BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - GREATEST HIT - Gatefold sleeve Double - NM/MINT- Vinyl LP

	£		56
	$		74

Double Gatefold sleeve

Vinyl LP

1995 original release vinyl LP on the COLUMBIA  record label Cat n# COL 478555-1   Made in ENGLAND?

The album cover is in NM/MINT condition. no splits or tears,no problems, the inner picture/lyric/credits sleeves are in NM/MINT condition. no splits or tears, the LP's are kept in a poly lined sleeve.

The vinyl itself is in NM/MINT condition. tno problems, this LP has only been played once or twice at the most.

If you need anymore information and pictures please get in touch, thanks.

Sorry if the shipping charges seem a bit high, the reason being i use heavy/strong packaging and the high cost of the Royal Mail price structure

THIS IS AS GOOD EXAMPLE OF WELL LOOKED AFTER OLD LP RECORD

Full track list

Side One

1. "Born to Run"   Born to Run (1975) 4:30
2. "Thunder Road"   Born to Run (1975) 4:48
3. "Badlands"   Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) 4:03
4. "The River"   The River (1980) 5:00 .

Side Two

5. "Hungry Heart"   The River (1980) 3:20
6. "Atlantic City"   Nebraska (1982) 3:56
7. "Dancing in the Dark"   Born in the U.S.A. (1984) 4:03
8. "Born in the U.S.A."   Born in the U.S.A. (1984) 4:41
9. "My Hometown" (early fade edit) Born in the U.S.A. (1984) 4:12  .

Side Three

10. "Glory Days" (early fade edit) Born in the U.S.A. (1984) 3:49
11. "Brilliant Disguise"   Tunnel of Love (1987) 4:15
12. "Human Touch" (edit) Human Touch (1992) 5:10
13. "Better Days"   Lucky Town (1992) 3:44
14. "Streets of Philadelphia" (single edit) Philadelphia soundtrack (1994) 3:16  .

Side Four

15. "Secret Garden"   Recorded in January 1995 at The Hit Factory, New York City[citation needed] 4:27
16. "Murder Incorporated"   Recorded at The Power Station in April/May 1982 3:57
17. "Blood Brothers"   Recorded in January 1995 at The Hit Factory, New York City 4:34
18. "This Hard Land"   Recorded in January 1995 at The Hit Factory, New York City 4:50 .

All songs written by Bruce Springsteen.

The Band

Personnel (Tracks 15–18)

The E Street Band
Roy Bittan – piano, synthesizer
Clarence Clemons – saxophone (15–17), percussion
Danny Federici – organ, synthesizer, accordion
Bruce Springsteen – guitar, vocals (harmonica on "This Hard Land" and "Blood Brothers")
Garry Tallent – bass guitar
Max Weinberg – drums
Steven Van Zandt – guitar on "Murder Incorporated," mandolin on "This Hard Land"
Nils Lofgren – guitar (15, 17, 18)
Patti Scialfa – vocals on "Secret Garden"
backing vocals ("Murder Incorporated") – all of the above except Nils Lofgren and Patti Scialfa

Additional musicians
Frank Pagano – percussion on "Blood Brothers" and "This Hard Land" .

 Greatest Hits is Bruce Springsteen's first compilation album, released February 27, 1995 on Columbia Records. It is a collection of some of Springsteen's hit singles and popular album tracks through the years and four extra numbers at the end, mostly recorded with the E Street Band in 1995. The latter constituted Springsteen's first (albeit very partial) release with his backing band since the late 1980s. Some of the songs are shorter versions of the original album releases.

The incorporation of the "new" tracks was portrayed in the 1996 documentary Blood Brothers. "Murder Incorporated" and "This Hard Land" were, in fact, unused 1982 songs from the Born in the U.S.A. sessions[citation needed], with the latter being re-recorded here more than a decade later, and both subsequently became Springsteen concert staples.[4] "Blood Brothers", on the other hand, was played only as the final closing song of both the 1999-2000 Reunion Tour and 2002-2003 Rising Tour, both times with an extra verse added. "Secret Garden" achieved notoriety via the soundtrack of the 1996 film Jerry Maguire. Alternate versions of several of these new tracks were released on the 1996 Blood Brothers EP.

The compilation was commercially successful, hitting the peaks of the U.S. album chart and UK Album Chart and selling more than four million copies in the U.S

Critical reception

The reception by music critics of Greatest Hits was rather negative upon the album's release, as were more contemporary reviews. David Browne of Entertainment Weekly felt that the album was released when it was because the Grammy Awards were coming up and "Streets of Philadelphia" was up for five awards and that the songs on the album were selected because of charting success which means that several important songs were overlooked. He also felt that "Murder Incorporated" was the only good new song on the album and that overall the album felt as if Bruce did not believe in himself any more.[2] The Rolling Stone review of the album by Parke Puterbaugh was rather unfavorable, which is surprising as most of Springsteen's albums were praised by the magazine. Parke felt that the songs on the collection belonged on their original LP releases, that songs from before Born to Run should have been included and that the new songs weren't that good.[3] A more contemporary review by Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine was also unfavorable, saying that a lot of Bruce's hits and popular album tracks were missing, that "Murder Incorporated" was better than the other new songs, and that The Essential Bruce Springsteen was much better than Greatest Hits

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Compiling a greatest-hits collection for Bruce Springsteen should be an easy task, yet Greatest Hits manages to miss the mark. Nothing from his first two albums is included, and the set includes such non-hits as "Atlantic City" and "The River" instead of hits like "Cover Me," "Tunnel of Love," and "Fade Away." In fact, a good portion of his hits are missing, as are important album tracks like "Backstreets," "Rosalita," and "Candy's Room," making this neither a straight hits collection nor a compilation of his best tracks. What's left are some of his biggest hits and best songs ("Born to Run," "Glory Days," "The River"), but not all of them, as well as four new tracks, the best of which is an outtake from the Born in the U.S.A. sessions ("Murder Incorporated"). Aside from "Murder Incorporated," the new tracks follow the synth-laden adult contemporary direction Springsteen began pursuing with "Streets of Philadelphia," only without the lyricism or melody. So, it's a mixed bag, drawing an incomplete portrait of one of the prime rockers of the '70s onward. Although voluminous by comparison, the three-disc The Essential Bruce Springsteen released in 2003 is a far better choice.

ROLLING STONE REVIEW

By Parke Puterbaugh

April 6, 1995
 
Bruce Springsteen is a peerless songwriter and consummate artist whose every painstakingly crafted album serves as an impassioned and literate pulse taking of a generation's fortunes. He is the foremost live performer in the history of rock & roll, a self-described prisoner of the music he loves, for whom every show is played as if it might be his last. Though some may argue the point, Springsteen single-handedly rescued rock & roll from its banal post-'60s doldrums. Moreover, his music developed a conscience that didn't ignore the darkening of the runaway American dream as the country greedily blundered its way through the '80s.

With the mighty exception of Born in the U.S.A., however — a veritable greatest-hits album in itself — Springsteen's standing as a singles artist has seemed an incidental byproduct of his main focus: arraying his songs in theme-driven album-length statements. For this reason, Greatest Hits comes across as a collection of familiar songs, each stellar in its own right, that somehow adds up to something less than the sum of its parts — even with the grafted-on bonus of four new tracks recorded with the E Street Band.

First of all, this album is not even what it purports to be. A straightforward program of Springsteen's greatest hits would at least have had the virtue of a governing logic. Although some Bruce-smitten critic blessed with second sight will no doubt divine a wishful thesis about the "story" it tells, the simple fact is that Greatest Hits liberally violates its stated premise. Absent for reasons unfathomable are five Top 10 hits ("Cover Me," "I'm Goin' Down," "I'm on Fire," "War" and "Tunnel of Love"), as well as such essential charting singles as "Prove It All Night" (No. 33), "Fade Away" (No. 20) and "One Step Up" (No. 13). Also missing is anything preceding "Born to Run," which leaves out a big chunk of the Springsteen story. If the album's assemblers could find reason to include "Atlantic City," which failed to crack the Top 100, surely there was room for "Blinded by the Light" and "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)." Those, too, rank among his greatest hits — ask anyone partial to FM radio or Springsteen concerts — despite the lack of corroboration from the charts.

In the early years of his career, a whole new palette of possibilities emerged from Springsteen's energetic vision — a playful, swinging landscape in which Bob Dylan met Roy Orbison at the Jersey Shore to a soundtrack produced by Phil Spector. All of that seemed to sour after Born to Run as Springsteen simultaneously fought a bruising legal battle with a former manager and tasted superstardom freighted with its share of hype. Thereafter, he began taking ever more penetrating and disillusioned looks into the troubled American psyche. His melancholy songs were often so intimate and personal (witness Nebraska) that the E Street Band eventually seemed an encumbrance, though he puffed out his chest for tours with them after the releases of Born in the U.S.A. and Tunnel of Love. In hindsight, Greatest Hits documents Springsteen's discomfort with the spotlight, the diminishing role of the E Street Band in his music and his rueful view of lives disintegrating against a backdrop of red, white and blues. After a certain point, he didn't want to be the Boss anymore.

By lining up a batch of Springsteen's biggest radio tracks, Greatest Hits unintentionally reveals a creaky, leaden quality that occasionally crept into the music he made in the post-Born to Run era. Plucked out of context, such popular hits as "Hungry Heart" and "Born in the U.S.A." sound stiff and muscle-bound now. The former is weighted by awkward lyrics ("Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack") that sentimentalize abandonment, the latter grinds a ponderous riff into the ground, and both are stamped with a metronomic snare sound that's leagues removed from the natural swing of the band circa The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. The notion occurs that "Better Days," featuring one of Springsteen's most thoughtful lyrics, would have benefited from a subtler vocal treatment than the histrionic growl sustained throughout. And spanning 20 years, isolated from the albums that gave them meaning, these songs don't mix particularly well, nor do they portray a remarkable career in a flattering or accurate light. Every album Springsteen has made is best heard in toto; this vivisection is largely for dilettantes, come-latelies and radio programmers who wouldn't delve deeply anyway.

As for the four unreleased songs — three of them newly recorded with the E Street Band for this project — they sound more like a final coda than a new beginning. Two of them, "Secret Garden" and "Blood Brothers," are so restrained that the E Streeters' involvement adds nothing that session musicians couldn't have provided just as well with their competent anonymity. On "Blood Brothers," a barely electrified folk tune that recalls Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Springsteen's harmonica is featured far more prominently than Clarence Clemons' sax or Nils Lofgren's guitar. The uptempo songs — "Murder Incorporated" and "This Hard Land" — don't restore or redefine the band members' roles in any way that suggests they have a future together. "Murder Incorporated" (originally recorded in 1982 and remixed for this album) is broad and bombastic enough to be a hit, while "This Hard Land" repeats some of Springsteen's most pronounced tics — the use of rivers, seeds and rides as metaphors, the contrived device of addressing his words to some fictional "sir." Musically it begs comparison with Woody Guthrie's populist folk songs.

This may, in fact, be where Springsteen is headed. It wouldn't be surprising if, on his next travels, he walked alone with a guitar and harmonica for companions. .

 Thanks for taking the time to look at this auction

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