Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (CD/2DVD)
List Price:
Our Price: $20.98
You Save: $19.00 (48%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $12.88 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more new music releases
Canadian Music Store
Music CD Cover
Artist: Bruce SpringsteenEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Original recording remastered, Special Edition
CD Release Date: 2005-11-15
Music Label: Sony
Soundtracks:
- Thunder Road
- Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
- Spirit In The Night
- Lost In The Flood
- She's The One
- Born To Run
- The E Street Shuffle/Having A Party
- It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City
- Backstreets
- Kitty's Back
- Jungleland
- Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
- 4th Of July Asbury Park (Sandy)
- Detroit Medley
- For You
- Quarter To Three
- The Journey
- Third Album Pressure
- "Born To Run"
- A New Band
- The Studio
- The Mix
- The Record Release
- The Hype
- End Of The Journey
- Credits
- Thunder Road
- Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
- Night
- Backstreets
- Born To Run
- She's The One
- Meeting Across The River
- Jungleland
Free Music Notes for Born To Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (CD/2DVD)
Free Music Review: Growing up in New Jersey with Born to Run
Hit: 5 Stars
Being from New Jersey Springsteen was ours. When this album came out, his promoters got him on the cover of Newsweek and Time Magazine on the same week. Presidents have trouble doing that! He became the Boss, and soon became an International Star. To me, he is the Boss from New Jersey, a friend, although I never met him. He not only spoke to the youth at the time, he spoke directly to New Jersey youth "Born to Run" crashed in at the decade's midpoint. Many of the `60s icons (the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Who, the Byrds, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crosby Stills Nash & Young) were either gone or on cruise control, and punk still hadn't come kicking and screaming to life. What Springsteen offered was not a new sound, but a full-on celebration of an old one. He self-consciously fused Dylan's lyricism with Phil Spector's production values and Roy Orbison's operatic vocals.
This was Springsteen's last-ditch effort to make a commercially viable record; its wall of sound production had an enormous budget and had become bogged down in the recording process.
Bruce Springsteen spent everything he had -- patience, energy, studio time, the physical endurance of his E Street Band -- to ensure that his third album was a masterpiece. Springsteen's reputation as a perfectionist on record begins here: There are a dozen guitar overdubs on the title track alone. He was also spending money he didn't have. Engineer Jimmy Lovine had to hide the mounting recording bills from the Columbia paymasters. "The album became a monster," Springsteen told his biographer, Dave Marsh. "It just ate up everyone's life." But in making Born to Run, Springsteen was living out the central drama in the album's tenement-love operas ("Backstreets," "Jungleland") and gun-the-engine rock & roll ("Thunder Road," "Born to Run"): the fight to reconcile big dreams with crushing reality. He found it so hard to get on tape the sound in his head -- the Jersey-bar dynamite of his live gigs, Phil Spector's Wagnerian grandeur, the heartbreaking melodrama of Roy Orbison's hits -- that Springsteen nearly scrapped Born to Run for a straight-up concert album. But his make-or-break attention to detail -- including the iconic cover photo of Springsteen leaning onto saxman Clarence Clemons, a perfect metaphor for Springsteen's brotherly reliance on the E Street Band -- assured the integrity of Born to Run's success. In his determination to make a great album, Springsteen produced a timeless, inspiring record about the labors and glories of aspiring to greatness.
The Song- Born to Run or New Jersey or Bust
According to the 30th anniversary addition to this album, (which comes with a live show from London in the early 1975 and a documentary on the making of Born to Run), the song Born to Run took nearly SIX Months to record. The lyrics to the song are appropriately epic for his last-ditch, all-or-nothing shot at the stars, yet they remain rooted in the universal desperation of adolescence. We gotta get out while we're young, he writes, 'cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run. This album was "one long endless summer" as Springsteen put it. Each song phrase and each word with the association of the music become alive, for all to see. Even though MTV was 6 or 7 years away, this was the first album, song by song, I heard with my eyes. With the elegance of the music that included a glockenspiel, (what ever the hell that is), just poured out visionary vibes about a do or die situation that all teenagers feel from the heart. Written in the first person, the song is a love letter to a girl named Wendy (Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend I wanna guard your dreams and visions...; I wanna die with you Wendy on the streets tonight/in an everlasting kiss!), whom the protagonist certainly has the passion to love, but may not have the patience. However, Springsteen has noted that it has a much simpler core: getting out of Asbury Park. This "mini epic" became an anthem for everyone who grew up in New Jersey!. It is our secret handshake that many tried to replicate, but no one ever came close. Through this song and the others on this album, we were connected like no other group of teenagers in the country. We knew what it meant to be tramps, or the "RAT", in a world that mocked New Jersey each and every night on late night television. As Springsteen comes of age in 1975, WE do to. High School daze turns into College dreams and this metamorphosis takes place in a world that is about to explode in every direction. From internal life decisions, to the world economy spinning in and out of control, the technological explosion of new toys for the home and office, to Ronald Reagan and so on and so on. The world was changing at a rate that was almost impossible to grasp, but with music and certainly the Boss in the front seat, there was an unwavering constant to settle on and to rely on getting us through each and every day.
And I'm all alone, I'm all alone
And kid you better get the picture
And I'm on my own, I'm on my own
And I can't go home
The Painful Recording Sessions
In recording each song, Springsteen first earned his noted reputation for perfectionism, laying down as many as eleven guitar tracks to get the sound just right. The recording process and alternate ideas for the song's arrangement are described in the Wings For Wheels documentary DVD included in the 2005 reissue Born to Run 30th Anniversary Edition package.
The Born to Run track was recorded well in advance of the rest of the album, and featured Ernest "Boom" Carter on the drums and David Sancious on keyboards; they would be replaced by Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan for the rest of the album and in the ongoing E Street Band (which was still uncredited on Springsteen's records at the time). The song was also recorded with only Springsteen and Mike Appel as producers; it would be later, when work on the album bogged down, that Jon Landau was brought in as an additional producer.
It turns out Clarence Clemons' extended saxophone solo on "Jungleland" really wasn't a solo at all, but a meticulously scripted musical passage that required 16 hours to record, note by painstaking note. Even the title track went through numerous incarnations, including one with strings and a backing choir that makes Springsteen cringe as he listens to the playback decades later in the 90-minute documentary DVD, "Wings for Wheels: The Making of `Born to Run. " But as far as recorded solos go, this is the best solo of any instrument of all time- bar none!
Springsteen calculated every gesture, down to the expansive introductions for the songs, all of which were composed on piano. The E Street Band had to relearn how to play, as Springsteen aimed for a simpler, denser sound, rather than the hyperactive sprawl of his previous albums. Out were Boom Carter and David Sancious and in came Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg. This change took months to solve and the album already had songs in the can. In fact on the Wings For Wheels documentary DVD, Max Weinberg admits that to this day he can not reproduce what Carter had recorded on drums for the song Born to Run. Springsteen ended leaving in what Carter had recorded.
After it was done, Springsteen and rock itself would be changed. His lyrics would become even sparser, his stories bleaker, his music more hard-hitting and direct on subsequent albums, such as "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "The River." By the time of "Born in the U.S.A.," the Jersey soul stirrer would give way to the muscular celebrity in blue jeans, with an American flag as his backdrop.
On "Born to Run," Springsteen knew he was losing his innocence, and that knowledge gives the album its enduring power. He was going for broke, calibrating every note for maximum impact. He knew that even as a gateway was opening, another was closing behind. Or, as he warns on "Thunder Road": "The door's open, but the ride ain't free."
Fed by release of an early mix of "Born to Run" to progressive rock radio, anticipation built towards the new album's release. On August 13, 1975, Springsteen and the E Street Band began a five-night, ten-show stand at New York's Bottom Line club; it attracted major media attention, was broadcast live on Philly's WMMR's sister station in New York, WNEW-FM, and convinced many skeptics that Springsteen was for real. (Decades later, Rolling Stone magazine would name the stand as one of the 50 Moments That Changed Rock and Roll.) With the release of Born to Run on August 25, 1975, Springsteen found success: while there were no real hit singles, "Born to Run", "Thunder Road", and "Jungleland" all received massive FM radio airplay and remain perennial favorites on many classic rock stations to this day. "Born to Run" represents a last gasp for a certain kind of songwriting: the Romantic escapism of Orbison and Buddy Holly and written in the manifestation of Dylan. Punk's sarcasm and skepticism were just around the corner, and the age of irony would soon follow.
One thing I hope to portray to you about music back in the day, is it was soooo personal, it could speak to you on so many different levels, as well as to a couple, or a group, but at the time mean absolutely nothing to the person next to you. Born to Run and the songs on it, took what Dylan had started a decade earlier and made Rock n Roll more tangible, more spiritual and made the poetry easier to feel, made your heart beat to the chords and made each line real and come to life. "Stranded in a jungle taking all the heat that is giving" is a profound line in that it was the way that I feel when I hear these songs together as they were recorded and not chopped up on mixed tapes or CD's that your father is so famous for. These songs NEED to be heard as the Album was recorded to really get the sense of the magic that was created way back in 1975.
The beauty of all the women described in these songs, from Wendy to the ones that found their way down "Flamingo Lane", are portrayed so wonderfully by the piano's resonance on each song. Just listen to the piano play on this album. The sound is stunning and makes songs like Backstreets and Jungleland so illustrated that you sometimes forget that the jungle that is soooooo clear in your head has only been seen by your memory of these songs and no one else. Visual is the only way to explain what the E street band accomplished on this Album. I can close my eyes and still vividly see the same images and reflections I experienced 30 years ago when I listened for the first time. I do not think I could say that about any other album to this point in my life. The enchantment of the words combined with the music's splendor makes it difficult to see "What's flesh and what's fantasy". That line means something different to each person who hears it. Only Great Song writers have that unfathomable touch with Mr. Webster's vocabulary.
The Boss was a very important and special friend to me "Growing UP" in the "Backstreets" of the "Jungleland". As friends we had grown through a lot of stuff. Each of us helped the other when able to. From lost loves, cars," Sandy" to children, he was always someone I could depend on for help. That was the beauty of music back in the day; the Boss and I were good friends through thick and thin, although we have never met!
Born To Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set (CD/2DVD) Poster
30th ANNIVERSARY 3 DISC SETCONCERT DVD Never-before-seen 1975 concert from Hammersmith Odeon, London featuring over 2 hours of music.
DOCUMENTARY DVD Definitive story of "Wings For Wheels: The Making of Born to Run" with new interviews & rare archival footage.
BORN TO RUN CD First time in newly-remastered digital sound. Includes 48 page booklet of rare and unpublished photos.
The first retooling of any album in the mighty Springsteen catalog is an exemplary labor of love by Columbia. The original 1975 release was the make-or-break record of Bruce's career and arguably still his best collection of material. It is presented here on one disc unsullied by outtakes or inferior versions--just pristine digital remasters of those eight grittily romantic songs of street life that defined the artist's signature styles. The substantial bonuses are two new DVD programs, one featuring a full concert performance by Bruce and the E Street Band on their first date outside the U.S. at London's Hammersmith Odeon in November 1975, and the other a "making of" documentary including band interviews and contemporary concert footage. The whole handsome box truly honors a legendary recording while providing generous value for fans.
The meat of the bonus material is the London show. A mythology has built around it that the band were so disorientated by travel and culture shock and Bruce so enraged by label-generated hype that they gave one of the worst performances of their career. Primitively shot by today's standards, the footage captures the brilliance of the relatively new band's ensemble playing. Highlights include a "Thunder Road" accompanied only by keyboards that opens the show, fiery solos on "Kitty's Back," a dynamic "Saint in the City," and a number of songs that have long since been retired. It's certainly notable how pensive and joyless Springsteen appears when compared to his later, animated stadium persona, but it's also fun to see the far greater role as foil played by Clarence Clemons. As he now testifies in the sleeve notes, putting lie to the myth, on that night they had "gone for broke," and as this writer can bear witness, the British audience exalted the show as the arrival of the greatest live performer of his generation. --Rob Stewart
The Best of Bruce
by guest editor Steve Perry
Steve is the editor-in-chief of City Pages newspaper in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle (1973)
After a folk-rockish debut album that bubbled with ideas and dense lyrical play, this is where Springsteen began to find his voice as a rocker and as a songwriter. The prisoner-of-love romanticism of "Rosalita" and "Incident on 57th Street" hinted at what was coming, and this early version of the E Street Band--jazzier and more spare than later versions, thanks largely to David Sancious's piano--sounds great, if a little ragged, these many years later.
Born to Run (1975) and Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)
These two records, which belong on any compilation of the top 100 rock albums of all time, sketched the themes that he would spend his whole career chasing, and defined the expectations fans would bring to his records ever after. The first chords of "Born to Run" sounded like freedom itself the first time I heard them on the radio, and the album lived up to them. "Thunder Road" is still the greatest rock & roll love song anyone's ever written. The record sounded so big and impassioned and propulsive it was easy to miss the dread running underneath it. Darkness... put the dread front and center. There are more of his best songs here than anywhere else, even if the sound is muddy and leaden at times.
Nebraska (1982)
After The River (the best record that didn't make this list) and the ensuing tour answered his rock & roll prayers--he was a big star now, not just a perennial critics' favorite--Springsteen holed up in a rented house on the Jersey shore, where he wrote these songs and sang them into a four-track recorder in his living room. The tape was supposed to be a demo for the band, but after several false tries he concluded that the tape he'd been carrying around in his pocket was the record. Quiet and bleak, Nebraska nonetheless grabbed you by the collar and made you listen as surely as his rock & roll records ever had.
Tunnel of Love (1987)
The glare and hubbub surrounding the Born in the USA tour (the tour was great--the record itself overrated) made him pull back again, this time to write a cycle of songs about love and fear and self-doubt. After this, Springsteen's first marriage broke up, and he started a family with Patti Scialfa, disappearing for the better part of 10 years, notwithstanding the pair of not-bad, just-disappointing albums he released in 1992, Human Touch and Lucky Town.
The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)
Some call it Nebraska II, but his second acoustic album was not a repeat of his first--the characters and settings had changed, and their circumstances were more expressly desperate, and social--though it did share the same interest in what happens to people whose isolation or marginal status renders them invisible.
The Rising (2002)
Everybody, including Springsteen, seemed to think it was a record about 9/11, but the subject was broader--death and loss as seen from more than halfway down life's road. Dave Marsh nailed it: "A middle-aged man confronts death and chooses life" Brendan O'Brien's production sounds great.
Classic Rock Music CDs
Paul Mccartney, Wings - Wings at the Speed of SoundRelease date: 1996-09-24; Music CD
Best price: $149.99
Small Faces - BoxedRelease date: 1997-11-01; Music CD
Best price: $39.95
Dr John - Gris GrisRelease date: 1994-07-15; Music CD
Price in other shops:
![Eric Clapton: Live in Hyde Park [VHS] Image](/images/Eric-Clapton-Live-in-Hyde-Park-VHS-6304817037-X.jpg){kind=small}
Eric Clapton: Live in Hyde Park [VHS]Warner Bros / Wea; Release date: 1998-02-17; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $13.50
Price in other shops:
![Human Highway [VHS] Image](/images/Human-Highway-VHS-6303589219-X.jpg){kind=small}
Human Highway [VHS]Warner Bros / Wea; Release date: 1995-08-08; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $153.94
![The Monkees - Head [VHS] Image](/images/The-Monkees-Head-VHS-6303337023-X.jpg){kind=small}
The Monkees - Head [VHS]Rhino / Wea; Release date: 1995-01-25; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $14.40
Price in other shops:
![Live & Loud [VHS] Image](/images/Live-Loud-VHS-630276193X-X.jpg){kind=small}
Ozzy Osbourne - Live & Loud [VHS]Sony; Release date: 1993-05-25; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $3.96
Price in other shops:
![Unplugged [VHS] Image](/images/Unplugged-VHS-6302639859-X.jpg){kind=small}
Bruce Springsteen - Unplugged [VHS]Sony; Release date: 1992-12-15; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $2.75
Price in other shops:
![Peter Gabriel - P.O.V. [VHS] Image](/images/noimg.gif)
Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel - P.O.V. [VHS]Virgin Records Us; Release date: 1992-06-29; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
![Past to Present [VHS] Image](/images/Past-to-Present-VHS-6301817664-X.jpg){kind=small}
Toto - Past to Present [VHS]Sony; Release date: 1991-07-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $77.99
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - Live in BarcelonaSony; Release date: 2003-11-18; DVD
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops:
Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band - Blood BrothersSony; Release date: 2001-01-16; DVD
Best price: $6.95
Price in other shops:
Bruce Springsteen - The Complete Video Anthology, 1978-2000Sony; Release date: 2001-01-16; DVD
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Live: 1975-85 (3CD)Release date: 1997-10-14; Music CD
Best price: $30.11
Price in other shops:
Bruce Springsteen - The RiverRelease date: 1990-10-25; Published: 1990; Music CD
Best price: $12.92
Price in other shops:
Bruce Springsteen - Greetings From Asbury Park NjColumbia; Release date: 1990-10-25; Music CD
Best price: $4.46
Price in other shops:
Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, the Innocent & the E-Street ShuffleSPRINGSTEEN,BRUCE; Release date: 1990-10-25; Music CD
Best price: $4.73
Price in other shops:
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - Live in New York CitySPRINGSTEEN,BRUCE & E STREET BAND; Release date: 2001-11-06; DVD
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: London Calling - Live in Hyde ParkSony; Release date: 2010-06-21; DVD
Best price: $12.26
Price in other shops:
Bruce Springsteen - The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story (3 CD/ 3 DVD)Release date: 2010-11-16; Music CD
Best price: $74.98
Price in other shops: