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October 17: Bruce Springsteen released The River in 1980

But I remember us riding in my brother’s car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I’d lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
Or is it something worse?
~Bruce Springsteen “The River”

Put on your best dress baby
And darlin’, fix your hair up right
Cause there’s a party, honey
Way down beneath the neon lights
~Bruce Springsteen “Out In The Street”

 

From Wikipedia

Released	October 17, 1980
Recorded	The Power Station, New York March 1979 – August 1980
Genre	Rock, heartland rock
Length	83:47
Label	Columbia
Producer	Jon Landau, Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt

The River is the fifth studio album (a double album) by Bruce Springsteen, released in 1980.

The sources of The River go back into earlier parts of Springsteen’s recording career. “Independence Day”, “Point Blank”, “The Ties That Bind”, “Ramrod”, and “Sherry Darling” were leftovers from his previous album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and had been featured on that 1978 tour, as had parts of “Drive All Night” as a long interpolation within “Backstreets”.”The River” had premiered at the September 1979 Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) concerts, gaining a featured spot in the subsequent documentary No Nukes.

No Nukes poster:

Here is “The River” from the first MUSE concert 1979-09-21:

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Here’s Bruce:

[The River] was a record that was sort of the gateway to a lot of my future writing. It was a record we made after Darkness on the Edge of Town. It was a record made during a recession – hard times in the States. Its title song is a song I wrote for my brother-in-law and sister. My brother-in-law was in the construction industry, lost his job and had to struggle very hard back in the late 70s, like so many people are doing today. It was a record where I first started to tackle men and women and families and marriage. There were certain songs on it that led to complete records later on: “The River” sort of went to the writing on Nebraska, “Stolen Car” went to the writing on Tunnel of Love.

Originally it was a single record. I handed it in with just one record and I took it back because I didn’t feel it was big enough. I wanted to capture the themes I had been writing about on Darkness. I wanted to keep those characters with me and at the same time added music that made our live shows so much fun and joy for our audience. So in the end, we’re gonna take you down to The River tonight.

Originally, the album was to be a single set entitled The Ties That Bind and released in late 1979. According to Dave Marsh, tracks of this unreleased album were to be:

Side One: 1. “The Ties That Bind” 2. “Cindy” 3. “Hungry Heart” 4. “Stolen Car” 5. “Be True”.

Side Two: 1. “The River” 2. “You Can Look (But Don’t Touch)” 3. “The Price You Pay” 4. “I Wanna Marry You” 5. “Loose Ends”.

Springsteen added darker material after he’d written the title track. Indeed, The River became noted for its mix of the frivolous next to the solemn. This was intentional, and in contrast to Darkness, for as Springsteen said during an interview:

“Rock and roll has always been this joy, this certain happiness that is in its way the most beautiful thing in life. But rock is also about hardness and coldness and being alone … I finally got to the place where I realized life had paradoxes, a lot of them, and you’ve got to live with them.”

“Hungry Heart” was Springsteen’s first U.S. pop singles chart top ten hit single, reaching #5. (Springsteen had not intended the song to be for himself, having initially written it for The Ramones; manager/producer Jon Landau convinced Springsteen to keep the song for himself.) The album hit number one on the U.S. pop albums chart, a first for Springsteen, and sold 1.6 million copies in the U.S. between its release and Christmas. Sales faltered with “Fade Away”, which only reached #20.

Hungry Heart at Capital Center in Landover, Maryland on November 24/1980:

• The album was followed by a lengthy tour of North America and Western Europe during 1980 and 1981. Several of the album’s up-tempo rockers became concert staples for decades to come, including “Cadillac Ranch”, “Ramrod”, and “Out in the Street”, as did “Two Hearts” (with Steven Van Zandt acting as the second ‘heart’).
• “Stolen Car” and “Wreck on the Highway”, the closing tracks on the original LP’s sides three and four, bore quiet, haunted arrangements that presaged much of the musical direction Springsteen would take in the future.
• “Point Blank” took its title from a 1967 movie starring Lee Marvin.
• Since its release, The River has been certified quintuple platinum by the RIAA in the U.S., making it one of Springsteen’s best-selling albums. In 2003, the album was ranked number 250 on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
• “Drive All Night” and “Stolen Car” played a key role in setting the tone of the 1997 film Cop Land.
• “Drive All Night” and “Out in the Street” were used in the 2007 film Reign Over Me, and the album was mentioned multiple times throughout the movie.
• On November 8, 2009, near the end of the Working on a Dream Tour, Springsteen and the E Street Band performed The River in its entirety for the first time at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Sherry Darling from November 8, 2009:

From allmusic.com – William Ruhlmann:

Imbedded within the double-disc running time of The River is a single-disc album that follows up on the themes and sound of Darkness on the Edge of Town — wide-screen, midtempo rock and stories of the disillusionment of working-class life and the conflicts within families. In these songs, which include the title track, “Independence Day,” and “Point Blank,” Bruce Springsteen’s world-view is just as dire as it had become on Darkness, but less judgmental. “Independence Day,” for example, is a father-and-son ballad that has little of the anger of its hard rock counterpart on Darkness, “Adam Raised a Cain.”Springsteen’s heroes again seek to overcome their crushing troubles through defiance and by driving around, and though “The River” repeats the soured love theme of “Racing in the Street,” he also posits romance as a possible escape, sometimes combining it with one of the other solutions, as on the eight-plus-minute “Drive All Night.”
…read more @ allmusic.com 

Track listing

All songs written by Bruce Springsteen.
Side one
“The Ties That Bind” – 3:34
“Sherry Darling” – 4:03
“Jackson Cage” – 3:04
“Two Hearts” – 2:45
“Independence Day” – 4:50

Side two
“Hungry Heart” – 3:19
“Out in the Street” – 4:17
“Crush on You” – 3:10
“You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)” – 2:37
“I Wanna Marry You” – 3:30
“The River” – 5:01

Side three
“Point Blank” – 6:06
“Cadillac Ranch” – 3:03
“I’m a Rocker” – 3:36
“Fade Away” – 4:46
“Stolen Car” – 3:54

Side four
“Ramrod” – 4:05
“The Price You Pay” – 5:29
“Drive All Night” – 8:33
“Wreck on the Highway” – 3:54

Personnel

• Bruce Springsteen – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano on “Drive All Night”

The E Street Band

• Roy Bittan – piano, organ on “I’m a Rocker” and “Drive All Night”, background vocals
• Clarence Clemons – saxophone, percussion, background vocals
• Danny Federici – organ, glockenspiel
• Garry Tallent – bass
• Steven Van Zandt – acoustic guitar, guitar, lead guitar on “Crush on You”, harmony vocals, background vocals
• Max Weinberg – drums
• Flo & Eddie – on “Hungry Heart”
• Howard Kaylan – harmony vocals
• Mark Volman – harmony vocals

Production

• Bruce Springsteen – producer
• Jon Landau – producer
• Steven Van Zandt – producer
• Neil Dorfsman – engineering
• Bob Clearmountain – mixing
• Chuck Plotkin – mixing
• Toby Scott – mixing
• Dana Bisbee – assistant engineer
• Frank Stefanko – cover art

Album of the day – The River (1980)

Other October 17

• American III: Solitary Man is the third album in the American series by Johnny Cash released in 2000 (and his 85th overall album). The album was notable for being Cash’s highest charting (#11 Country) solo studio LP since his 1976 One Piece at a Time, an album that reached No. 2 Country based on the title cut. To the present day, Cash’s studio albums for American have continued to sell & chart extremely well, as evidenced by the platinum #22 POP, #2 C&W American IV: The Man Comes Around (released one year before his death) and the gold, #1 on both charts, American V: A Hundred Highways.
  

  Released	October 17, 2000
  Genre	Country, americana
  Length	42:15
  Label	American Recordings
  Producer	John Carter Cash, Rick Rubin

• Copperhead Road is anAmericanalternative country/country rock album released in 1988 by Steve Earle. Often referred to as Earle’s first “rock record”, Earle himself calls it the world’s first blend of heavy metal and bluegrass, while in their January 26, 1989 review of the album Rolling Stone suggested the style be known as “power twang”.
  

  Released	October 17, 1988 April 29, 2008 (Deluxe)
  Genre	Heartland rock, Alt-Country, Country rock, Americana
  Length	43:36
  Label	Uni Records (USA/Canada) MCA
  Producer	Steve Earle, Tony Brown

  –

• 12 X 5 is the second American album by The Rolling Stones, released in 1964 following the massive success of their debut The Rolling Stones in the UK and the promising sales of its American substitute, The Rolling Stones (England’s Newest Hit Makers), sometimes title as England’s Newest Hit Makers or just The Rolling Stones.
  

  Released	17 October 1964
  Recorded	25 February, 12 May, 10–11 and 24–26 June, 2 and 28–29 September 1964; Chess, Chicago,Illinois, United States and Regent Sound Studios, London, United Kingdom
  Genre	Rock
  Length	33:24
  Language	English
  Label	London
  Producer	Andrew Loog Oldham

  –

• Alan Eugene Jackson (born October 17, 1958) is an American country music singer, known for blending traditional honky tonk and mainstream country sounds and penning many of his own hits. He has recorded 14 studio albums, three Greatest Hits albums, two Christmas albums, one Gospel album and several compilations, all on the Arista Nashville label. More than 50 of his singles have appeared on Billboard’s list of the “Top 30 Country Songs”. Of Jackson’s entries, 35 were number-one hits, with 50 in the Top 10. He is the recipient of 2 Grammys, 16 CMA Awards, 17 ACM Awards and nominee of multiple other awards. He is a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2001. Jackson has sold more than 60 million records worldwide.
  –
• Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), better known by his stage name Eminem (often stylized as EMINƎM) and by his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. Eminem’s popularity brought his group, D12, to mainstream recognition. In addition to being a member of D12, Eminem is also one half of the hip hop duo Bad Meets Evil, withRoyce da 5’9″. Eminem is one of the best-selling artists in the world and is the best selling artist of the 2000s (decade). He has been listed and ranked as one of the greatest artists of all time by many magazines including the Rolling Stone magazine which has ranked him 82nd on its list of The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

-Egil & Hallgeir