The River Tour

The River Tour was a concert tour featuring Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band that took place in 1980 and 1981, beginning concurrently with the release of Springsteen's album The River.

The River Tour
Tour by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Associated albumThe River
Start dateOctober 3, 1980
End dateSeptember 14, 1981
Legs4
No. of shows140
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert chronology

Itinerary

The first leg of the tour took place in arenas in the United States, comprising 46 shows beginning on October 3, 1980 in Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor, Michigan and lasting through the very end of the year. After a three-week holiday break, a second leg continued with 26 shows through early March in Canada and the U.S.

The third leg of the tour, during April through June 1981 (and pushed back three weeks from the original schedule, due to Springsteen's exhaustion from the first two legs), represented Springsteen's first real foray into Western Europe, and his first appearances at all there since his very short venture there following the release of Born to Run in 1975. In total 34 shows were played, including six nights at London's Wembley Arena. Ten countries were visited: West Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom.

The final leg was billed as a "homecoming tour", visiting U.S. cities that had been special in Springsteen's career for multiple night stands, beginning with six nights that opened his native New Jersey's Meadowlands Arena. After 34 shows in just 10 cities, this leg concluded on September 13 and 14 at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum.

The show

For the only time in his career, Springsteen opened some concerts with his signature song, "Born to Run". At the very first Ann Arbor show, he (in)famously was struck dumb and forgot the words to it; the audience's singing them helped him regain his bearings. In that show's encore, local hero Bob Seger appeared to duet with Springsteen on "Thunder Road".

Springsteen's performances on this tour were similar in nature to tours before, but extended in length. Thirty-song sets were often seen and shows ran up to four hours; it was during this tour that Springsteen's reputation for marathon performances really took hold.

The emotional temper of the concerts was assessed differently depending upon the goer, with some having a party and others reporting that after a string of depressing songs they felt like slitting their wrists. Certainly The River had material to illustrate both viewpoints — on it Springsteen had acknowledged that "life had paradoxes, a lot of them, and you've got to live with them" — and the tour followed in kind. A key difference now was that where before Springsteen had relied upon old 1960s R&B and pop numbers for his concerts' uptempo, lighter moments, he now had written them himself: "Out in the Street" "I'm a Rocker," "Ramrod," "Cadillac Ranch," "Crush on You" and "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)" would serve this role in this tour and in tours for years to come.

A couple of Springsteen concert traditions began during the tour. Near the end of the frat-rocker "Sherry Darling", Springsteen pulled a young female out of the front rows and danced with her on stage; this practice would become famous when he did it in the subsequent Born in the U.S.A. Tour during "Dancing in the Dark". And when playing his new (and first) Top 10 hit "Hungry Heart", Springsteen let the audience sing the first verse and chorus, a ritual that would be solidified on subsequent tours as well.

Two shows were noted at the time for their confluence with historical events. A November 5, 1980 show at Arizona State University followed the day after Ronald Reagan's electoral college landslide in the United States Presidential election. In a rare move for the time, Springsteen pronounced, "I don't know what you guys think about what happened last night, but I think it's pretty frightening", after which he and the band launched into a particularly fiery rendition of "Badlands". The performance of the song, but not the preceding remark, was included in the Live/1975-85 box set, and the performance was later included in full on a video release of the show in 2015. About a month later, on December 9, Springsteen went ahead with a scheduled concert at The Spectrum in Philadelphia the day after John Lennon was murdered, despite initial objections from sideman Steven Van Zandt. "It's a hard world that asks you to live with a lot of things that are unlivable", Springsteen announced before starting the show, "And it's hard to come out here and play tonight, but there's nothing else to do." He opened with an especially frenzied "Born to Run" and closed with a rendition of The Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout".

The most famous of the shows on the tour is probably the New Year's Eve 1980 one at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York. With a set list 38 songs strong, it is one of the longest Springsteen shows of all time.

Springsteen in concert on The River Tour. Drammenshallen, Drammen, Norway. 5 May 1981.

The first European show in Hamburg, Germany started out stiffly, but in time language and cultural barriers were broken and the European leg of the tour was considered a great success in building a Springsteen following there. It concluded with two epic shows at Birmingham, England's NEC Arena, one of which featured The Who's Pete Townshend joining the encores.

Moreover, his time in these foreign countries exposed Springsteen to the world outside America, including talking to people who considered America a beacon of self-interest and greed, and gave him alternative views of societies and issues. He began to read books on American history, deepening his heretofore admittedly shallow political consciousness.

By the time the final leg of the tour took place back in the U.S., he was doing a benefit show for Vietnam Veterans of America in Los Angeles (which raised $100,000) and often singing a heartfelt acoustic version of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land", presaging his much greater political involvement later in the 1980s. His on-stage stories and raps became longer and emotional, and he began asking for quiet before some of his more serious songs. He added the dour death-of-Elvis "Bye Bye Johnny" (later retitled "Johnny Bye Bye") and obscure Jimmy Cliff descent "Trapped" to his repertoire.

The July 1981 Meadowlands shows, while lauded for opening the arena (New Jersey's first), were marred by their proximity to the American Fourth of July and the firecrackers that were set off in the crowd during every show of the stand. Springsteen hated them (and had once been hit in the face with one), and angrily denounced the fans doing it.

This was also the final E Street Band tour performed in the classic all-male lineup before Patti Scialfa joined the band permanently from the Born in the U.S.A. Tour onwards.

Songs performed

Originals

Critical and commercial reception

By now tickets were very hard to get for many Springsteen concerts. As biographer Dave Marsh wrote, "Springsteen concert tickets sold out of all proportion to his popularity in the record stores or on Top Forty radio. He could sell out 20,000-seat sports arenas faster and more often than artists who sold four or five times as many records ... he was acclaimed as the greatest performer in rock." Thus, ticket scalping was a constant problem, as was fraud in mail-order lottery sales.

Critic Robert Hilburn wrote that the album and "the extensive U.S. tour that immediately followed its release made Springsteen not just a critical but also popular favorite with rock & roll fans across the country. No longer was he seen as merely an East Coast critical phenomenon." Music writer Robert Santelli wrote that, "Eager to please old fans and make disciples of new ones, Springsteen and the band pushed the limits nearly every night, with shows that went on for three—and sometimes four—hours. These marathon performances were exhausting for band and audience alike. The sheer number of songs played, the range of emotions explored, and the between-songs stories told by Springsteen ... took the shows far beyond the usual rock concert. Each night turned into a hard-driving demonstration of how and why Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band had become the best rock act on the road."

Legacy

Of all Springsteen's tours, The River Tour is perhaps the least known in retrospect to people who were not there. For many years, unlike tours before and since, there was little official audio or video documentation of it — no live radio broadcasts, no live album, no music videos made from concert footage, and no DVD releases. The Live/1975-85 box set had thirteen selections from the tour, but they formed little thematic pattern. Shows from the tour were of course bootlegged, but otherwise they are mostly lost to time.

The tour also suffers by comparison to the legendary 1978 Tour before it and the monumental Born in the U.S.A. Tour after it. Perhaps its biggest legacy is the successful introduction of Springsteen's music and performance abilities across Western Europe. Two decades later, much of Europe would boast a bigger and more vociferous fan base for Springsteen than anywhere in America.

In simultaneity with the box set, a new tour was announced, The River Tour 2016, which celebrated the original album's 35th anniversary and featured full front-to-back performances of The River during its initial leg. The tour kicked off in January 2016. The press release containing the announcement of the tour directly referred to the legacy of the original tour by stating that "[t]he original The River Tour began Oct. 3, 1980, two weeks before the release of Springsteen's fifth album, and continued through September 4, 1981. With sets that regularly approached the four-hour range, the 140-date international tour firmly established a reputation for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band as marathon performers."

Broadcasts and recordings

As previously mentioned, no River Tour shows were broadcast live, and for nearly three decades after the tour's completion, the sole documentation of the tour came from the Live/1975-85 box set's selections.

Partial video of the November 5, 1980 show in Tempe was released as part of The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, and audio of the missing songs was released through the Bruce Springsteen Archives as a free download on December 24, 2015.

Several shows have since been released as part of the Bruce Springsteen Archives:

  • Nassau Coliseum, New York 1980, released March 25, 2015 and re-mixed and re-released on July 5, 2019.
  • Wembley Arena, June 5, 1981, released August 3, 2018.
  • Nassau Coliseum, New York 12/29/80, released July 5, 2019.
  • Brendan Byrne Arena, July 9, 1981 released May 1, 2020.

Personnel

Tour dates

Date City Country Venue Attendance Revenue
First leg
October 3, 1980Ann ArborUnited StatesCrisler ArenaN/AN/A
October 4, 1980CincinnatiRiverfront Coliseum16,336 / 17,000$138,819
October 6, 1980RichfieldRichfield ColiseumN/AN/A
October 7, 1980
October 9, 1980DetroitCobo Hall
October 10, 1980ChicagoUptown Theatre
October 11, 1980
October 13, 1980Saint PaulSt. Paul Civic Center
October 14, 1980MilwaukeeMECCA Arena11,714 / 11,714$98,000
October 17, 1980St. LouisKiel Opera House6,769 / 6,769$71,074
October 18, 1980
October 20, 1980DenverMcNichols Arena15,932 / 15,932$162,126
October 24, 1980SeattleSeattle Center Coliseum13,426 / 13,426$154,550
October 25, 1980PortlandMemorial Coliseum9,893 / 12,000$95,453
October 27, 1980OaklandOakland–Alameda County Coliseum Arena27,287 / 27,287$271,630
October 28, 1980
October 30, 1980Los AngelesLos Angeles Sports ArenaN/AN/A
October 31, 1980
November 1, 1980
November 3, 1980
November 5, 1980TempeASU Activity Center
November 8, 1980DallasReunion Arena
November 9, 1980 Austin Frank Erwin Center
November 11, 1980Baton RougeLSU Assembly Center12,926 / 12,926$106,659
November 14, 1980HoustonThe Summit25,764 / 25,764$270,776
November 15, 1980
November 20, 1980RosemontRosemont Horizon
November 23, 1980LandoverCapital CentreN/AN/A
November 24, 1980
November 27, 1980New York CityMadison Square Garden39,860 / 39,860$465,000
November 28, 1980
November 30, 1980PittsburghCivic Arena34,862 / 34,862$339,905
December 1, 1980
December 2, 1980RochesterRochester Community War Memorial9,288 / 9,288$87,084
December 4, 1980BuffaloWar Memorial Auditorium17,646 / 17,646$165,648
December 6, 1980PhiladelphiaThe Spectrum54,819 / 54,819$614,230
December 8, 1980
December 9, 1980
December 11, 1980ProvidenceProvidence Civic Center13,000 / 13,000$112,978
December 12, 1980HartfordHartford Civic Center16,057 / 16,057$155,002
December 15, 1980BostonBoston Garden31,000 / 31,000$307,961
December 16, 1980
December 18, 1980New York CityMadison Square Garden
December 19, 1980
December 28, 1980UniondaleNassau Coliseum50,000 / 50,000$600,000
December 29, 1980
December 31, 1980
Second leg
January 20, 1981TorontoCanadaMaple Leaf GardensN/AN/A
January 21, 1981
January 23, 1981MontrealMontreal Forum
January 24, 1981OttawaOttawa Civic Centre
January 26, 1981South BendUnited StatesEdmund P. Joyce Center10,182 / 10,182$104,929
January 28, 1981St. LouisCheckerdome9,975 / 15,000$114,713
January 29, 1981AmesHilton Coliseum14,158 / 14,158$165,498
February 1, 1981Saint PaulSt. Paul Civic CenterN/AN/A
February 2, 1981MadisonDane County Coliseum
February 4, 1981CarbondaleSIU Arena
February 5, 1981Kansas CityKemper Arena
February 7, 1981ChampaignAssembly Hall
February 12, 1981MobileMunicipal Auditorium7,932 / 10,000$88,455
February 13, 1981StarkvilleHumphrey ColiseumN/AN/A
February 15, 1981LakelandLakeland Civic Center
February 16, 1981
February 18, 1981JacksonvilleJacksonville Memorial Coliseum7,829 / 10,000$84,143
February 20, 1981Pembroke PinesHollywood SportatoriumN/AN/A
February 22, 1981ColumbiaCarolina Coliseum
February 23, 1981AtlantaThe Omni
February 25, 1981MemphisMid-South Coliseum
February 26, 1981NashvilleNashville Municipal Auditorium9,546 / 9,546$100,457
February 28, 1981GreensboroGreensboro Coliseum15,288 / 23,029$170,151
March 2, 1981HamptonHampton ColiseumN/AN/A
March 4, 1981LexingtonRupp Arena17,332 / 17,332$182,952
March 5, 1981IndianapolisMarket Square Arena14,632 / 14,632$153,081
European leg
April 7, 1981HamburgGermanyCongress CentreN/AN/A
April 9, 1981BerlinInternationales Congress Centrum Berlin
April 11, 1981ZürichSwitzerlandHallenstadion
April 14, 1981FrankfurtGermanyFesthalle
April 16, 1981MunichOlympiahalle
April 18, 1981ParisFrancePalais des Sports de Saint-Ouen
April 19, 1981
April 21, 1981BarcelonaSpainPalau d'Esports de Montjuïc
April 24, 1981LyonFrancePalais des Sports de Gerland
April 26, 1981BrusselsBelgiumForest National
April 28, 1981RotterdamNetherlandsAhoy
April 29, 1981
May 1, 1981CopenhagenDenmarkForum
May 2, 1981 Brøndby Hall
May 3, 1981GothenburgSwedenScandinavium
May 5, 1981OsloNorwayDrammenshallen
May 7, 1981StockholmSwedenJohanneshovs Isstadion
May 8, 1981
May 11, 1981NewcastleEnglandNewcastle City Hall
May 13, 1981ManchesterManchester Apollo
May 14, 1981
May 16, 1981EdinburghScotlandEdinburgh Playhouse
May 17, 1981
May 20, 1981StaffordEnglandNew Bingley Hall
May 26, 1981BrightonThe Brighton Centre
May 27, 1981
May 29, 1981LondonWembley Arena
May 30, 1981
June 1, 1981
June 2, 1981
June 4, 1981
June 5, 1981
June 7, 1981BirminghamNational Exhibition Centre
June 8, 1981
Homecoming leg
July 2, 1981East RutherfordUnited StatesMeadowlands Arena125,922 / 125,922$1,500,345
July 3, 1981
July 5, 1981
July 6, 1981
July 8, 1981
July 9, 1981
July 13, 1981PhiladelphiaThe Spectrum92,272 / 92,272$1,127,187
July 15, 1981
July 16, 1981
July 18, 1981
July 19, 1981
July 29, 1981RichfieldRichfield ColiseumN/AN/A
July 30, 1981
August 4, 1981LandoverCapital Centre55,925 / 55,926$671,112
August 5, 1981
August 7, 1981
August 11, 1981DetroitJoe Louis ArenaN/AN/A
August 12, 1981
August 16, 1981MorrisonRed Rocks Amphitheatre17,000 / 17,000$233,844
August 17, 1981
August 20, 1981Los AngelesLos Angeles Sports ArenaN/AN/A
August 21, 1981
August 23, 1981
August 24, 1981
August 27, 1981
August 28, 1981
September 2, 1981San DiegoSports Arena
September 8, 1981RosemontRosemont Horizon
September 10, 1981
September 11, 1981
September 13, 1981CincinnatiRiverfront Coliseum31,289 / 31,289$378,057
September 14, 1981

Sources

  • Fred Schruers, "Bruce Springsteen and the Secret of the World", Rolling Stone, February 5, 1981.
  • Born in the U.S.A. Tour (tour booklet, 1984), Springsteen chronology.
  • Hilburn, Robert. Springsteen. Rolling Stone Press, 1985. ISBN 0-684-18456-7.
  • Marsh, Dave. Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s. Pantheon Books, 1987. ISBN 0-394-54668-7.
  • Santelli, Robert. Greetings From E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Chronicle Books, 2006. ISBN 0-8118-5348-9.
  • Killing Floor's concert database gives valuable coverage as well, but also does not support direct linking to individual dates.
  • Brucebase's concert descriptions even more valuable coverage
  • Setlists statistics page, for River Tour retrieval queries
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