Live/1975–85

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Live/1975–85
Live/1975–85 cover
Live album by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Released November 10, 1986
Recorded October 18, 1975 – September 30, 1985 at various locations
Genre Rock
Length 216:13
Label Columbia
Producer Jon Landau, Chuck Plotkin, Bruce Springsteen
Professional reviews
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band chronology
Born in the U.S.A.
(1984)		 Live/1975–85
(1986)		 Tunnel of Love
(1987)

Live/1975–85 is a live album by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. It consists of 40 tracks recorded live at a series of concerts from 1975-1985. It was released as a box set with either five vinyl records, three cassettes, or three CDs. There was also a record club-only release which came on three 8-track cartridges, which is extremely hard to find.

Contents

[edit] History

Two singles were released from the box set: "War" (a cover of the Edwin Starr hit), which was a #8 success on the U.S. pop singles chart, and "Fire" (a Springsteen song already familiar from other artists' recordings of it), which only reached #46 on the Billboard charts, breaking Springsteen's string of eight consecutive Top 10 singles. The music video for "War" was taken from the concert where it was recorded, while the video for "Fire" was from a completely unrelated 1986 acoustic performance at a Bridge School Benefit concert. A third video, for "Born to Run", was also released, which showed a melange of clips from the band's 1984–85 Born in the U.S.A. Tour.

Live/1975–85 is the second-best-selling live album in U.S. history, certified by the RIAA for 13 times platinum, trailing only Garth Brooks' Double Live. This figure reflects the RIAA accounting practice of counting each record in a multi-record set as a separate unit sold; the actual physical number of copies sold is instead slightly over 4 million. The box set's sales performance attracted considerable media attention at the time, first for setting records during the 1986 holiday shopping period and leading a boom in CD-based box sets, then later for fizzling out in sales in early 1987, especially after "Fire" failed as a single, and being oversupplied so much that unprecedented returns were taking place from retail outlets, causing talk of a "Boss backlash".

While the album was well-received among casual fans, from the Springsteen faithful there were a number of complaints, mostly centered around the band's legendary 1978 Tour being poorly served, and from too much lesser material being included from the Born in the U.S.A. Tour.

[edit] Track listing

[edit] Disc one

  1. "Thunder Road" – 5:46
  2. "Adam Raised a Cain" – 5:26
  3. "Spirit in the Night" – 6:25
  4. "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" – 6:34
  5. "Paradise by the "C"" – 3:54
    • Recorded July 7, 1978 at The Roxy.
    • Song never released by Springsteen before. The version on this release omits Bruce saying "All you bootleggers out there in radioland, roll your tapes" right before the song.
  6. "Fire" – 2:51
    • Recorded December 16, 1978 at the Winterland. The short spoken intro is from July 7, 1978 at The Roxy.
    • Song never released by Springsteen before, although recorded by others most notably by The Pointer Sisters and Robert Gordon.
  7. "Growin' Up" – 7:58
    • Recorded July 7, 1978 at The Roxy. This version doesn't mention the name of Bruce's lawyer, who later became the mayor in his hometown.
  8. "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" – 4:39
    • Recorded July 7, 1978 at The Roxy.
    • End Side Two on LP release.
  9. "Backstreets" – 7:35
    • Recorded July 7, 1978 at The Roxy.
    • This version edits out a long section in the middle which includes early versions of "Drive All Night" and "Sad Eyes"
  10. "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" – 10:08
  11. "Raise Your Hand" – 5:01
    • Recorded July 7, 1978 at The Roxy.
    • Cover song never released by Springsteen. Eddie Floyd's version of the song is the most well known.
    • End Side Three on LP release.
  12. "Hungry Heart" – 4:30
  13. "Two Hearts" – 3:06

[edit] Disc two

  1. "Cadillac Ranch" – 4:52
  2. "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)" – 3:58
  3. "Independence Day" – 5:08
    • Recorded July 6, 1981 at Meadowlands Arena.
    • End Side Four on LP release.
  4. "Badlands" – 5:17
  5. "Because the Night" – 5:19
  6. "Candy's Room" – 3:19
  7. "Darkness on the Edge of Town" – 4:19
  8. "Racing in the Street" – 8:12
    • Recorded July 6, 1981 at Meadowlands Arena.
    • End Side Five on LP release.
  9. "This Land Is Your Land" – 4:21
    • Recorded December 28, 1980 at Nassau Coliseum.
    • Cover song never released by Springsteen before. This is a Woody Guthrie song.
  10. "Nebraska" – 4:18
  11. "Johnny 99" – 4:24
  12. "Reason to Believe" – 5:19
    • Recorded August 18, 1984 at Meadowlands Arena.
    • End Side Six on LP release.
  13. "Born in the U.S.A." – 6:10
  14. "Seeds" – 5:14
    • Recorded September 30, 1985 at the LA Coliseum.
    • Song never released by Springsteen before.

[edit] Disc three

  1. "The River" – 11:42
  2. "War" – 4:53
    • Recorded September 30, 1985 at the LA Coliseum.
    • Cover song never released by Springsteen before. This was a hit for Edwin Starr in the 1960's.
  3. "Darlington County" – 5:12
  4. "Working on the Highway" – 4:04
  5. "The Promised Land" – 5:36
  6. "Cover Me" – 6:57
  7. "I'm on Fire" – 4:26
  8. "Bobby Jean" – 4:30
  9. "My Hometown" – 5:13
    • Recorded September 30, 1985 at the LA Coliseum.
    • This performance previously released as the music video for "My Hometown" single
    • End Side Nine on LP release.
  10. "Born to Run" – 5:03
  11. "No Surrender" – 4:41
  12. "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" – 4:21
  13. "Jersey Girl" – 6:30
    • Recorded July 9, 1981 at Meadowlands Arena.
    • This performance was released in 1984 as the B-side of the "Cover Me" single. The song was written by Tom Waits and originally released on his Heartattack and Vine album.
    • End of side ten on LP release.

[edit] Personnel

[edit] The E Street Band

[edit] Additional musicians

[edit] Production

[edit] Chart positions

Year Chart Position
1986 The Billboard 200 1
Preceded by
Third Stage by Boston		 Billboard 200 number-one album
November 29, 1986 - January 17, 1987		 Succeeded by
Licensed to Ill by Beastie Boys
v • d • e
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Bruce Springsteen • Roy Bittan • Clarence Clemons • Nils Lofgren • Patti Scialfa • Garry Tallent • Soozie Tyrell • Steven Van Zandt • Max Weinberg
Danny Federici • Ernest "Boom" Carter • Suki Lahav • Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez • David Sancious
Original studio albums
Live albums
Compilations, Reissues,
and Unreleased material albums
Video releases
Tours
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