might not be a father, might not be in a marriage. What was wrong? And he kinda went back to what today we would call a, a childhood trauma. And, you know, that's the kind of--

• 36:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  The childhood trauma being what exactly?

• 36:53Speaker 01

  The way he describes it is, uh, when he was born, they went to live with his paternal grandparents. And his dad, Douglas, had a sister who was killed on her bicycle around age six, seven. And the parents never really talked about it. You know, there was a picture of this girl who had died on her tricycle over the television. Kind of haunting the scene. And what the grandparents did with Bruce as the first grandchild was to withhold any discipline. And he could do as he wanted. And in his words, he said,

• 37:35Speaker 01

  "It was the making of me, and it was the destruction of me." And that's the period that he goes back to, to find the songs of Nebraska.

• 37:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  How much time did you spend with Bruce to write your book?

• 37:50Speaker 01

  It was really that day. And, uh, he gave me what I needed.

• 37:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  And then my first two readers were John Landau. And John said, "Send it to Bruce." And Bruce was my second reader. And I got an email from Bruce and, you know, it was, you know, one of those things you save. And at the end, he said, "How can I help you?" And I, I said, wrote back, said, "I cannot find the house where you recorded Nebraska." You can find any Bruce Springsteen house online, but not that one. And a few days later, I got a no caller ID phone call. And, uh, it was Bruce and he was standing in the room where he recorded Nebraska. And he said, "I haven't been here in 40 years,

• 38:42Speaker 01

  but the guy who owns it is the one who rented to me."

• 38:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, no kidding.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  He said, "You can come out." And--

• 38:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Still had the orange shag carpet in there?

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Had the orange shag carpets. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and so, you know, you, you know what it's like writing a book. It's a solitary affair. And in this case, I was writing a book about another man's solitary affair. And suddenly, I'm stepping into the room that I've been writing about for a couple of years.

• 39:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  With Bruce?

• 39:13Speaker 01

  With the guy--

• 39:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Who made the record in that room.

• 39:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  He asked you to take a picture of him in there, didn't he?

• 39:19Speaker 01

  He, uh, for a moment, I, I was probably levitating. And, uh, you know, he, he found a way to get a man back onto earth. He just kinda put his phone in my stomach and said, "Take my picture."

• 39:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, I think for anybody watching this, you know, they hear about your life with the Del Fuego's, you becoming an academic, becoming a music writer. They hear about writing, um, a book about this dark, private record, Nebraska, and Bruce Springsteen's making of it. And I think the one thing nobody's thinking is, "Oh, that should be a movie." But it's Bruce Springsteen. So yeah, maybe it should be a movie.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  The movie happened blissfully fast. Because it's, it's, there's an intensity to these unexpecteds in life.

• 40:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  So how, how involved were you and how involved was Bruce in the making of the movie?

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Um, Bruce was on the set a lot.

• 40:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Where is it shot?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Uh, mostly in Jersey.

• 40:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  On purpose, so Bruce could be there?

• 40:21Speaker 01

  On purpose, um, I mean, I'll say this. At one point, someone who was working on budgets pointed to the number of dollars that would be saved if it was shot in Pittsburgh. And Bruce caught wind of this and just said, "You're gonna make a movie about Bruce Springsteen in Pittsburgh?" And that was the last thing he heard of Pittsburgh.

• 40:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. It's good to be Bruce Springsteen.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  It, it had to be Jersey.

• 40:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  It, it had to, it had to touch that soil.

• 40:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  And--

• 40:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  We should say you're in Jersey also, so that's not valueless.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  And the first day of shooting was so close to my house that I could walk there.

• 41:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Seriously?

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I walk, you know, the sun's just coming up. My book is being turned into a movie. I start seeing trucks. I see all these people that I don't know. I walk onto a set, there are even more people I don't know. Then I see a row of director's chairs. And there's one with the name Bruce Springsteen, one with the name John Landau, and then one with my name misspelled.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  And it brought me like right where I needed to be. Like, they misspelled my name. It's on the cover of the book.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  And I told my-

• 41:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did they misspell your first or your last name?

• 41:51Speaker 01

  My last name. There's no S on it. It just said Warren Zane.

• 41:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Sounds like a cowboy.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  And the person responsible for this was horrified. And I said, "You cannot change it." If this guy gets too big for his britches, we all have trouble.

• 42:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  How'd you like the movie?

• 42:14Speaker 01

  I feel really proud of the movie. Like, John Landau will still say, "A movie got made about what, up to Tunnel of Love, remains his worst-selling record."

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Like, what a thing. But Bruce says, "Of Nebraska, it still may be my best."

• 42:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you want to write a full bio of Bruce?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  I'm writing one.

• 42:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, you are?

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  That was easy. I'm glad I could give you a good idea.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Well, I haven't announced it.

• 42:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, like, your access in this case is, couldn't be better. It's remarkable. And it's earned. I don't mean to imply it's not earned. But how do you think about balancing access with anything you want to write about the guy?

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think the code is, and I haven't, there is no written code, but the code for the biographer, I think, should be, you have to be willing to forfeit the relationship with the subject. At a certain point, you're there with the subject, you're doing interviews, you are collaborating with them, but there's a turn in the road where you're working for the audience.

• 43:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you think you're going to be able to do that with Bruce?

• 43:32Speaker 01

  I think he has a kind of sophistication about his own story that allows peaks and valleys. A lot of artists don't.

• 43:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  You know, I'm sure that Bruce Springsteen has inspired, like, a million people to start playing music and to join bands. But I don't know if I ever told you this, but, you know, when we were at that club in Greensboro where you guys were on tour, and he popped in and played encores with you, and I was just the lucky witness to that. And what I heard that night backstage at the Rhinoceros Club was that if I knew what this is what it's really like to be a rock and roll star, I'm not so sure I would have wanted to do it. That's the Bruce message that I took away that night. In my band, we were just getting ready to, like, sign a record deal.

• 44:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  And we did. And then like a year and a half later, for a variety of reasons, I decided to quit. Quit playing the band, quit playing music. And so I feel like I'm the one guy that Bruce Springsteen talked into not starting a band, quitting a band, so-

• 44:44Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 44:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  So if you ever, you know, next time you talk to him, tell him I'm very grateful, honestly, because I loved it, but it wasn't the long-term path for me.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, he doesn't tell pretty stories. Like, he's not interested in that. And his ambivalence about success has been a constant. And I think he's found a lot more comfort with it. But in that time, he, you know, born in the USA, the ascendancy that he experienced after Nebraska, he really, a lot of the book is about him readying himself for that, getting the support he needs, going back. You know, they say, "If you don't deal with your past, your past will deal with you." And he made sure his past wasn't going to deal with him. He readied himself.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Oh, look who's here.

• 45:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  How are you?

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Greetings.

• 45:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I quit my band and became a writer. Warren got pushed out of his band by his brother Dan. But time can do interesting and nice things. The Del Fuegos, including Warren, have recently gotten back together to play some shows. They were rehearsing out in New Jersey, near where Warren lives, so I went to see them there.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  I mean, it's been 40 years.

• 46:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. But you guys played much between now and then?

• 46:16Speaker 01

  I think like two times.

• 46:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  So this is a big deal. It's fun. I mean, fun. It's a fun thing. It's awesome.

• 46:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  After rehearsal, I sat down with Dan, and I asked him what he makes of his little brother's unlikely career turnaround.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  I'm just so proud of him. It's been incredible. And I know it wasn't easy. I mean, it's a blessing to see anybody succeed in life and to succeed in showbiz and to create a space for themselves where they can really be themselves and be creative and also reach people, you know? And he was able to do all that. I think it was a bumpy road in that a lot of the times that we knew you, just because of the usual, you know?

• 47:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  I don't know if getting wasted all day, every day brings out the best in people, but it didn't bring out the best in me.

• 47:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  How badly did Warren want to get his songs in the band back then? Because he told us that was the reason, but I didn't know. When you're the little brother, sometimes you don't know how to really ask for what you want. So I always wondered whether he maybe, like, you'd written songs, you'd say to Dan, like, "I have this song." But sometimes you have to say, "I have a song and I'm bringing it in today," you know? So I was curious how that worked out.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  I think he was able to ask. I think he was able to ask. I wasn't able to hear it, you know?

• 47:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Because why?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's threatening if you're in that position and you're used to that role in the band. I think you don't want to be, you know, then all of a sudden, now you have to share all that stuff. You know, I think that's a tough-

• 47:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. You all got through it and kind of mastered it, it seems, yeah?

• 47:56Speaker 01

  But I will say, the distance between our vocations

• 48:04Speaker 01

  made things easier. And from that time forward, Dan's been one of my early readers on every book except the first, I think. It's been just support. And that, too, probably made it easier to come back into the band where I don't get my fair share and never have, you know?

• 48:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Later that night, Warren and Dan and the rest of the Del Fuegos took the stage in Montclair, New Jersey. There were a lot of people who remembered them. But I think the best part was that they remembered themselves.

• 48:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  The story of Warren Zanes is a story of flaws and of flaws overcome. Mistakes made, mistakes acknowledged, and mistakes overcome. Back in my apartment, he had offered a very Warren Zanes take on mistakes.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  All mistakes are okay.

• 49:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you like about mistakes?

• 49:06Speaker 01

  In the best case, when they happen, they reinforce meaning. Like, they're actually not mistakes.

• 49:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  How do you mean?

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Meaning, when a voice goes slightly out of pitch,

• 49:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  it's probably happening because of the emotion of the lyric.

• 49:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  And if you fix that, it may be better, but you have to weigh it and make room for the error.

• 49:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thank you for checking out this episode of Better in Person with Warren Zanes. I will say, the video version has some stuff that didn't make the audio version, so you might want to check that out. You can watch it on the Freakonomics YouTube channel or look for Better in Person on Apple Podcasts. Our email is [email protected]. We will be back soon, right here, with more Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself, and, if you can, someone else, too.

• 50:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Warren Zanes, everybody. I think we're done.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 50:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  One person left in the room. This is like a lot of our early gigs. You start with like 12.

• 50:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thanks again to ChatGPT for sponsoring today's episode of Better in Person. ChatGPT can help teams move from goals to real outcomes. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today.