The following story originally appeared in the Asbury Park Press on Nov. 7, 1986.
Record stores, radio stations and — most of all — rock music fans are gearing up for the imminent release of the next Bruce Springsteen album, an anxiously awaited, five-record, 40-song, live set.
It features three hours and 35 minutes of music. A phone survey of record stores in Ocean and Monmouth counties revealed that the price of the album may vary from as little as $21 to as much as $35, with the three-tape cassette equivalent bringing similar prices. The expected asking price of the compact disc version of the album ranged from $39.95 to $50.
The album, “Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live/1975-85,” is due in record stores on Monday, but select radio stations in the New York-Philadelphia area will begin playing eight advance-released tracks from the recording today.
By agreement with Columbia Records, Springsteen’s label, the stations receiving the special eight-song promotional disc will not be permitted to play material from the record before 8 a.m.
Radio stations in New Jersey, Philadelphia and New York are playing songs from the new Bruce Springsteen “Live” album.
“We’ll go exactly at 8, as promised,” said Pat Gillen, program director of WJLK-FM (K94), Asbury Park, one of the stations chosen to preview the album. Among the other New York-Philadelphia area stations planning to preview the record are WNEW-FM, WMMR-FM and WXRK-FM (K-Rock).
To mark the album’s official release, WXRK will broadcast live from Palace Amusements, home of the Asbury Park Rock ‘n’ Roll Museum, from 7 to 10 p.m. Monday. Springsteen, a native of Freehold who lives in Rumson, performed frequently in Asbury Park at the outset of his career.
Included on the advance disc is the first single from the new album, a Springsteen remake of the 1970 Edwin Starr hit “War.” The song was recorded on Sept. 30, 1985, at a Los Angeles Coliseum concert at the tail end of Springsteen’s marathon “Born in the U.S.A” tour.
All the songs on the new album, which is Springsteen’s first authorized live set, were recorded on stage. The earliest selections date from Springsteen’s “Born to Run” tour in 1975, with the most recent recordings culled from the “Born in the U.S.A.” tour.
Bootleg recordings of Springsteen performances have been peddled underground ever since Springsteen began gaining a reputation in the early 1970s as rock’s most exciting concert artist. The decision to release a live album was influenced, in part, by a desire to thwart the bootleggers.
In addition to previously unreleased versions of many of his best-known songs, the new Springsteen album features two original compositions, “Paradise by the `C'” and “Seeds.” It also includes songs written or popularized by other artists but never released on an album by Springsteen before, including Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” the Eddie Floyd hit “Raise Your Hand” and Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl.”
One of the selections on the promotional sampler is “Fire,” a Springsteen composition that was a successful single for the Pointer Sisters, but which Springsteen has never committed to record before.
Also among the first eight cuts to be released from the album are two songs taped at the Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford: “Cadillac Ranch,” recorded on July 6, 1981, four days after Springsteen became the first performer to appear there, and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” recorded on Aug. 20, 1984, during the first leg of the “Born in the U.S.A.” tour.
Other songs among the initial releases include “Hungry Heart” (recorded at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum in 1980), “Raise Your Hand” (recorded at the Roxy in Los Angeles in 1978), “Born in the U.S.A” and “The River” (both recorded at the same Los Angeles concert as “War”).
Gillen said WJLK-FM would probably follow its initial broadcast of “War” with the live recordings of “Hungry Heart” and “Born in the U.S.A.,” which were popular Springsteen singles when released in studio form.
After listening to the complete promotional disc, Gillen said: “For folks who’ve never gotten a chance to see Bruce live, I think this is really going to have a lot of appeal.”
In an article published in the Nov. 10 issue of Time magazine, critic Jay Cocks gave the “Live/1975-85” album an enthusiastic endorsement, pronouncing it “the personal testament of a decade” and calling Springsteen “America’s greatest rocker.”
Among the older Springsteen songs included on the album are “Growin’ Up,” “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” “Thunder Road” and “Adam Raised a Cain,” which span his first four albums from the 1973 release “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” to 1978’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Bruce Springsteen Live tracks to hit airwaves, 1986
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