Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band and the box set Live/1975-85

Bruce Springsteen – No Nukes festival – Madison Square Garden, New York – September 1979

Introduction

On the coldest day of the cold spell that gripped the Netherlands from January 10 to 19, 1987, I bought my first Bruce Springsteen record. The release of the live box set Live/1975-85 provided the perfect starting point for me. My friend Martin played Springsteen regularly, and I had fallen for his music hook, line and sinker.

Introduction to Bruce Springsteen

Of course, I had known about Bruce Springsteen for years. I vividly remember watching and hearing the live video of The River from No Nukes for the first time in 1981. The lyrics were beautiful, the performance was intense, and I loved it. After that, things went quiet, at least as far as I was concerned. My attention shifted to ska, punk, post-punk, new wave and, in 1984, Prince.

That same year, the frenzy surrounding Born In The U.S.A. took off. Just like Prince & The Revolution’s Purple Rain and Madonna’s Like A Virgin, Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The U.S.A. was everywhere. The hit singles just kept coming, but to my ears, it all sounded a little too bombastic, and above all, too plastic. The synthesizers struck me as predictable and lacking in imagination. So I was quite happy to let the 1985 Rotterdam concerts pass me by.

I can’t remember exactly when, but in 1986 my childhood friend Martin properly introduced me to Springsteen. Darkness On The Edge Of Town in particular made a deep impression. But where do you start with an artist who has already released so much music? As it happened, the timing was perfect. A live album was about to be released, or rather, a box set containing five albums, packed with live recordings spanning his entire career up to that point.

As a student, I didn’t have much money back then, so I had to save up. I finally bought the set on January 14, 1987, at Pico Records in Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer district, where I lived at the time in the Ganzenhoef apartment block. The live box set contained no fewer than three CDs of Springsteen music, featuring an impressive 40 tracks. If there was ever a perfect introduction to the world of Bruce Springsteen, Live/1975-85 was it.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Live – September 17, 1975

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band

So, what did I know about Bruce Springsteen? Above all, that he was revered by critics and music lovers alike. The famous quote by music critic Jon Landau, “I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen”, published on May 22, 1974, led to a collaboration that continues to this day. Springsteen was huge in the US, where he had earned the status of the nation’s foremost troubadour, someone who understood the world of ordinary people: working men striving to give their families the life they deserved. But there was also the romance of a different, bigger and more exciting life waiting just around the corner, even when there seemed to be little opportunity to make that dream come true.

But was it really romance? Wasn’t it more about melancholy, a succession of painful failures and lives that had fallen far short of expectations? The answer is as obvious as it is simple: it was both. It’s no coincidence that one of my early favorites was Darkness On The Edge Of Town, an album steeped in hardship and struggle, yet still radiating optimism. The double album The River had an almost garage-rock attitude and sound. I already knew the title track and thought it was beautiful.

And then came the phenomenal success of Born In The U.S.A.. The single Dancing In The Dark was okay, but it couldn’t compete with the music being unleashed on the world from Minneapolis that year. The bombastic rock of the title track was certainly full of energy, but all that fist-pumping, shouting-along business wasn’t quite my thing. My Hometown was beautiful, though, but was somewhat spoiled by the unimaginative synthesizer sound that detracted from the album as a whole. The muscular sound was hardly subtle, either. At least, that’s how I saw it at the time.

I read a lot about Springsteen and the Born In The U.S.A. tour, which kicked off on June 29, 1984, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and concluded on October 2, 1985 (!) in Los Angeles. During that period, Springsteen played no fewer than 156 concerts, each lasting between three and four hours. What struck me most was the sheer commitment, dedication and fire that came through in every article I read about the live phenomenon that Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band so clearly were. Prince also attended one of the shows during this tour and got a firsthand look at what went on. He was impressed, as he explained in his second major Rolling Stone interview, published on October 18, 1990.

I’m not real into Bruce Springsteen’s music, but I have a lot of respect for his talent.
I admire the way he holds his audience – there’s one man whose fans I could never take away.
[How does Prince compare their stage tactics?] I’m not sure, but at one point, his band started going off somewhere. Springsteen turned around and shot the band one terrifying look. You know they got right back on it!

Prince interview, Rolling Stone, October 18, 1990

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Live/1975-85 – Announcement

Live album?

Up to that point, Springsteen had occasionally released live recordings, but they were all covers:

• Jersey Girl, B-side of the Cover Me single, released on July 31, 1984, written by Tom Waits
• Trapped, included on the We Are The World album, released on April 1, 1985, written by Jimmy Cliff
• Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town, B-side of the My Hometown single, released on November 21, 1985, written by Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie

However, releasing a live album was the furthest thing from Springsteen’s mind. On October 30, 1984, the BBC broadcast an interview with Springsteen on its Whistle Test program. The interview had been recorded after a concert in Philadelphia that had lasted more than three hours. When interviewer Bob Harris asked, “The question people ask always, fans, critics, whoever, is why don’t you make a live record?”, Springsteen replied:

Well, I don’t know, I don’t know that a live record, what we do at this point, a lot of it is about being there, which is why we haven’t done much television or too much of the video thing. A lot of it is, it allows too much distance. Like what our band is about is about breaking down distance. You know, it’s the thing that we’ve always done since we started. And I think it’s important to people. Hey, they come out, you know, they come down, they go someplace where there’s a bunch of other people. And the other thing was, a live record, a lot of times you’re doing songs that you’ve done aleady. It’s a little boring.

Bruce Springsteen interview, BBC Whistle Test, October 30, 1984

A little over two years later, the live box set Live/1975-85 would finally be released. Manager Jon Landau had been keen on the idea for some time and sent Springsteen a tape containing four live performances. Springsteen recounts what happened in the album’s liner notes.

The idea of a live album went down extremely well with record label Columbia, better than anyone could have imagined. Springsteen’s momentum was enormous, and demand for a live release was perhaps even greater. In the US, the advertising campaign for the box set began in September 1986, and demand exploded immediately. All previous pre-order records were shattered. Both in terms of quantity and total value, it was the biggest advance order in history. In fact, Live/1975-85 had effectively been certified platinum before it had even reached the shops.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Live/1975-85

Live/1975-85

On November 10, 1986, the box set Live/1975-85 was released, triggering a buying frenzy at record stores across the US, where long queues often formed outside. Many shops opened their doors at midnight. The box sets were flying off the shelves. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard chart, something that hadn’t happened since 1976 and had never before been achieved by a live album.

Never before had a box set of this size become so popular. Today, box sets are a regular occurrence, but back then, releasing one was a huge gamble. Producing a collection containing so much music was expensive, making it relatively costly for customers as well. And there was the sheer volume of music: far too much, according to many record companies. This very issue was at the heart of the dispute between Prince and Warner Bros. over how much music should be released and whether audiences were capable of keeping up with such an enormous output.

Initially, the gamble paid off handsomely. A live album had long been a cherished wish among fans and critics alike, but it could also be seen as a kind of “greatest hits” collection. At the same time, it provided an opportunity to release songs Springsteen had never previously recorded himself for commercial release, including his own versions of Fire and Because The Night, as well as Paradise By The ‘C’, Seeds and the covers of Raise Your Hand, This Land Is Your Land and War.

See the companion article Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Live/1975-85 – Launch, which features several television clips about the release, along with TV commercials.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Live/1975-85 – Ads

Review

As mentioned earlier, Live/1975-85 was the perfect starting point for my Bruce Springsteen collection, which I still had to build from scratch. Besides offering a wonderful cross-section of Springsteen’s work, the box set was also a tribute to Springsteen and the E Street Band. His studio albums had all been credited to Bruce Springsteen, with The E Street Band occasionally mentioned in the liner notes. Yet Bruce Springsteen was almost always associated with the E Street Band, whose distinctive personalities, such as “Mighty” Max Weinberg, “Miami” Steve Van Zandt and, of course, the “Big Man” Clarence Clemons, were recognizable cornerstones of the band. They gave the music almost as much character as Springsteen himself.

From the opening moments, Live/1975-85 takes the listener on a grand, almost epic journey through Springsteen’s catalogue, but also through an America that no longer exists. Back then, America was the world’s undisputed superpower, a position that was reflected in its culture. American music, lyrics, films, theatre and literature were everywhere. More than that, they had a worldwide influence. Springsteen’s music captured a distinctly human and American blend of romance and melancholy.

The set opens with the understated yet matter-of-fact introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band”. What follows is a wonderful succession of rock ‘n’ roll, folk, country, swing, tenderness, excitement and euphoria. Springsteen’s lyrics, in particular, regularly hit me right in the heart. Fragments of lyrics that have become lodged in my subconscious and represent pure bliss. And yes, those are big words, but I mean every one of them.

Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that’s me and I want you only
Don’t turn me home again
I just can’t face myself alone again
Don’t run back inside
darling you know just what I’m here for
So you’re scared and you’re thinking
That maybe we ain’t that young anymore
Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night
You ain’t a beauty but hey you’re all right
(Thunder Road)

Well the cops finally busted Madame Marie for tellin’ fortunes better than they do
This boardwalk life for me is through
You know you ought to quit this scene too
(4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)

Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going
(Hungry Heart)

But now there’s wrinkles around my baby’s eyes
And she cries herself to sleep at night
When I come home the house is dark
She sighs “Baby did you make it all right”
She sits on the porch of her daddy’s house
But all her pretty dreams are torn
She stares off alone into the night
With the eyes of one who hates for just being born
(Racing In The Street)

The jury brought in a guilty verdict and the judge he sentenced me to death
Midnight in a prison storeroom with leather straps across my chest
Sheriff when the man pulls that switch sir and snaps my poor head back
You make sure my pretty baby is sittin’ right there on my lap
(Nebraska)

Maybe you’ll be out there on that road somewhere
In some bus or train traveling along
In some motel room there’ll be a radio playing
And you’ll hear me sing this song
Well if you do you’ll know I’m thinking of you and all the miles in between
And I’m just calling one last time not to change your mind
But just to say I miss you baby, good luck goodbye, Bobby Jean
(Bobby Jean)

Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more
They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back to your hometown
(My Hometown)

Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
Someday girl, I don’t know when,
we’re gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go
and we’ll walk in the sun
But till then tramps like us
baby we were born to run
(Born To Run)

We busted out of class had to get away from those fools
We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school
Tonight I hear the neighborhood drummer sound
I can feel my heart begin to pound
You say you’re tired and you just want to close your eyes and follow your dreams down
(No Surrender)

© Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Live/1975-85 – Booklet

The lives of Mary, Crazy Janey, Sandy, Rosie, Kate and Wendy become part of your own experience. Their dreams, failures, disappointments and victories feel deeply personal, as though they belong to people you know. Their experiences and emotions become your own. The fact that their lives are nothing like yours makes no difference whatsoever. The impressions these songs leave behind feel utterly real. Springsteen takes you to another world. For me, he is one of the few artists who can truly do that. Escapism at its finest.

I had already experienced the power of Springsteen’s lyrics, but the music is every bit as important. The rock ‘n’ roll of Springsteen and the E Street Band is infused with convincing doses of soul and gospel, and the excitement the audience must have felt on those nights comes bursting out of the speakers. When Springsteen brings Raise Your Hand to a halt towards the end and launches into a sermon, you almost feel compelled to get up, turn your stereo up even louder than it already is, and lose yourself in the moment.

I see some people not even up back there…
You think this is a free ride…
Do you think this is a free ride…
You wanna play, you gotta pay…
Now, I wanna see you get up!…
And out there, I want you to walk over to your radio, turn the mother up as loud as she’ll go
Open up the windows, wake up your neighbors, ’cause if there’s something you need…
If there’s somehing you want…
You gotta raise your hand!

When Hungry Heart kicks in and the audience sings the entire first verse and chorus, you wish you were there. When tears are almost streaming down your cheeks during Racing In The Street, you wish you were there. When Springsteen says, “Hello out there… 1 2 1 2 3 4” and launches into Born In The U.S.A., you wish you were there. When Springsteen delivers his moving introduction before The River begins, you wish you were there. When the audience’s euphoria gives way to the beauty and emotion of Bobby Jean, you wish you were there. When Born To Run temporarily descends into a glorious wall of sonic chaos, you wish you were there. No other live album can convey that feeling, let alone sustain it across 40 tracks. The ecstasy lasts for a full three and a half hours, the average length of a Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band concert.

Live/1975-85 is the perfect introduction to Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, but it is also a rock ‘n’ roll classic that every music lover should own. Rarely has music sounded so genuine, convincing, warm, exhilarating and intimate.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Live/1975-85 – Singles

Singles

Two singles were culled from the live album.

• War
  (released on November 10, 1986)
• Fire
  (released in 1987)

Songs

All songs written by Bruce Springsteen, unless stated otherwise.

Disc 1

1. Thunder Road
2. Adam Raised A Cain
3. Spirit In The Night
4. 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
5. Paradise By The ‘C’
6. Fire
7. Growin’ Up
8. It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City
9. Backstreets
10. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
11. Raise Your Hand (Steve Cropper, Eddie Floyd, Alvertis Isbell)
12. Hungry Heart
13. Two Hearts

Disc 2

1. Cadillac Ranch
2. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
3. Independence Day
4. Badlands
5. Because The Night (Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith)
6. Candy’s Room
7. Darkness On The Edge Of Town
8. Racing In The Street
9. This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie)
10. Nebraska
11. Johnny 99
12. Reason To Believe
13. Born In The U.S.A.
14. Seeds

Disc 3

1. The River
2. War (Barrett Strong, Norman Whitfield)
3. Darlington County
4. Working On The Highway
5. The Promised Land
6. Cover Me
7. I’m On Fire
8. Bobby Jean
9. My Hometown
10. Born To Run
11. No Surrender
12. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
13. Jersey Girl (Tom Waits)

Recorded on
October 18, 1975, Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California: 1-1
July 7, 1978, Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California: 1-2,3,5,7,8,9,10,11
December 16, 1978, Winterland, San Francisco: 1-6
November 5, 1980, ASU Activity Center, Tempe, Arizona: 2-4
December 28, 1980, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York: 1-12 2-5
December 29, 1980, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York: 2-2,7,9
December 31, 1980, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York: 1-4
July 6, 1981, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey; 2-1,3,8
July 8, 1981, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey: 1-13 2-6
July 9, 1981, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey: 3-13
August 6, 1984, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey: 2-10 3-11
August 10, 1984, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey: 3-12
August 19, 1985, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey: 2-11,12 3-4,7,10
August 21, 1985, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey: 3-8
September 30, 1985, Los Angeles Coliseum: 2-13,14 3-1,2,3,5,6,9

The B-sides of the two singles released from Live/1975-85 featured live recordings that were not included in the box set. The War single included a live performance of Merry Christmas Baby, recorded on December 31, 1980, while the Fire single featured a live version of For You, recorded on July 7, 1978. In 1987, CBS released the live EP Live Collection in Japan, which included a previously unreleased live version of Incident On 57th Street, recorded on December 29, 1980.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Central Park New York – 1980 (fltr: Steve Van Zandt, Max Weinberg, Danny Federici, Bruce Springsteen, Clarence Clemons, Roy Bittan, Garry Tallent)

Musicians

• Bruce Springsteen – vocals, guitar, harmonica
• Roy Bittan – piano, synthesizer, background vocals
• Clarence Clemons – saxophone, percussion, background vocals
• Danny Federici – organ, accordion, glockenspiel, piano, background vocals; synthesizer on My Hometown
• Nils Lofgren (from 1984 onwards) – guitar background vocals
• Patti Scialfa (from 1984 onwards) – background vocals; synthesizer on Born In The U.S.A.
• Garry Tallent – bass, background vocals
• Steve Van Zandt (up to 1981) – guitar, background vocals
• Max Weinberg – drums

Guests

• Flo & Eddie – background vocals on Hungry Heart
• The Miami Horns (Stan Harrison, Eddie Manion, Mark Pender, Richie “La Bamba” Rosenberg) – horns on Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Live 1975-85 – Sales course US

After Live/1975-85

On February 2, 1987, Live/1975-85 was certified triple platinum in the US. Despite its initial success, sales soon declined dramatically. The box set quickly disappeared from the charts, and the hype proved short-lived. Its final appearance in the US Top 50 was on March 14, 1987, just 16 weeks after it first entered the chart. Compared with Springsteen’s other releases from the 1980s, its 16 weeks in the US Top 50 was a rather average performance:

• The River 1980: 28
• Nebraska 1982: 12
• Born In The U.S.A. 1984: 100
• Live/1975-85 1986: 16
• Tunnel Of Love 1987: 34

Even though the sales curve was the same all over the world, Live/1975-85 remains the second best-selling live album of all time, with worldwide sales of more than five million copies. Immense numbers for a box set of this size.

Bruce Springsteen – Chimes Of Freedom (EP)

Further live releases

Bruce Springsteen had clearly overcome his initial reluctance. More live releases soon followed:

• Live Collection EP (1987)
• Live Collection II EP (1987)
• Chimes Of Freedom EP (1988)
• In Concert/MTV Plugged (1993)
• Live In New York City (2001)
• Hammersmith Odeon, London ’75 (2006)
• Live In Dublin (2007)
• Magic Tour Highlights EP (2008)
• Live From The Carousel EP (2011)
• Springsteen On Broadway (2018)
• The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts (2021)
• Land Of Hope & Dreams EP (2025)

In addition, live recordings appeared in the many expanded reissues of albums such as Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The River and Nebraska.

Bruce Springsteen Archives & Bruce Springsteen Live Series

In 2014, Bruce Springsteen launched the Bruce Springsteen Archives and announced that he would be releasing a selection of complete shows from his personal archives. After being remastered, these recordings would be made available through live.brucespringsteen.net, where they could be ordered as downloads or CDs. I now own several releases from this series, and they all sound equally beautiful, raw and exhilarating. The series has since grown to 106 releases, with an average of six to ten new titles added each year. All recordings come from Bruce Springsteen’s personal archives.

These archive recordings are exclusively available through the website mentioned above. However, from 2018 to 2024, playlists featuring selections from the Bruce Springsteen Archives were also made available through regular streaming services under the name Bruce Springsteen Live Series. These collections were often built around a particular theme. The themes released so far are Songs Of The Road, Songs Of Friendship, Songs Of Hope, Songs Of Love, Songs From Around The World, Songs Under Cover, Songs Of Summer, Stripped Down, Songs Of Location, Songs Of Character, Songs Of Introspection, Songs Of New Jersey, Songs Of Keys, Songs Of Celebration and Songs Of Conscience.

Bruce Springsteen 06/29/1988 concert ticket

My Connection to Bruce Springsteen

Live/1975-85 was my first Bruce Springsteen purchase. In 1987, I added Nebraska, Darkness On The Edge Of Town and the magnificent Tunnel Of Love to my collection. The latter remains my favorite Bruce Springsteen album to this day. In 1988, the Tunnel Of Love Express Tour got underway, with the tour scheduled to visit the Netherlands in June. I had tickets for the June 29, 1988 concert, which I was eagerly looking forward to. Before the shows, I bought Born To Run and Born In The U.S.A., an album I was beginning to appreciate more and more. After that mind-blowing concert, there was no stopping me, and I went on to acquire the rest of his studio albums.

I continued to follow him closely, bought his records and have now seen Springsteen live more than ten times. Of the 40 tracks on Live/1975-85, there are only six I have never experienced live myself. Not a bad statistic! The E Street Band remains an absolute sensation to witness live. Springsteen was right when he said in 1984, “Like what our band is about is about breaking down distance”. A Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band concert creates a sense of community, even if it’s only for three or four hours.

In closing

What do you think of the Live/1975-85 box set? Let me know!

Video/Spotify
This story contains an accompanying video. Click on the following link to see it: Video: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band and the box set Live/1975-85. The A Pop Life playlist on Spotify has been updated as well.