Bruce Berkeley

Bruce Springsteen once said he intended to make an album with words like Bob Dylan that sounded like Phil Spector where he sang like Roy Orbison, a nifty summary of many, but not all, of his artistic ambitions and a key to his appeal. Unlike any other singer/songwriters saddled with the appellation of "the new Dylan" in the early '70s, Springsteen never hid how he was raised on '60s AM radio. He loved rock & roll, whether it was the initial blast from the '50s or the mini-symphonies from the days before the Beatles or the garage rockers that surfaced in the wake of the British Invasion, and all this could be heard within his wild, wooly collective E Street Band, a group who debuted on his second album, 1973's The Wild The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, and who would support him throughout most of his career.

The earliest show on the Darkness tour to be released in the Archive Series, Berkeley 7/1/78 bristles with energy on songs like "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" and "Adam Raised A Cain," along with "Night" and "For You," both of which featured in the early months of the '78 tour. A memorable encore opens with Bruce's definitive solo-piano arrangement of "The Promise", the first live version of the song to be released from 1978, and offers only the second E Street Band performance ever of "Because The Night," with alternate lyrics.

The earliest show on the Darkness tour to be released in the Archive Series, Berkeley 7/1/78 bristles with energy on songs like "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" and "Adam Raised A Cain," along with "Night" and "For You," both of which featured in the early months of the '78 tour. A memorable encore opens with Bruce's definitive solo-piano arrangement of "The Promise", the first live version of the song to be released from 1978, and offers only the second E Street Band performance ever of "Because The Night," with alternate lyrics.

Bruce Springsteen once said he intended to make an album with words like Bob Dylan that sounded like Phil Spector where he sang like Roy Orbison, a nifty summary of many, but not all, of his artistic ambitions and a key to his appeal. Unlike any of the other singer/songwriters saddled with the appellation of "the new Dylan" in the early '70s, Springsteen never hid how he was raised on '60s AM radio. He loved rock & roll, whether it was the initial blast from the '50s or the mini-symphonies from the days before the Beatles or the garage rockers that surfaced in the wake of the British Invasion, and all this could be heard within his wild, wooly collective the E Street Band, a group who debuted on his second album, 1973's The Wild The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, and who would support him through most of his career.

"The Live Anthology" is a multiple-disc set of recordings drawn from thirty years of live performances. The collection brings together material from 1978-2007 culled from hundreds of hours of live concert recordings covering every era of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' tours and represents the best tracks as chosen by producers Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Ryan Ulyate.