First look & listen to Bruce Springsteen's The Ties That Bind: The River Collection

Hot Press was among the first in the world to see and hear The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, the massive 4CD/3DVD box-set, which will be making its way into many a Brooooooce lover’s stocking this Christmas.

The best starting point is the titular documentary in which Bruce explains where he was mentally and physically going into the making of his classic 1980 album.
“I didn’t just want to be a commentator, I didn’t want to be the audience, I didn’t want to be the observer, I wanted to be an active part of it in some way,” the 66-year-old Springsteen says of his younger self. “That’s a lot of what I was telling myself on The River. Ties that bind… well how do you make that happen? How do people come together and fall apart? Up to that point in my life I hadn’t really had the courage to do that or I tried and failed so quickly that it didn’t add up. Part of The River was trying to find the courage to jump in with both feet and experience those things myself.”
Bruce goes on to explain how him and the E Street Band then decamped to the countryside.
"We moved to a large farmhouse in Holmdel, New Jersey, set on 160-acres," he resumes. "I think I paid seven hundred bucks a month rent-wise for that. I started to write there for The River. Darkness (On The Edge Of Town) was the sort of samurai record where there was lots of isolation on it. For The River I was trying to move my characters back towards the mainstream, I guess. I wanted to write for my age, y’know? I was moving forward but in a funny way I was being inspired by things older than rock music at the time. I was listening to quite a bit of classic country - Roy Acuff, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Tammy Wynette. It was small town, rural music but it also had adult concerns and I was interested in going there."
In between the Boss’ further reflections, we get to see him picking out ‘Two Hearts’ in his backyard on an acoustic, and strumming ‘The River’ in Patti and his’ kitchen.
In-between all of that, we get a fascinating insight into the way Bruce goes about his songwriting business courtesy of the embryonic demos he came up with during those first days in the farmhouse.
The other two DVDs are devoted to a 1980 River tour stop-off in Tempe where Springsteen treated Arizonan fans to a 25-track set that’s straight in, no kissing with a turbo-charged ‘Born To Run’. It segues into a version of ‘Prove It All Night’ dominated by Clarence Clemons’ lung-bursting sax playing. The Big Man really was a storm force of nature back then.
The gig is rougher, faster and, well, more Clash-like than The Boss and the boys had ever been before which makes sense given his admitted chain-listening the previous year to London Calling.
Baggy of suit, curly of hair and generous of sideburn, Bruce ends as was traditional in those days with a ‘Detroit Medley’ that confirms his soul man credentials.
The holy grail for Springsteen fans is The River: Outtakes, eleven tracks never (officially) available before that have been spruced up by Bob Clearmountain.
Standouts include ‘Meet Me In The City’, a classic Bruce let’s-all-go-out tonight rocker; the similarly rambunctious, organ-driven ‘Little White Lies’; ‘The Time That Never Was’ which strikes the same melancholy chord as the title-track; ‘Whitetown’, a love letter to both his teenage years and “that girl in Kensington blue” on which he hits some serious falsetto notes, and the Duane Eddy-aping ‘Chain Lightning’.
There are more outtakes that originally appeared on the Tracks and Essentials collections, plus a gorgeous, 148-page coffee table book which puts the treasure trove of goodies into full historical context.
The Ties That Bind: The River Collection is released on December 4, with the documentary part of the box-set airing the following night on TG4.

Bruce portrait by Joel Bernstein