To bring it back to rock 'n roll influences, when I was writing
  Neuromancer, I'm pretty sure I was listening to Springsteen's Nebraska and
  thinking "OK, it's not hotrods, it's computers."
William Gibson

I grew up in a shotgun row/ sliding down the hill /out front were the big
  machines /steel and rusty now, I guess
Kim Gordon


springsteen i'm on fire cutting slack down the line from atlantic city
   somewhere waits a girl wearing makeup & pretty shoes let's call her betty
   lost in a sprawl of her own devising threads of knotted hair & a wow!
   expression

betty's waiting & bruce doesn't show up he's told her to put that jacket
   on because the long sprawl nights are getting cold she's beside a railway
   track disused since the whole world went cable wobbly old lines rusted no
   caboose for who knows how many years

bruce where are you man she needs you badly now the sprawl's got into the
   water supply there & folks is worried about chlorine again bruce get your
   arse in here now & take that tape out of your back pocket time to play it
   man don't be sly

there's a girl waiting outside in the cold for you let's call her betty
   she's standing next to the CYPHERPUNK graffiti having just finished her
   shift at the diner & she's wondering whether you'd be up for a drive down by
   the old wooden bridge remember the place you used to go when she was your
   high school sweetheart

she's still got the ring and your last payslip you left it in the envelope
   when you bolted with the money that was going to be for her college
   education you had it all figured out she'd continue working her shifts &
   you'd send her little payslips to let her know you were saving up for that
   mansion on the hill

but then something happened bruce the little payslips stopped coming the
   bed got cold she got sad she began to forget the feeling of your stubble
   against her shoulder shunted off to another yard now even the ring slipped
   off her finger because her hands were too cold in that cold single bed in
   her uncle's cold house

she's never been on an aeroplane bruce but she's telling everyone she
   meets that you're coming back for her when the light burns bright in august
   no she hasn't started walking down that road yet she's still waiting for the
   chiming guitars to kick in and that bloodcurdling scream to issue from your
   mouth bruce

the radio relay towers send the love buzz down through the aerial & out
   the tiny speaker now the sound gushes into her pelvic region broadcasting
   its own signals uncannily 80s & the fog rolls in bringing rumours of the
   closure of the very last automobile factory steel mill timber yard &
   nomination for presidency

bruce why did you do that why didn't you give the republicans a murder
   song instead too late now for the forty one shots they've already been fired
   the smoke's cleared leaving a bleak industrial landscape coloured metallic
   blue complete with one or two dogs & a telegraph pole tilted at forty five
   degrees

here comes betty again with that make-up on & hair real pretty & bruce is
   singing maybe every thing that dies some day comes back but she's gone bruce
   she's lost in the sprawl of smoke your cigarette sends pluming into the
   atmosphere as the car blasts straight towards