TRACKS & 18 TRACKS

TRACKS & “18 TRACKS”

TRACKS commercially released: November 9, 1998 / “18 TRACKS” commercially released: April 12, 1999

1998-99 Producers: Bruce Springsteen and Chuck Plotkin
(see Brucebase Session listings for the specific producers of the original/individual recordings)

1998-99 Technical Coordinator and Recording engineer: Toby Scott
(see Brucebase Session listings for the recording engineer/s of the original/individual recordings)

1998-99 Mixers: Ed Thacker, Thom Panunzio and Bob Clearmountain

PART 1 – TRACKS and “18 TRACKS” SESSIONS OVERVIEW

Following the completion of the GOTJ Tour in May 1997 Springsteen kept a relatively low profile and spent the summer months in New Jersey with his family. He held a studio session in Nov 1997 (the first of what is now known as the Seeger Sessions) and also participated in songwriting sessions with Joe Grushecky in Dec 1997-Jan 1998. According to interview comments by Toby Scott, (Springsteen’s audio archivist and recording engineer), it was in February 1998, during solo sessions being conducted at Bruce’s NJ home studio, that Springsteen approached Scott and said “let’s do the boxed set”. Scott then went to work gathering the potential material from Springsteen’s massive audio library (located, along with Sony’s sound archives, in the high-tech Iron Mountain facility near Buffalo, NY). Bruce’s NJ home studio (Thrill Hill East) served as the main operational center for all TRACKS project activities.

Springsteen mentioned in an early 1999 interview with journalist Patrick Humphries that 200 to 300 different songs (12 to 18 cd’s worth) formed the large pool of recordings that he initially reviewed in the spring of 1998 as potential candidates for the boxed set. Over the course of the next few months the 200-300 was narrowed down. According to Toby Scott by late June then number was down to about 128 songs (8 cd’s worth). It was then narrowed down yet again during July to about 100 songs (a 6cd set). Although these 100 songs were prepped for the TRACKS release there was a commercial decision made later in the summer to reduce the size of the release to a 4cd (66-track) package. The package was delivered to Sony in mid-September in order to facilitate the mid-November 1998 release schedule.

The primary intent of TRACKS (at least insofar as it’s slimmed-down 6-cd and 4-cd incarnations were concerned) was to cover all of Springsteen’s commercially released album sessions. However due to ongoing (and at the time still-unresolved) court proceedings involving most of Springsteen’s unreleased 1972 studio recordings, it was decided not to release any of that in-dispute session material on TRACKS. Consequently unreleased songs from the Greetings LP session, or other demo sessions from that period, were not released in the package. The four “Hammond” CBS demo session songs that are found in the box were utilized because that particular studio session and those particular songs were not part of the court proceedings. Postscript: these legal matters were finally resolved, in Springsteen’s favor, in 2001 – thereby freeing up these recordings for release at any time. It is likely that a “TRACKS, VOL 2” (i.e., another boxed set of similar scope), will be released sometime in the future.

Despite stellar reviews the initial sales of the TRACKS boxed set were well below expectations – probably due to this pricey retrospective not being issued in the wake of a huge selling Springsteen album (as had been the case in 1986 when the Live Box set followed the BITUSA LP). Partly as a consequence of the slow sales it was decided in Jan 1999 to release an abbreviated 1 CD version of TRACKS called “18 TRACKS”. This was intended for the more casual fan, although “18 TRACKS” also served the purpose as a promotional tie-in for the E Street Band “Reunion” Tour that was announced at the same time. “18 TRACKS” contained 15 recordings already issued on TRACKS, plus 3 previously unreleased recordings (“The Fever”, “Trouble River” and “The Promise). Sales of “18 TRACKS” were also disappointing, although the Reunion Tour that followed was a tremendous commercial success.

NOTE BELOW:  * issued on both “TRACKS” and “18TRACKS”       ** issued on “18TRACKS” (not on TRACKS)

PART 2 – TRACKS and “18 TRACKS” SESSIONS DETAILS

Please go to the specific session era from which these tracks emanate for details on each track.

Page updated October 2, 2006