Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Bruce Springsteen (vocals, acoustic & electric guitars, harmonica); Steve Van Zandt (acoustic & electric guitars, background vocals); Nils Lofgren (acoustic & electric guitars, background vocals); Clarence Clemons (saxophone, percussion, background vocals); Roy Bittan (piano, synthesizer, background vocals); Danny Federici (organ, accordion, glockenspiel, keyboards, background vocals); Patty Scialfa (sunthesizer, background vocals); Max Weinberg (drums).

Flo & Eddie: Mark Volman, Howard Kaylan.

Miami Horns: Stan Harrison (tenor saxophone); Eddie Manion (baritone saxophone); Mark Pender (trumpet); Richie La Bamba (trombone).

Producers: Bruce Springsteen, Jon Landau, Chuck Plotkin.

Recorded live between 1975 and 1985.

Long before he sold substantial numbers of records, Bruce Springsteen began to earn a reputation as the best live act in rock & roll. Fans had been clamoring for a live album for a long time, and with Live/1975-85 they got what they wanted, at least in terms of bulk. His concerts were marathons, and this box set, including 40 tracks and running over three and a half hours, was about the average length of a show. In his brief liner notes, Springsteen spoke of the emergence of the album's "story" as he reviewed live tapes, and that story seems nothing less than a history of his life, his concerns, and his career. The first cuts present the Springsteen of the early to mid-'70s; these performances, most of them drawn from a July 1978 show at the Roxy in Los Angeles, present the romantic, hopeful, earnest Springsteen. The second section begins with his first Top Ten hit, "Hungry Heart" -- this is the Springsteen of the late '70s and early '80s, an arena rock star with working-class concerns. After an acoustic mini set given largely to material from Nebraska -- songs of economic desperation and crime -- comes a reshuffling of Born in the U.S.A., songs in which the artist and his characters start to fight back and rock out. Finally, he brings it all back home to New Jersey, starting with the unofficial state anthem, "Born to Run." Fans could rejoice in the seven previously unreleased songs, but Live/1975-85 wasn't as funny, moving, or exhilarating as a Springsteen show could be. Maybe no single album could have been, but where Springsteen impressed in concert because he tried so hard, here he seemed to have tried a little too hard to make a live album carry the freight of everything he had to say. ~ William Ruhlmann

There's one song from a 1975 show, which makes the title of this box set true in the literal sense, and eight from a 1978 appearance at the Roxy in Los Angeles, but in essence this is Bruce Springsteen in the '80s--physically huge, politically charged and desperate to connect. You get the sense this is no accident. LIVE/1975-85 easily could have been a celebration of Springsteen's rise to rock & roll fame, instead, it's a concerted effort to make something of it. Almost all of LIVE/1975-85 was recorded in arenas and stadiums and almost all of it is intent on spreading a message.

The cover song that resonates most isn't the party encore "Raise Your Hand"(from 1978) but the anti-war chant "War" (from 1985). The most astonishing sequence of songs is all acoustic and almost all angry: Woody Guthrie's protest song "This Land Is Your Land" and Springsteen's own "Nebraska," "Johnny 99" and "Reason To Believe." With its reverberant keyboards and a haunting intro that quotes the soul classic "Nowhere to Run," even the love song "Cover Me" sounds like some sort of protest. There's lots of celebrating and rocking here, too, but mostly there's lots to think about.

Q (1/03, p.140) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...These remasters reveal a ragged glory..."

Uncut (01/03, p.131) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...Plenty of good stuff..."