The River is the fifth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, released as a double album on October 17, 1980, through Columbia Records. The album was Springsteen's attempt to capture the E Street Band's live sound on record. Co-produced by Springsteen, his manager Jon Landau, and bandmate Steven Van Zandt, the recording sessions lasted 18 months in New York City from March 1979 to August 1980. Springsteen originally planned to release a single LP, The Ties That Bind, in late 1979, before deciding it did not fit his vision and scrapped it. Over 50 songs were recorded, with outtakes being released as B-sides, or on compilation albums.

The River is a heartland rock and rock and roll record with a live garage-band sound, combining party songs with introspective ballads. The lyrics expand on the themes of Springsteen's previous albums Born to Run (1975) and Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) and mainly focus on love, marriage, and family. Springsteen took inspiration from the writer Flannery O'Connor for the characterizations. The cover photograph of Springsteen was taken by Frank Stefanko, who also took the front cover photograph of Darkness on the Edge of Town.

The River became Springsteen's first album to top the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart in the US and was his fastest-selling album yet. It was also a commercial success elsewhere, topping the chart in Canada and Norway, and reaching number two in the UK. It spawned several singles, including "Hungry Heart", a US top ten, "Fade Away", and "The River". Springsteen and the E Street Band supported the album on The River Tour from October 1980 to September 1981.

Upon release, music critics praised the songwriting, the performances of the E Street Band, and the lyrical evolution, while others believed Springsteen was recycling old material and lacking in creativity. In later decades, The River has been regarded as one of Springsteen's finest works, although many critics remain divided on the album's consistency. It has appeared on best-of lists, while several songs foreshadowed the direction Springsteen took on his next album, the solo effort Nebraska (1982). The River was reissued as an expanded box set in 2015, featuring the scrapped single LP, The Ties That Bind, and a documentary detailing the album's making.

Background Bruce Springsteen supported his fourth studio album Darkness on the Edge of Town on the Darkness Tour from May 1978 to January 1979, performing with the E Street Band – Roy Bittan (piano), Clarence Clemons (saxophone), Danny Federici (organ), Garry Tallent (bass), Steven Van Zandt (guitar), and Max Weinberg (drums). Upon the tour's completion, he began preparations for his next studio record. Having grown closer with the E Street Band during the tour, he wanted his fifth album to be a "band" album, one that captured the feel of the band playing on stage. Springsteen stated: "I wanted to cut some music that felt very explosive. I wanted a record that combined the fun aspect of what the band did along with the story I was telling. Find a way to combine those things and create a bigger picture of what we did out in front of the people."

Rehearsals took place with the E Street Band during the early months of 1979 at a studio inside Springsteen's home in Holmdel, New Jersey. Springsteen wrote both new material and had an assortment of pre-written tracks either already recorded in the studio during the Darkness sessions or performed live on the tour, including "Independence Day", "Point Blank", "The Ties That Bind", "Ramrod", "Drive All Night", and "Sherry Darling". Springsteen used the Byrds as the basis for several songs, specifically their use of harmony vocals to unite the band as a whole. According to the author Peter Ames Carlin, the new material picked up where Darkness left off, being influenced by early rock and roll and country records, with stories capturing "snapshots of the real world as viewed through the hopes, labors, fears, joys, and strugglers of the unheralded many". Songs that took shape during this time included "Be True", "Hungry Heart", "I Wanna Be with You", "Bring on the Night", and "Roulette", which was written as a response to the Three Mile Island accident and foreshadowed Springsteen's future as a politicized singer-songwriter.

Recording history Initial sessions

Recording sessions for the album began in March 1979 and took place at the Power Station in New York City. The venue was chosen after Weinberg, Tallent, and Bittan had recorded Ian Hunter's You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic album there. Several different microphones were set up around the studio's large gymnasium-sized room designed to capture the live sounds of the band. Springsteen, Jon Landau, and Van Zandt acted as co-producers. Van Zandt exerted more control during these sessions after assisting with production during the Darkness sessions. He was tasked with giving the band a more "garage" and "rugged" sound to contrast with Born to Run (1975) and Darkness, and ensured the band was ready to play; Landau ensured progress was being made. Van Zandt later said: "The River was the first record where I felt comfortable enough to start capturing what the band was all about."

Springsteen's perfectionism from previous recording sessions remained, with the entire band recording numerous retakes of the same tracks. The Power Station's resident engineer Bob Clearmountain was taken aback by Springsteen's work ethic at first but was impressed by his material and dedication to achieving perfection. Songs were played based on the complexity of their chord structures. Springsteen taught the band the more complex ones in sections, while more simple ones began without the band knowing what they were playing entirely. Tallent remembered: "We'd hear the song for the first time while we were recording it." Tracks were mostly recorded live, apart from occasional vocal, guitar, or saxophone overdubs.

One of the first songs recorded was "The Ties That Bind". In May, the band attempted "Bring on the Night" and the Born to Run outtake "Janey Needs a Shooter", the latter of which Springsteen donated to Warren Zevon. Between May and mid-June, the band recorded "Sherry Darling", "Independence Day", "I Wanna Be With You", "Ramrod", "Bring on the Night", "Jackson Cage", "Be True", and "Hungry Heart", which Springsteen initially wrote for the Ramones, believing its poppy sound was out of place with the rest of the material, but Landau convinced him to keep it. Harmony vocals on the song were provided by Flo & Eddie (Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, formerly of the Turtles). Anticipating a hit single, the mixer Chuck Plotkin sped the tape up to "give the vocal a more boyish lilt", after which Clearmountain mixed the song. Springsteen initially disliked the finished song before being convinced it fit on the album and would perform well as the lead single. In June, Springsteen attended the wedding of his lighting director Marc Brickman in Los Angeles, California, after which he wrote "Stolen Car" and other songs with marital and parental themes, including "The Price You Pay", "Loose Ends", "I Wanna Marry You", and "Cindy". Other songs, such as "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)" and "Ricky Wants a Man of Her Own", appeared by late July.

The sessions continued through August, during which Springsteen wrote "The River". By September, he had finalized a track list and was ready to release the album, to be titled The Ties That Bind, by Christmas 1979. This version was engineered and mixed by Clearmountain. Nevertheless, Springsteen felt the album "wasn't enough" as he kept listening to it. In his 2016 autobiography Born to Run, he explained that he was inspired by artists such as Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Marvin Gaye, who "created self-aware, self-contained worlds on their albums, and then invited their fans to discover them". After performing with the E Street Band at the No Nukes benefit concerts for Musicians United for Safe Energy at Madison Square Garden in mid-September, Springsteen reconceptualized the album. He had debuted "The River" during the shows and wanted to write new material that reflected the song's darker themes.

Later sessions

With The Ties That Bind scrapped, the recording sessions continued through the end of 1979 into 1980 as Springsteen kept writing new material, including "Crush on You", "Where All the Bands Are", "Party Lights", "I'm a Rocker", "Living on the Edge of the World", "Take 'em as They Come", "Out in the Street", and "Two Hearts". Discussing his long recording periods in the studio, Springsteen said: "I stopped feeling bad about ... spending a long time in the studio ... I said [to myself], That's me, that's what I do. I work slow, and I work slow for a reason: To get the results that I want." These sessions were engineered by Neil Dorfsman as Clearmountain departed for other commitments.

Between January and April 1980, Springsteen continued writing new songs, such as "Restless Nights" and "Wreck on the Highway", and reintroduced already recorded material to re-record, including "Independence Day", "Point Blank", "Sherry Darling", "Drive All Night", "Stolen Car", and "Jackson Cage". Landau proposed making the record a double album to encompass everything Springsteen was trying to achieve. By the end of April, Springsteen had selected 22 tracks for the album, although recording continued. He later stated in the late 1990s: "It's never over until it's over. Everybody's telling you you're done and you take it home and it's just not right ... [But] my life at the time [of The River] was extremely focused, probably to the detriment of the records."

The sessions lasted until August 1980 for a total of 18 months, during which almost 50 songs were recorded. Of the outtakes, some were issued as B-sides ("Be True", "Held Up Without a Gun", and "Roulette"), while others later appeared on compilation albums such as 1998's Tracks ("Loose Ends" and "Ricky Wants a Man for Her Own") and 2015's The Ties That Bind: The River Collection ("Cindy" and "The Man Who Got Away"). Springsteen also gave songs to other artists, including "From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)" to Dave Edmunds, who released his own version in 1982, as well as "Dedication" and "Your Love" to the singer Gary U.S. Bonds. Springsteen later admitted he left "an entire album ... [of] three [to] four-minute pop songs" in the vault.

Mixing Mixing for the double album, now called The River, was done at Clover Studios in Los Angeles by Plotkin and Toby Scott. Reportedly lasting five months, mixing the 20 chosen recordings proved problematic; the studio's microphones used to record the live sound bled together, creating a "muddled and unclear" sound. Scott explained: "Neil [Dorfsman]'s recording of the room mics had been one of my problems when I mixed The River. There was so much cymbal in those room mics, I had to recreate the room by using the Clover studio and piping some of the drums back out over speakers into the studio to have them reverberate around, while also using reverb units." Plotkin and Scott attempted to make their own mix of "Hungry Heart" before deciding Clearmountain's mix was superior. Mastering was done by Ken Perry at Capitol Studios in Hollywood.

Music and lyrics