When Bruce Springsteen was making Nebraska, the time and the tunes were characterised by darkness. It was crafted during a period of personal struggle, and it reflects in the songs, but also reflects in the material that inspired it.

To the outside world, the Springsteen of the early 1980s should have been untouchable. As the mid-1970s drew to the end of the decade, he was on a golden run. Born To Run established him as the new great American artist, and then from that point on, album after album, single after single, it was only growing.

His 1980 record, The River, was his most commercially successful yet and sent him off on a massive tour with major media attention. It might seem like a dream, but as we hear time and time again, things are more complex than that.

Instead, the attention left Springsteen struggling. He was dealing with what he’d later call his “first real major depression”. Right as he began working on the album, he remembers stepping into a therapist’s office for the first time and simply sobbing. Then, when he hit the studio, working all on his own without his usual band, he felt the album and the emotions “spewing like an oil spill… [with the] black sludge threatening to smother”.

It was a dark time, and as is often the case in these moments, music became a companion. Sure, Springsteen had his own songs that he was writing to be there alongside him. But his mood also reflected in his playlist as he started to get really into one band in particular.

Around that time, he discovered Suicide, a more avant-garde outfit. They’re not the typical type of band that anyone might assume classic rocker Springsteen would be into. Instead, Suicide were somewhere between being early punks and even earlier electronic artists. Their work is a far cry from the fist-pumping crowd rousers The Boss makes, but at this time, he loved it.

“They had one of the most amazing songs I ever heard,” he said to Rolling Stone in 1984 as he reflected on the music that inspired Nebraska. Picking out ‘Frankie Teardrop’, it becomes even more telling for the dark headspace that the singer was in and was working from as the Suicide track tells the story of a man who kills his wife, his child and then himself, with horrifying sonics.

“Oh, my God! That’s one of the most amazing records I think I ever heard,” he said, adding, “I really love that record.”

Clearly in the mood to engage with the darker side of art as he made his own gloomy record, Suicide’s own brand of morbid influenced him greatly both in content and style, encouraging him to go beyond his classic sound.

“[Suicide] are underground masters,” he said years later, remaining an enduring fan of the band as he campaigned, “They should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”.