Bruce Springsteen Details Massive ‘The River’ Box Set
UPDATE: The Ties That Bind, the new documentary on the creation of Bruce Springsteen‘s landmark album The River, will premiere on HBO on Friday, November 27th at 9 p.m. ET.
After years of rumor and anticipation, Bruce Springsteen has unveiled the details of a new box set spotlighting his 1980 double LP The River. Entitled The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, the four-CD/three-DVD package will land in stores on December 4th. It features the original single disc album of The River (then called The Ties That Bind) Springsteen planned on releasing in 1979, 11 previously unreleased outtakes from The River sessions, a new documentary, a concert filmed on the The River tour and another 10 songs from the era that were released on previous archival packages.
The new hour-long documentary The Ties That Band was directed and produced by longtime Springsteen collaborator Thom Zimny. It shows Springsteen playing acoustic renditions of songs from The River, along with photographs and concert footage from the era. Among many other songs, he plays “Independence Day,” “Point Blank” and “Wreck On The Highway” outdoors near a garage (on what appears to be the grounds of his New Jersey home) as he explains their backstories in great detail.
“You’re brought into a very late night intimate convention between two people,” he says of “Independence Day.” “It’s part of a series of songs that I wrote about my dad that weren’t completely autobiographical, but were emotionally autobiographical.”
Also in the box set is a a two-DVD Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert shot in Tempe, Arizona on November 5th, 1980. The 160-minute set was shot on four cameras and recorded in multitrack audio. It’s a high-energy (though sadly incomplete) show of Springsteen, wearing a grey sport coat, tearing through songs like “Born To Run,” “Badlands” and “Cadillac Ranch” the day after Ronald Reagan was elected president. (The definitive fan site Brucebase refers to the concert as “one of the finest, most intense shows of the River tour.”) There’s also 20 minutes of band rehearsal footage filmed in September of that same year weeks before the release of the album.
The River was Springsteen’s fifth studio record, and his first one to hit #1 on the Billboard 200. The double album contained “Hungry Heart,” his first Top Ten single, and veers back and forth between wild rockers (“Ramrod,” “I’m a Rocker,” “Cadillac Ranch”) and somber, reflective tunes (“Independence Day,” “Stolen Car,” “Wreck On The Highway”). The title track was inspired by his sister Ginny, who married her husband Mickey after getting pregnant as a teenager.