Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda: This Could Have Been a Heckuva Lot Better.

For me, live albums exist largely as a way to add something to the music not heard on the studio version, and secondarily as a nostalgia trip. I have no interest in their third purpose, which is as a greatest hits collection. The Allman Brothers classic “Live at the Fillmore East” is a good example of the first reason. It’s a live collection that often transcends the album versions while preserving the vitality and excitement of the concert experience. The recent Genesis retrospective is an example of the first two: it adds enough to be interesting, and reminds me of the great time I had at one of their shows back in the 70’s. On the other hand, you have a clunker like Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s 1974 “Welcome Back My Friends”, which falls into the third category and is largely note for note transcriptions played with a studied lack of interest.

Now, I confess that I was one of those people who were lined up outside the record store doors when “Springsteen Live 1975-1985” was released in 1986. I had seen Springsteen on four different tours (two more subsequently) and owned two great bootlegs of concerts from the classic 1978 “Darkness” tour. I had lived with his music since college. I couldn’t wait for a live set. And what I was hoping for was a set that would give me the excitement and gritty performances of my bootlegs along with clean sound.

I got the sound, but the performances and song choices. . . well, I’ve heard better from the Boss.

It’s not that this is a bad live collection. It isn’t, and people who aren’t major Springsteen fans, or who jumped on the “Born in the U.S.A.” bandwagon, or have never seen him in concert will probably enjoy this. From the perspective of the knowledgeable fan, though, this leaves something to be desired.

Admittedly, he could have released a ten instead of a five disc set (which in itself was rather ambitious). The forty songs here are taken across the spectrum of Springsteen’s work to that time and include some important tunes not previously available on vinyl. That'’s the good part. What’s also good is that the live versions of many of Springsteen’s early songs (from the first two albums) are much superior to the studio versions. The bad part is that I’ve heard a lot of these songs performed better, there are some inexplicable inclusions (with an overemphasis on material from “U.S.A.”), and some unforgivable omissions. So what I’m going to do is take a look at most of the songs on “Live” and discuss their concert vs. studio virtues.

The first CD of the three CD’s is solid, for the most part. The collection opens with a surprising acoustic version of the classic “Thunder Road”, with just Springsteen on harmonica and Roy Bittan on piano. Right off the bat, I’m going to contradict myself: this nice version is totally different from the album version, but for this song—the best rock and roll song ever recorded—you really need the electric concert version, which I have heard numerous times and which is extraordinary (if you’ve seen the concert film “No Nukes”, you know what I mean—not that I support that cause, but the version of “Thunder Road” is fabulous). It’s nice, but it’s just not the rocker this tune is meant to be.

Next up is a routine but solid version of the concert stalwart “Adam Raised a Cain”, from “Darkness on the Edge of Town”. (I saw the Boss on this 1978 tour.) It is followed by a very good version of “Spirits in the Night” (from “Greetings from Asbury Park”) that blows away the rather hollow album version, but is nonetheless not quite up to other live versions I have heard. An instrumental, “Paradise by the C” is next, an old concert rocker that is nice to have on disk.

A terrific version “Fourth of July Asbury Park (Sandy)” follows. The band sounds great, the accordion is fun, the whole thing rocks. I heard the Boss perform this in 1978 and almost heard him do it in 1981 at the University of Illinois. However, just as the accordion lit up, Springsteen saw a newly married couple off to the side of the stage. He brought them out, introduced them, and played “Little Girl I Wanna Marry You” (forgetting some of the lyrics in the process).

So much for Sandy.

Next is the concert standby “Fire”, covered by more artists than I can count. It’s great that this tune is on the album as it is not on any of the studio albums. However, the version included here is a truncated form of longer versions I have heard many times. I don’t know why this was included instead of other, better versions.

The next great performance is “Growin’ Up”, from the first album. It’s great, exciting, and just what the doctor ordered. (Contrast it with the album version and the acoustic version from “Tracks”.) It’s what every song here should have been. Following it is another reworked first album song, “It’s Hard to Be A Saint in the City.” It, too, is vastly superior to the studio cut (I would have preferred “Lost in the Flood”, but who’s counting?).

Still on the first CD, the concert and album classic “Backstreets” is next. This is a great, booming, marvelous song of busted love and the concert performance is fun. But. . . the better thing to do was include the great “Drive All Night” interlude that splits the end of the verses from the repeated “hiding on the backstreets” refrain. I’ve never been much of a fan of Springsteen’s stories and little segues. I find them pompous and irrelevant. But the “Drive All Night” bit is classic and fits naturally
with the misery of “Backstreets”. Indeed, if you had never heard “Backstreets” before seeing Springsteen in concert, you would think it was part of the song. I’ve got three live versions of “Backstreets” with this interlude, and all of them are better than this one.

No Springsteen performance is complete without the obligatory “Rosalita”, and this is no exception. It’s a great tune, but so was the version on the album and you’ve heard it a million times. It doesn’t add much, but I suppose it HAD to be here.

Also included is another obscure tune, “Raise Your Hand”, from the 1978 tour. Not a great song, but it wasn’t on disc before and it’s nice to see it here.

After this promising start on the first CD, the rest of the first and most of the second and third CD’s are mostly downhill. The material is mostly from the better known albums “Born to Run”, “Darkness”, “The River”, and the breakthrough “Born in the U.S.A.”. along with a few obscurities and concert staples. Here, my major complaint comes out in force: generally speaking, these versions add little to what we’ve already heard in the studio.

CD two is headed up with five tunes off “The River”: the crowd pleaser “Hungry Heart”, the rocker “Two Hearts”, the terminally annoying “Independence Day”, “You Can Look But You Better Not Touch”, and “Cadillac Ranch”. None of the performances add much to what we’ve heard before. A terrific version of “Badlands”, followed by a long-awaited version of “Because the Night” (co-written by Patti Smith, and it blows away her version and the neurotic 10,000 Maniacs edition as well), and three more tunes from “Darkness”: “Candy’s Room”, the title track, and a beautiful version of “Racing in the Streets” that is far superior to the album version.

But even here, we see another missed opportunity. There are tapes floating around (mine included) that have this great rendition of “Racing in the Streets” melding into an incredible “Thunder Road” electric version. (complete with the story about Robert Mitchum) It’s a shame that this medley was deep-sixed for what we got here.

Thankfully, a few obscurities follow: Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”, the title cut from “Nebraska” and “Johnny 99” (what—no “Atlantic City”), “Reason to Believe” and “Seeds”.

Most of the rest of the set is drawn from “Born in the U.S.A.”, including the title track, “I’m On Fire”, “Darlington County”, the surpassingly mediocre “Working on the Highway” (originally written as a ballad, Springsteen turned it into a rocker, and with good reason), the hit single “Cover Me”, “No Surrender”, “My Hometown”, and a superlative version of “Bobbie Jean” (written as a farewell to guitarist Miami Steve Van Zandt, now of “The Sopranos”). Surprisingly, “Dancing in the Dark” is AWOL.

Interspersed amongst these standard renditions are a cover version of “War”, and the obligatory “Born to Run”, “Promised Land”, and a beautiful “The River”, and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”. A touching version of Tom Waits’s “Jersey Girl” closes.

It’s good stuff, but what are some of the Springsteen tunes that should be here, but aren’t? Why don’t we start with the inexcusable admission of the show-stopping epic, “Jungleland”? How about the wonderful “Point Blank”—and not just a live version of the cut from “The River”, but the version from the 1978 tour with the different lyrics (and a performance that blows away the album). You can get picky and ask where “Thundercrack” and “Rendezvous” are, but we got them on “Tracks” so maybe that’s OK. Where’s “The Fever”?

And instead of all that pablum from “Born in the U.S.A.”, where are “The Ties that Bind” and “Sherry Darling”, two more concert favorites? “Prove It All Night”? “Meeting Across the River?” Or “Pink Cadillac”, a surprise hit (it was the flip side of a single)? And then there is a truly glaring omission, the phenomenal ten-minute live version of “Incident on 57th Street”, which is not only one of the Boss’s best songs, but was on the reverse side of the “Fire” single that was released with this live set?

You may say that these complaints are merely grousing, so let’s get into the Springsteen concert covers that are absent. Start with the Mitch Ryder medley, a concert closing classic that is MIA—instead we get “War”? Where is “Do You Love Me (Now that I can Dance)”? And where, oh where, is the apocalyptic encore, the eight minute version of “Twist and Shout”?

You get the idea.

In sum, it’s a nice collection of listenable stuff. But there is no sense of adventure, and it really seems directed at the new (vintage 1985) listener. For old-timers, this is not. Springsteen has proven that he can do better. There is a multitude of people who will buy live sets from the Boss, as the plethora of bootlegs proves. Let’s see some more.