October 2015
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A new and expansive box set that delves deeply into Bruce Springsteen's sessions for his 1980 double album The River will be released December 4.

The Ties That Bind: The River Collection features four CDs and three DVDs, including a remastered edition of the original 20-track album, an early 10-song single-disc version of the record, a variety of outtakes, a new making-of documentary, a previously unreleased 1980 concert video, and more.

The single-disc edition of The River features a list of tracks recorded in 1979 that Springsteen initially intended to release as the follow-up to 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town.

He later decided the songs lacked the cohesion of a finished album and returned to the studio to keep recording. The disc includes seven songs that eventually were included on the version of The River that was released, and three tunes that didn't make the cut -- "Cindy," "Be True," and "Loose End."

The first DVD features a new 60-minute documentary titled The Ties That Bind that was produced and directed frequent Springsteen collaborator Thom Zimny. It offers an in-depth interview with The Boss about the creation of The River, as well as segments in which Bruce plays some of the songs on acoustic guitar.

The film also includes archival concert footage and rare photos from the same period suring which Springsteen and The E Street Band were recording the album. The other two DVDs contain a previously unseen full-length performance Springsteen and his band played in November 1980 at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Professionally shot with four cameras, the shows runs two hours and 40 minutes and features 24 songs, including more than half of the tunes featured on The River.

In addition, one of the DVDs includes 20 minutes of footage of Bruce and company rehearsing for The River Tour in September 1980 in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

The Ties That Bind: The River Collection comes packaged with a 148-page hardcover coffee table book boasting rare and unseen photographs, as well as pics of Springsteen's notebooks, single covers, images from the original album photo sessions and various other pieces of memorabilia. Book also features a new foreword penned by acclaimed journalist Mikal Gilmore, comments Bruce wrote about The River from the 1998 book Songs, and more.

The Ties That Bind: The River Collection also will be available as a four-CD/two-Blu-ray package and a digital download. You can pre-order a copy now at Amazon.com and iTunes. You can check out one of the outtakes from the box set, "Meet Me in the City," now at Springsteen's official website.

oh good god, can you imagine prince's WB albums being re-released like this?

i know everyone always says that on threads like these, but man it would be so cool

meanwhile, this boxset looks great, i'll check it out.

These type of remastered projects are so cool.Hardcore fans live for stuff like this!

Such a shame that Prince won't give us amazing things like this

The River album marked my introduction to Springsteen's music. I can hardly wait to get my hands on this massive collection.

Prince, earth 2 Prince, come in Prince!!

Prince never looks at things from the perspective of a fan.He dosen't want us to "celebrate" his past albums.It's like he wants us to forget all that music and focus only on what he's doing now

Doalwa said:

Oh man, first that massive Queen box set, now this...I might have to think about picking up a second job to pay for all this stuff

But yeah, this is just another painful reminder of all those lost opportunities for Prince to take care of his own legacy.

SoulAlive said:

Prince never looks at things from the perspective of a fan.He dosen't want us to "celebrate" his past albums.It's like he wants us to forget all that music and focus only on what he's doing now

Man, just the thought of a 4-disc 1999 reissue box set with bonus content..

[Edited 5/6/17 16:48pm]

Identity said:

SoulAlive said:

Prince never looks at things from the perspective of a fan.He dosen't want us to "celebrate" his past albums.It's like he wants us to forget all that music and focus only on what he's doing now

Man, just the thought of a 4-disc 1999 reissue box set with bonus content...[img:$uid]http://i.imgur.com/tfvKSnG.gif[/img:$uid]

damn,Prince!!

IstenSzek said:

oh good god, can you imagine prince's WB albums being re-released like this?

I don't care about a 4 CD set for Prince albums, but it would be nice for Stevie Wonder. I would be interested in a set for unreleased stuff by The Time/O7.

MickyDolenz said:

I don't care about a 4 CD set for Prince albums,

can I ask why? Is it because so much of Prince's unreleased outtakes are already circulating?

SoulAlive said:

can I ask why? Is it because so much of Prince's unreleased outtakes are already circulating?

No, I don't get into bootlegs and I've heard very few of the unreleased songs. I'm not into Prince that much that I have to hear all of his music. Maybe I would have been cared more about it in the 1980s, when I listened to Prince a lot. Like I would have been excited about Howard Jones or Whitney Houston then too. But I don't play Prince much now and mostly only hear him today on the urban contemporary station and they play the same 6 or 7 songs over and over like Kiss & Diamonds And Pearls. I haven't heard any of his albums past the one that was only sold in Target and I haven't heard any online only songs other than PFunk (I think that's the name of it). You don't see me posting in the Prince section do you? I'd be more excited about a Johnnie Taylor set than a Prince one. If Prince released a music video compilation with the full video versions, I'd buy that. If Prince put out something like the Genesis box sets from 2007-2009, I might buy that, but I don't think Prince would do the behind the scenes interviews like Genesis did. I thought The Monkees Headquarters Sessions 3 CD set was a bit overkill and didn't buy it.

Prince : "why should I ..I can still write new music"

too bad im not a springsteen fan..

Veteran artists like Paul McCartney,Bruce Springsteen and others truly understand their fans and they know exactly what their fans want.

SoulAlive said:

Prince never looks at things from the perspective of a fan.He dosen't want us to "celebrate" his past albums.It's like he wants us to forget all that music and focus only on what he's doing now

Prince definitely wants us to keep the focus on his new material.

''Meet Me in the City" is a previously unheard track from the box set.

One thing to remember is a lot of the artists getting to do these box sets now were actually in their heyday in the 1970s, so we could still be a whole decade away from getting something similar from Prince, and that's only if he slows down like the rest did... doubtful!

Cinny said:

One thing to remember is a lot of the artists getting to do these box sets now were actually in their heyday in the 1970s, so we could still be a whole decade away from getting something similar from Prince, and that's only if he slows down like the rest did... doubtful!

nah,Prince ain't never gonna do something like this.

SoulAlive said:

Prince never looks at things from the perspective of a fan.He dosen't want us to "celebrate" his past albums.It's like he wants us to forget all that music and focus only on what he's doing now

There's a bit of me still kinda respects him for that in principle, though - that he's not trying to milk his back catalogue; he just wants to keep on creating and looking forward. The only problem is that so much of what he does now just isn't very good (), and so I have to agree that he'd be better off just doing something like this and giving us fans some well-compiled sets of his classic material - which we'd eat up. And I suppose it'd be nice to see him have more of a comfortable relationship with his past, which he sometimes seems to disown and try to discard as soon as he's done with it.

Just typing this it occurs to me that, as ever, things are full of contradictions with Prince, because when you look at his live shows over the past couple of decades, he's been quite content to endlessly rehash the past ("I've got too many hits", etc) and never really move on to sets built around newer material, with the older stuff taking more of a back seat.

Put out an 8 cd album called the Purple Gold unleashed! lol I wish.

NorthC said:

Doalwa said:

Oh man, first that massive Queen box set, now this...I might have to think about picking up a second job to pay for all this stuff

But yeah, this is just another painful reminder of all those lost opportunities for Prince to take care of his own legacy.

Yep, record companies sure know how to rip off us old folk who still buy CDs! I'm no Springsteen fan, but Dylan is coming with another one of his Bootleg Series... I'm actually glad Prince doesn't do box sets...that would make it even worse!
[Edited 10/18/15 13:44pm]

KingSausage said:

NorthC said:

Yep, record companies sure know how to rip off us old folk who still buy CDs! I'm no Springsteen fan, but Dylan is coming with another one of his Bootleg Series... I'm actually glad Prince doesn't do box sets...that would make it even worse!
[Edited 10/18/15 13:44pm]

The Dylan Bootleg Series arts and all of Springsteen's reissues have been the furthest thing from a ripoff so far. It boggles my mind that you would even say that.

I wish the outtakes were going to be sold on a separate CD...

purplethunder3121 said:

I wish the outtakes were going to be sold on a separate CD...

that will NEVER EVER EVER HAPPEN

purplethunder3121 said:

Cinny said:

purplethunder3121 said:

I wish the outtakes were going to be sold on a separate CD...

that will NEVER EVER EVER HAPPEN

well, there was "the promise"