A Hollywood leading man spent months learning The Boss’s distinctive vocals in a new biopic
Every painstaking note Jeremy Allen White sang as he strove to perfect Bruce Springsteen’s rasping tone made him certain who was The Boss. Aping Springsteen’s genius for his role in the new biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere, was always set to be a daunting task.
But the actor, who first found fame playing juvenile delinquent Lip Gallagher in the US version of Shameless, had not bargained on the Born to Run star shadowing him 24/7 on set. He laughs: “It was very hard. Especially because he’s sitting there the whole time.
“I had not had a lot of experience – or any experience – singing, playing guitar, any of it, before I took on the role. So that was daunting, to say the least, in the beginning. I had a lot of time, but I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked. You never do, you know? I had about six months to kind of learn.
“The chords are pretty simple. There’s not many of them. And a lot of the songs are in the same (chord). Yeah. But the singing was a gamble.”
Six months may sound to the uninitiated like a very long time. But there is a reason why Springsteen’s rugged, raspy, heartland voice has helped him sell 150 million records … he is pretty much inimitable.
To get somewhere close, White, 34, hired Hollywood vocal coach Eric Vetro to knock his vocal chords into shape. He says: “He helped Austin Butler with the Elvis movie and he helped Timothy Chalamet with the Bob Dylan movie. He’s kind of the ‘go-to’, you know?
“And he works with a lot of amazing, like vocalists and real singers and performers.” Worried if he could even sing, White continues: “Then you try to find a little bit of that rasp and then you start messing around with that nasal sound, that New Jersey phrasing.
“I really have to give Eric credit because he was there to say ‘this is how you sing a song. This is how you make it sound good.’ When I finally sounded like Bruce, that was like a breakthrough.”
And, according to The Boss himself, White – who will be appearing with Springsteen on BBC1 ’s Graham Norton show on October 17 – hit all the right notes, as he recreated his trademark New Jersey blue collar sound. He says: “I remember Bruce was great the first time he heard one of my pre-records, because he was like, ‘You sound like me, but you’re singing the song, you know? And you’re making the song your own. You’ve got your connection with the song”.
Audiences can see if they agree when Deliver Me From Nowhere is released in cinemas on October 24. The film shows Springsteen crafting his 1982 ‘left turn’ album Nebraska, after finding Billboard success with his seminal 1980 album The River.
Based on a book by Warren Zanes, it dramatises Springsteen’s journey to create the album, as he accelerates towards global stardom, which struck in 1984 when his multi million selling album Born in the USA exploded, with hits like Dancing in the Dark.
Springsteen was keen to ensure the movie was an accurate portrayal of this time. But, after showing his faith in White’s singing, the actor says it felt like Springsteen was giving him “permission” to keep going with his interpretation of his life.
In fact, the stars’ backgrounds are not a million miles apart. While Springsteen was born in New Jersey, White grew up in nearby Brooklyn – where he was teased onto the stage, aged around 14, by his parents, who were both former actors.
White, who was trained in ballet, tap and jazz as a child, remembers: “My mom grew up in North Carolina, went to North Carolina School of the Arts and studied acting there. But she moved to New York in the late 70s, early 80s, with the big dreams and my pops too. He grew up outside of Philadelphia and he moved there to pursue acting as well. I grew up in a household that was very supportive of the arts, the passion there, you know what I mean?”
White says he owes his success to a drama teacher, who drew the best out of him as a teenager. He says: “This teacher taught at a school in Brooklyn and I joined the class. And yeah, it was just an improv sort of exercise and in a black box, you know.
“I just remember the feeling of being able to focus, which was very hard for me as a young person and still is. But I remember the attention. I felt the eyes on me. And I felt people were waiting and like connected and wanted to see what was going to happen next. And I was like, ‘Oh, this is pretty cool.’ That space always feels insane. It was my teacher who planted the seed.”
Since his breakthrough in Shameless, White has established himself as one of Hollywood’s rising stars to watch, thanks to his role in the Hulu series The Bear, playing troubled New York chef Carmen Berzatto.
Said to be based loosely on the career of British Michelin star-winning chef Marco Pierre-White, the role won him two Critics Choice Television Awards, as well as three Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild gongs and two Emmys. Then, two years ago, White finally made it onto the big screen, playing the late American pro-wrestler Kerry Von Erich in the biographical sports film The Iron Claw.
And just last year, White graced billboards worldwide when he became global ambassador for Calvin Klein underwear, modelling the brand’s 2024 collection and generating a staggering $12.7m in advertising revenue. Next year looks to be even brighter for the actor, with a role in the Star Wars movie The Mandalorian & Grogu.
Attributing his growing success to his enthusiasm for learning, he continues: “I had a lot of energy as a kid and, like I said, it was very hard for me to focus. “My parents put me through everything. I was wrestling and I was playing soccer, I was playing baseball and doing all the stuff. They were like ‘We got to run this kid out.’
“It was fun. And it was that again, it was ‘eyes on you’. So, anyway, I think I was lucky in the start because I was like, ‘whatever, this is fun.’ And that’s the way to approach this thing. But the older you get, it becomes, ‘Oh, maybe I’m doing this now’, or ‘this is how I make a living’, or ‘this is how people are paying attention’.
For now, his career seems to be achieving perfect harmonies – that is, unless you ask him to sing the Springsteen classic Born in the USA. He laughs: “Doing the Bruce movie wasn’t easy, but I’ll remember recording Born in the USA for the rest of my life. I lost my voice entirely. I needed a nap and I saw Bruce shortly after that recording.
“I just stopped speaking for a couple of days and then my voice started to come back, and I loved the sound of it. I had this real rasp and I was like, ‘Oh, man, how can I capture this or recapture this?’
“I was waking up in the morning and I was screaming into a pillow to try and recapture like a little bit of that rasp, but I think my neighbours were getting nervous and I knew that I couldn’t go on that way.”
With about a week left before shooting on the biopic began, Springsteen had a documentary, Road Diary, coming out on Hulu and was at an event nearby.
White recalls: “I saw Bruce after that. I didn’t have any voice and he said,’What’d you do today?’ I said, ‘I recorded Born in the USA.’ And he said, ‘yeah, that sounds about right!’”
