One of my favourite Bruce Springsteen releases, the double-disc The River (1980) has received an extensive make-over.
Columbia Records will release The Ties That Bind: The River Collection on December 4. It will be a substantial look at The River era, with a set containing fifty-two tracks on four CDs with plenty of unreleased audio material and four hours of never-before-seen video on three DVDs. The box-set will comprised the original The River double album, the first official release of The River: Single Album, a CD of 1979/80 studio outtakes, a two-DVD film of never-released, newly edited multi-camera footage from Springsteen’s famed 1980 show in Tempe Arizona, rare tour rehearsal footage, a new documentary about the original release The Ties That Bind and a coffee table book of two hundred rare or previously unseen photos and memorabilia with a new essay by Mikal Gilmore.
The River: Single Album is the ten-track album that Springsteen recorded in 1979 as a follow-up to 1978’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town but never released. Seven of the ten titles eventually appeared on The River, some with alternate lyrics and arrangements, with outtakes like “Cindy” and a rockabilly version of “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)”.
The fourth CD on the box set is The River: Outtakes, which spans the entire original sessions in 1979 and 1980. Eleven songs are rarities that have never been released before.
The Ties That Bind is a sixty-minute documentary produced and directed by Grammy and Emmy-winning filmmaker Thom Zimny that features an intimate interview with Springsteen as he reflects on the tumultuous, extended period writing and recording The River. The film transitions between Springsteen telling the stories behind the music — and illustrating them with solo acoustic guitar performances — interspersed with period concert footage and rare photos of Bruce and the band in and out of the studio.
The final video component is Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: The River Tour, Tempe 1980, a film produced from footage professionally filmed in 1980 using four cameras and recorded in multi-track audio. The film features twenty-four songs on two DVDs from Springsteen’s November 5, 1980 concert at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. Widely regarded as one of Springsteen’s finest performances, this features early live versions of over half of The River songs. Also included is twenty minutes of footage from the late September, 1980 River Tour rehearsals held in Lititz, Pennsylvania, showing Springsteen and The E Street Band working through live arrangements of what was then unreleased material from the upcoming album.
Here’s a taste of a previously unreleased track:
For the Springsteen completeists, it sounds like a must. It is available for pre-sale on Amazon for US$130
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