The River (Bruce Springsteen album)

Background

The sources of The River go back into earlier parts of Springsteen's recording career. "Independence Day", "Point Blank", "The Ties That Bind", "Ramrod", and "Sherry Darling" were leftovers from his previous album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and had been featured on the 1978 tour, as had parts of "Drive All Night" as a long interpolation within "Backstreets." "The River" had premiered at the September 1979 Musicians United for Safe Energy concerts, gaining a featured spot in the subsequent documentary No Nukes.

Originally, Springsteen intended The River to be a single set entitled The Ties That Bind and released in late 1979 with 10 tracks. Springsteen added darker material after he'd written the title track. Indeed, The River became noted for its mix of the frivolous next to the solemn. This was intentional, and in contrast to Darkness, for as Springsteen said during an interview, "Rock and roll has always been this joy, this certain happiness that is in its way the most beautiful thing in life. But rock is also about hardness and coldness and being alone ... I finally got to the place where I realized life had paradoxes, a lot of them, and you've got to live with them."

On November 8, 2009, at a concert, Bruce Springsteen spoke about the album, saying: "The River was a record that was sort of the gateway to a lot of my future writing. It was a record we made after Darkness on the Edge of Town. It was a record made during a recession—hard times in the States. Its title song is a song I wrote for my brother-in-law and sister. My brother-in-law was in the construction industry, lost his job and had to struggle very hard back in the late 70s, like so many people are doing today. It was a record where I first started to tackle men and women and families and marriage. There were certain songs on it that led to complete records later on: 'The River' sort of went to the writing on Nebraska, 'Stolen Car' went to the writing on Tunnel of Love. Originally it was a single record. I handed it in with just one record and I took it back because I didn't feel it was big enough. I wanted to capture the themes I had been writing about on Darkness. I wanted to keep those characters with me and at the same time added music that made our live shows so much fun and joy for our audience. So in the end, we're gonna take you down to The River tonight."

Reception and legacy

In a contemporary review for Melody Maker, Paolo Hewitt compared listening to The River to "taking a trip through the rock 'n' roll heartland as you've never experienced it. It's a walk down all the streets, all the places, all the people and all the souls that rock has ever visited, excited, cried for and loved." Rolling Stone critic Paul Nelson deemed it "a rock & roll milestone" and said it possesses "weighty conclusions, words to live by" regarding "the second acts of American lives", conclusions "filled with an uncommon common sense and intelligence that could only have come from an exceptionally warmhearted but wary graduate of the street of hard knocks". The River was voted the second best album of 1980 in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics nationwide, published by The Village Voice. Robert Christgau, its creator and supervisor, wrote of Springsteen in a column accompanying the poll, "All the standard objections apply--his beat is still clunky, his singing overwrought, his sense of significance shot through with Mazola Oil. But his writing is at a peak, and he's grown into a bitter empathy. These are the wages of young romantic love among those who get paid by the hour. Maybe he's giving forth with so many short fast ones because the circles of frustration and escape seem even more desperate now." In The New Rolling Stone Record Guide (1983), Dave Marsh called The River "by far Springsteen's most mature work, and arguably his most consistent". According to Jon Pareles of The New York Times, The River was the beginning of 1980s heartland rock. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it at number 253 on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

"Hungry Heart" was his first U.S. pop singles chart top ten hit single, reaching number five. (Springsteen had not intended the song to be for himself, having initially written it for The Ramones; manager/producer Jon Landau convinced Springsteen to keep the song for himself.) The album hit number one on the U.S. pop albums chart, a first for Springsteen, and sold 1.6 million copies in the U.S. between its release and Christmas. "Fade Away" reached number 20.

The album was followed by a lengthy tour of North America and Western Europe during 1980 and 1981. Since its release, The River has been certified quintuple platinum by the RIAA in the U.S., making it one of his best-selling albums and his highest certified studio release after Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run.

Track listing

All tracks written by Bruce Springsteen.

The Ties That Bind: The River Collection

Springsteen celebrated the 35th anniversary of The River by releasing a boxed set titled The Ties That Bind: The River Collection on December 4, 2015. The set contains 52 tracks on four CDs along with four hours of video on three DVDs or two Blu-ray discs. The first two CDs feature the remastered version of The River and the third CD contains the previously unreleased The River: Single Album. As is noted above, the single album was originally to be titled The Ties That Bind; it circulated as a bootleg for many years. The fourth CD, The River: Outtakes, spans the entire The River sessions in 1979 and 1980 and contains eleven previously-unreleased outtakes. The fifth disc (DVD or Blu-ray) contains a 60-minute documentary, The Ties That Bind, which was produced and directed by filmmaker Thom Zimny and features an interview with Springsteen as he reflects on 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 photos. The remaining disc(s) feature Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: The River Tour, Tempe 1980, a new film produced from footage professionally filmed in 1980 using four cameras and recorded in multitrack audio. The film features 23 of 33 songs performed, clocking in at 2 hours, 40 minutes on 2 DVDs (or one Blu-ray), from Springsteen’s November 5, 1980, concert at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Also included is 20 minutes of footage from the late September 1980 River Tour rehearsals held in Lititz, Pennsylvania. The boxed set also includes a 148-page coffee table book featuring 200 rare or previously unseen photos and memorabilia, including a new essay by Mikal Gilmore.

On October 16, 2015, along with the announcement of the boxed set, "Meet Me in the City", one of the eleven unreleased outtakes, was released through Springsteen's website and on iTunes to promote the release of the boxed set. On November 23, 2015, "Party Lights" was released to promote the box set and made available through iTunes. Much like with The Promise, Springsteen recorded new vocals for some of the outtakes in the set.

Springsteen announced details for The River Tour 2016 on December 4, 2015. The tour began in January 2016 and features a full-album performance of The River at every show, as well as other songs from Springsteen's career. As of the end of the U.S. leg on April 25, 2016, "Meet Me in the City" opened all but one show; the song previously made its live debut when Springsteen and the E Street Band performed on the December 19, 2015, episode of Saturday Night Live.

On December 24, 2015, Springsteen released Arizona State University, Tempe 1980, a free download through the Bruce Springsteen Archives at http://live.brucespringsteen.net. The release contained the ten missing songs from the concert video featured in the boxed set.

Track listing

All tracks written by Bruce Springsteen.

Springsteen wrote a large amount of music during album sessions, and even with the 2015 box set, many songs still remain unreleased. Songs such as "Held Up Without a Gun", "Be True", and "Roulette" were featured as B-sides, the first two on the album's singles and the last on a Tunnel of Love single. "Mary Lou", "I Wanna Be with You", "Bring on the Night", "Ricky Wants a Man of Her Own", "Loose Ends", "Dollhouse", "Where the Bands Are", "Living on the Edge of the World", "Restless Nights", "Take 'em as They Come" were released on the Tracks box set with "From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)" on The Essential Bruce Springsteen collection. Prior to the album being recorded, Springsteen had intended to call it The Ties That Bind. Of the songs recorded for that release, most made The River. However, an alternate version of "Stolen Car" was released on Tracks while a rockabilly version of "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)" and "Cindy" remained officially unreleased until 2015 (though both had been available in bootleg form for some years). During The River sessions, Springsteen also recorded "Jole Blon", "Dedication", "Your Love" and "This Little Girl" — songs he would eventually give to Gary U.S. Bonds for two of his albums on which Springsteen produced and appeared on along with other members of the E Street Band. "Janey Needs a Shooter" was also given to Warren Zevon, which he re-worked and recorded.

Charts

The Ties That Bind: The River Collection