The The Ties That Bind: The River Collection [CD/DVD]

by Bruce Springsteen

Overview

Bruce Springsteen's ambition is his blessing and his curse. He's always believed that rock & roll is a music that can express people's deepest hopes and dreams and change their lives, and his best work communicates that brilliantly. But Springsteen often seems to doubt his own abilities and struggles under the weight of his own (high) standards, and many of Springsteen's best albums were painstakingly created as he spent months in the studio, searching for the right set of songs and performances that would tell the larger story in his mind. Springsteen is too smart to believe you can will a masterpiece into creation, but he does have a work ethic that suggests nothing worthwhile comes without sweat and sore muscles, and the man who regularly plays energetic three-hour shows has never hesitated to do whatever it takes to get the details just right in the studio, even if the desire is to create something that sounds explosive and spontaneous. After taking his early urban folk tales of cars and girls as far as he could on Born to Run, Springsteen took a long, hard look at the lives of those same kids, now saddled with adult responsibilities and realizing that the American Dream was increasingly out of their grasp, on 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town. With 1980's The River, Springsteen sought to expand on those themes while also offering more of the tough, bar-band rock that was his trademark (and often conspicuous in its absence on Darkness), and by the time it was released it had swelled into Springsteen's first two-LP set. After presenting his fans with a grand-scale study of how Darkness on the Edge of Town came into being on the 2010 box set The Promise, Springsteen does the same for The River with The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, which features a newly remastered edition of the original album along with a bonus disc of outtakes (most previously unreleased) and an early single-LP version of the album that Springsteen opted not to release because it failed to tell the story he had envisioned. The short version sounds like the rough draft that it is, though it also includes several songs that didn't appear on the longer final version ("Loose Ends" and "To Be True" in particular are superb songs that simply didn't fit the flow of the album), as well as different versions of a few tracks that do ("The Ties That Bind" contains different lyrics, while "Stolen Car" and "You Can Look [But You Better Not Touch]" feature different arrangements). And the outtakes disc offers 22 variations on the album's themes that point to any number of directions the album could have gone, and if nothing else it says a great deal about Springsteen that he had enough good songs that numbers as strong as "Party Lights," "Roulette," "Where the Bands Are," and "Chain Lightning" could end up on the shelf. The Ties That Bind also includes a documentary (on DVD or Blu-ray) on the making of the album, as well as a full concert filmed in 1980 that finds Springsteen & the E Street Band in incendiary form. The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, like a high-profile DVD release of the 2000s, is more about the bonus features than the main feature, but the extras lend an invaluable perspective to one of the most important works in Springsteen's catalog, and this set makes it possible to imagine the many chapters that could have been added or removed from the album while still telling the same powerful story, as well as documenting the thought and effort Springsteen put into the process. ~ Mark Deming

Product Details

Release Date:	12/04/2015
Label:	Columbia / Sony Music
UPC:	0888751646728
Rank:	7546

Tracks

Disc 1

1. The Ties That Bind
2. Sherry Darling
3. Jackson Cage
4. Two Hearts
5. Independence Day
6. Hungry Heart
7. Out in the Street
8. Crush on You
9. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
10. I Wanna Marry You
11. The River

Disc 2

12. Point Blank
13. Cadillac Ranch
14. I'm a Rocker
15. Fade Away
16. Stolen Car
17. Ramrod
18. The Price You Pay
19. Drive All Night
20. Wreck on the Highway

Disc 3

21. The Ties That Bind
22. Cindy
23. Hungry Heart
24. Stolen Car (Vs. 1)
25. Be True
26. The River
27. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
28. The Price You Pay
29. I Wanna Marry You
30. Loose End

Disc 4

31. Meet Me in the City
32. The Man Who Got Away
33. Little White Lies
34. The Time That Never Was
35. Night Fire
36. Whitetown
37. Chain Lightning
38. Party Lights
39. Paradise by the "C"
40. Stray Bullet
41. Mr. Outside
42. Roulette
43. Restless Nights
44. Where the Bands Are
45. Dollhouse
46. Living on the Edge of the World
47. Take 'Em as They Come
48. Ricky Wants a Man of Her Own
49. I Wanna Be with You
50. Mary Lou
51. Held Up Without a Gun
52. From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)

Disc 5

53. The Ties That Bind [Documentary]

Disc 6

54. Born to Run
55. Prove It All Night
56. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
57. Jackson Cage
58. Two Hearts
59. The Promised Land
60. Out in the Street
61. The River
62. Badlands
63. Thunder Road
64. No Money Down
65. Cadillac Ranch
66. Hungry Heart
67. Fire
68. Sherry Darling
69. I Wanna Marry You
70. Crush on You
71. Ramrod
72. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)

Disc 7

73. Drive All Night
74. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
75. I'm a Rocker
76. Jungleland
77. Detroit Medley
78. Where the Bands Are [Credits]
79. Ramrod [River Tour Rehearsal] [Bonus Track]
80. Cadillac Ranch [River Tour Rehearsal] [Bonus Track]
81. Fire [River Tour Rehearsal] [Bonus Track]
82. Crush on You [River Tour Rehearsal] [Bonus Track]
83. Sherry Darling [River Tour Rehearsal] [Bonus Track]

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Bruce Springsteen   Primary Artist,Guitar,Vocals,Harmonica
Roy Bittan   Piano,Vocals,Keyboards
Max Weinberg   Drums
Steven Van Zandt   Guitar,Vocals
Clarence Clemons   Vocals,Saxophone,Percussion
Danny Federici   Organ,Keyboards
Kevin Buell   Guitar
Barry Rebo   Director
Garry Tallent   Bass,Guitar (Bass)

Technical Credits

Jon Landau   Producer,Executive Producer
Joel Bernstein   Photography
Bruce Springsteen   Composer,Producer,Executive Producer
Toby Scott   Mixing,Restoration,Archive Research,Project Supervisor
Steven Van Zandt   Producer
Bill Scheniman   Assistant
Barbara Carr   Executive Producer
Neil Dorfsman   Engineer
Thom Zimny   Editing,Producer
Shari Sutcliffe   Music Contractor
Lynn Goldsmith   Photography
Anastasia Pantsios   Photography
George Travis   Executive Producer
Lawrence Kirsch   Photography
Jimmy Wachtel   Photography
Kevin Buell   Technician
David Gahr   Photography
Frank Stefanko   Photography
Barry Rebo   Producer
Jim Marchese   Photography
Mikal Gilmore   Liner Notes
Michelle Holme   Design,Art Direction
Peter Howes   Photography
Jan Stabile   Project Coordinator
Zachary Russo   Producer
Dave Bett   Design,Art Direction
Jim Scott   Photography
Bob Clearmountain   Mixing,Engineer
Bob Ludwig   Mastering
Chuck Plotkin   Mixing
Garry Rindfuss   Assistant
Jeff Hendrickson   Assistant