Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Live/1975-85 (1986)

Live/1975–85 is a live album by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. It consists of 40 tracks recorded live at a series of concerts from 1975-1985. It was released as a box set with either five vinyl records, three cassettes, or three CDs. There was also a record club-only release which came on three 8-track cartridges, which is extremely hard to find.

The E Street Band:

* Roy Bittan – piano, synthesizer, background vocals
* Clarence Clemons – saxophone, percussion, background vocals
* Danny Federici – organ, accordion, glockenspiel, keyboards, background vocals
* Nils Lofgren (beginning in 1984) – guitars, background vocals
* Patti Scialfa (beginning in 1984) – synthesizer, background vocals
* Bruce Springsteen – vocals, guitars, harmonica
* Garry Tallent - bass
* Steve Van Zandt (until 1984) – guitars, background vocals
* Max Weinberg – drums

Additional musicians:

* Flo and Eddie (Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman) - backing vocals on "Hungry Heart"
* The Miami Horns (Stan Harrison – tenor saxophone, Eddie Manion – baritone saxophone, Mark Pender – trumpet, Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg – trombone) – horns on "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"
* Soozie Tyrell

Production:

* Toby Scott – engineer

Review, by William Ruhlmann, Allmusic:

Long before he sold substantial numbers of records, Bruce Springsteen began to earn a reputation as the best live act in rock & roll. Fans had been clamoring for a live album for a long time, and with Live/1975-85 they got what they wanted, at least in terms of bulk. His concerts were marathons, and this box set, including 40 tracks and running over three and a half hours, was about the average length of a show. In his brief liner notes, Springsteen spoke of the emergence of the album's "story" as he reviewed live tapes, and that story seems nothing less than a history of his life, his concerns, and his career. The first cuts present the Springsteen of the early to mid-'70s; these performances, most of them drawn from a July 1978 show at the Roxy in Los Angeles, present the romantic, hopeful, earnest Springsteen. The second section begins with his first Top Ten hit, "Hungry Heart" — this is the Springsteen of the late '70s and early '80s, an arena rock star with working-class concerns. After an acoustic mini set given largely to material from Nebraska — songs of economic desperation and crime — comes a reshuffling of Born in the U.S.A., songs in which the artist and his characters start to fight back and rock out. Finally, he brings it all back home to New Jersey, starting with the unofficial state anthem, "Born to Run." Fans could rejoice in the seven previously unreleased songs, but Live/1975-85 wasn't as funny, moving, or exhilarating as a Springsteen show could be. Maybe no single album could have been, but where Springsteen impressed in concert because he tried so hard, here he seemed to have tried a little too hard to make a live album carry the freight of everything he had to say.

Rolling Stone Review

Tracks:

CD 1 (01:13:29):

01. Thunder Road
02. Adam Raised a Cain
03. Spirit in the Night
04. 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
05. Paradise by the C
06. Fire
07. Growin' Up
08. It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City
09. Backstreets
10. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
11. Raise Your Hand
12. Hungry Heart
13. Two Hearts

CD 2 (01:09:44):

01. Cadillac Ranch
02. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
03. Independence Day
04. Badlands
05. Because the Night
06. Candy's Room
07. Darkness on the Edge of Town
08. Racing in the Street
09. This Land Is Your Land
10. Nebraska
11. Johnny 99
12. Reason to Believe
13. Born in the U.S.A
14. Seeds

CD 3 (01:12:44):

01. The River
02. War
03. Darlington County
04. Working on the Highway
05. The Promised Land
06. Cover Me
07. I'm on Fire
08. Bobby Jean
09. My Hometown
10. Born to Run
11. No Surrender
12. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
13. Jersey Girl