Live/1975–85 is a live album by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. It consists of 40 tracks recorded at various concerts between 1975 and 1985, released as a box set by Columbia Records on November 10, 1986.
Live/1975–85 | ||||
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Live album by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band | ||||
Released | November 10, 1986 | |||
Recorded | October 18, 1975 – September 30, 1985 | |||
Venue |
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Studio | (Additional recording)
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Genre | Rock | |||
Length | 216:13 | |||
Label | Columbia | |||
Producer |
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Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band chronology | ||||
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Singles from Live/1975–1985 | ||||
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In November of '85, Springsteen wrote in the liner notes, "Jon Landau sent a four-song cassette of 'Born in the U.S.A.', 'Seeds', 'The River' and 'War' down to my house with a note attached saying he 'thought we might have something here'. Over the following months we listened to 10 years of tapes, the music did the talkin', and this album and its story began to emerge. We hope you have as much fun with it as we did. I'd like to thank Jon for his friendship and perseverance and the E Street Band for 1,001 nights of comradeship and good rockin'. They're all about the best bunch of people you can have at your side when you're goin' on a long drive."
It was released as a box set of five vinyl records, three cassettes, or three CDs. There was also a record club only release which came on three 8-track cartridges.[1]
Springsteen's long-awaited and highly anticipated live album generated advance orders of more than 1.5 million copies, making it the largest dollar-volume pre-order in the history of the record business at the time.[2] Record stores around the country found fans waiting in line on Monday morning before opening and one New York store reportedly sold the album right off the back of the delivery truck. The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard album chart, a then-rare occurrence that hadn't happened in ten years since Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life in 1976. It also became the first five-record set to reach the top 10 and the first to sell over a million copies.
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Allmusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Chicago Tribune | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Rolling Stone | positive[5] |
Tom Hull | B+ (![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Village Voice | A−[7] |
Most reviews were overwhelmingly positive. There were, however, a few critics that felt the album could have been better, citing the omission of several concert highlights such as Springsteen's live rendition of "Prove It All Night" and his rousing cover of John Fogerty's "Who'll Stop the Rain", among others. Another complaint was that some of his many unreleased songs such as "The Fever" were ignored in favor of recent album tracks like "Darlington County".[8][9]
Live/1975–85 is the second-best-selling live album in U.S. history based on RIAA certification. It has been certified by the RIAA for 13x platinum, trailing only Garth Brooks' Double Live.[10] This figure reflects the RIAA practice of counting each disc in a multi-disc set as a separate unit sold; the actual number of copies sold is instead over 4 million. Based on sets sold, Live/1975–85 also trails several others including Eric Clapton's Unplugged (10 million) and Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive! (8 million). The box set's sales performance attracted considerable media attention at the time, first for setting records during the 1986 holiday shopping period, then later for fizzling out in sales in early 1987, leaving many retailers overstocked.[11]
Two singles were released from the box set: "War" (a cover of the 1970 Edwin Starr hit), which was a #8 success on the U.S. pop singles chart, and "Fire" (a Springsteen song that was a top 10 hit for The Pointer Sisters in 1979), which only reached #46 on the Billboard charts, breaking Springsteen's string of eight consecutive Top 10 singles. Two non-album tracks—"Incident on 57th Street", recorded at Nassau Coliseum in December 1980, and "For You", taken from the July 1978 Roxy show—materialized on B-sides from the album's singles and on a Japanese release titled Live Collection. 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.
All tracks are written by Bruce Springsteen, except where noted.
No. | Title | Recording date and location | Length |
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1. | "Thunder Road" | October 18, 1975, Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California | 5:44 |
2. | "Adam Raised a Cain" | July 7, 1978, Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California | 5:26 |
3. | "Spirit in the Night" | July 7, 1978, Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California | 6:25 |
4. | "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" | December 31, 1980, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York[a] | 6:34 |
No. | Title | Recording date and location | Length |
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1. | "Paradise by the "C"" | July 7, 1978, Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California[b] | 3:52 |
2. | "Fire" | December 16, 1978, Winterland, San Francisco[c] | 2:51 |
3. | "Growin' Up" | July 7, 1978, Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California | 7:54 |
4. | "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" | July 7, 1978, Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California | 4:39 |
No. | Title | Recording date and location | Length |
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1. | "Backstreets" | July 7, 1978, Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California[d] | 7:35 |
2. | "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" | July 7, 1978, Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California | 10:00 |
3. | "Raise Your Hand" (writers: Steve Cropper, Eddie Floyd, Alvertis Isbell) | July 7, 1978, Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California | 4:56 |
No. | Title | Recording date and location | Length |
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1. | "Hungry Heart" | December 28, 1980, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York | 4:28 |
2. | "Two Hearts" | July 8, 1981, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 3:06 |
3. | "Cadillac Ranch[e]" | July 6, 1981, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 4:52 |
4. | "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)" | December 29, 1980, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York | 3:58 |
5. | "Independence Day" | July 6, 1981, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 4:52 |
No. | Title | Recording date and location | Length |
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1. | "Badlands" | November 5, 1980 ASU Activity Center, Tempe, Arizona[f] | 5:17 |
2. | "Because the Night" (writers: Springsteen, Patti Smith) | December 28, 1980, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York[g] | 5:19 |
3. | "Candy's Room" | July 8, 1981, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 3:19 |
4. | "Darkness on the Edge of Town" | December 29, 1980, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York | 4:19 |
5. | "Racing in the Street" | July 6, 1981, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 8:12 |
No. | Title | Recording date and location | Length |
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1. | "This Land Is Your Land" (writers: Woody Guthrie) | December 28, 1980, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York[h] | 4:21 |
2. | "Nebraska" | August 6, 1984, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 4:18 |
3. | "Johnny 99" | August 19, 1985, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 4:24 |
4. | "Reason to Believe" | August 19, 1984, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 5:19 |
No. | Title | Recording date and location | Length |
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1. | "Born in the U.S.A." | September 30, 1985, Los Angeles Coliseum | 6:10 |
2. | "Seeds" | September 30, 1985, Los Angeles Coliseum | 5:14 |
3. | "The River" | September 30, 1985, Los Angeles Coliseum | 11:42 |
No. | Title | Recording date and location | Length |
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1. | "War" (writers: Barrett Strong, Norman Whitfield) | September 30, 1985, Los Angeles Coliseum | 4:53 |
2. | "Darlington County" | September 30, 1985, Los Angeles Coliseum | 5:12 |
3. | "Working on the Highway" | August 19, 1985, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 4:04 |
4. | "The Promised Land" | September 30, 1985, Los Angeles Coliseum | 5:36 |
No. | Title | Recording date and location | Length |
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1. | "Cover Me" | September 30, 1985, Los Angeles Coliseum | 6:57 |
2. | "I'm on Fire" | August 19, 1985, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 4:26 |
3. | "Bobby Jean" | August 21, 1985, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 4:30 |
4. | "My Hometown" | September 30, 1985, Los Angeles Coliseum[i] | 5:13 |
No. | Title | Recording date and location | Length |
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1. | "Born to Run" | August 19, 1985, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 5:03 |
2. | "No Surrender" | August 6, 1984, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 4:41 |
3. | "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" | August 20, 1984, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey | 4:21 |
4. | "Jersey Girl" (writer: Tom Waits) | July 9, 1981, Meadowlands Arena, East Rutherford, New Jersey[j] | 6:30 |
Notes
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
The E Street Band
Guest musicians
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Technical
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Chart (1985–1987) | Peak position |
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Australian Albums (ARIA)[12] | 3 |
Canadian Albums (RPM)[13] | 1 |
Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[14] | 1 |
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[15] | 8 |
Irish Albums (IRMA)[16] | 42 |
Italian Albums (Musica e Dischi)[17] | 8 |
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[18] | 11 |
Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)[19] | 3 |
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)[20] | 2 |
UK Albums Chart[21] | 4 |
US Billboard 200[22] | 1 |
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
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Australia (ARIA)[23] | Platinum | 70,000^ |
Finland (Musiikkituottajat)[24] | Gold | 32,402[24] |
France (SNEP)[25] | Gold | 100,000* |
Germany (BVMI)[26] | Gold | 250,000^ |
Netherlands (NVPI)[27] | Platinum | 100,000^ |
New Zealand (RMNZ)[28] | Gold | 7,500^ |
Portugal (AFP)[29] | Gold | 20,000^ |
Sweden (GLF)[30] | Platinum | 100,000^ |
Switzerland (IFPI Switzerland)[29] | Gold | 25,000^ |
United Kingdom (BPI)[31] | Gold | 100,000^ |
United States (RIAA)[32] | 13× Platinum | 4,333,329^ |
* Sales figures based on certification alone. |
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