The Rising [Special Packaging] [Limited]

Performer: Bruce Springsteen/Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
Artist: Asif Ali Khan; Nils Lofgren; Steven Van Zandt; Patti Scialfa; Max Weinberg
Engineer: Chuck Plotkin; Dave Reed; Karl Egsieker; Nick DiDia; Toby Scott; Billy Bowers; Melissa Mattey
Producer: Brendan O'Brien
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: Personnel includes: Bruce Springsteen (vocals, acoustic, electric, & baritone guitar, harmonica); Danny Federici (vocals, organ); Patty Scialfa (vocals); Nils Lofgren (electric & slide guitar, banjo, dobro, background vocals); Steven Van Zandt (electric guitar, mandolin, background vocals); Soozie Tyrell (violin, background vocals); Brendan O'Brien (hurdy gurdy, glockenspiel); Larry Lemaster, Jerry Flint, Jane Scarpantoni (cello); The Nashville String Machine (strings); Clarence Clemons (saxophone, background vocals); Roy Bittan (piano, Mellotron, Kurzwiel organ, pump organ, keyboards, synthesizer); Garry Tallent (bass); Max Weinberg (drums); Asif Ali Khan And Group. Recorded at Southern Tracks Recording, Atlanta, Georgia; Thrill Hill Studios, New Jersey; The Sound Kitchen Recording Studios, Franklin, Tennessee. THE RISING won the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. "The Rising" won the 2003 Grammy Awards for Best Rock Song and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. THE RISING was nominated for the 2003 Grammy Award for Album Of The Year."The Rising" was nominated for the 2003 Grammy Award for Song Of The Year. This version of THE RISING is a limited editon that comes in a hard cardboard little book with photos & lyrics. Personnel: Bruce Springsteen (vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, baritone guitar, harmonica); Larry Antonio, Patti Scialfa, Asif Ali Khan (vocals); Nils Lofgren (electric guitar, slide guitar, dobro, banjo, background vocals); Steven Van Zandt (electric guitar, mandolin, background vocals); Brendan O'Brien (hurdy-gurdy, glockenspiel); Soozie Tyrell (violin, background vocals); Connie Ellisor, Mary Kathryn Vanosdale, Pamela Sixfin, David Davidson , Lee Larrison, Alan Umstead, David Angell (violin); Jim Grosjean, Kris Wilkinson, Monisa Angell, Gary VanOsdale (viola); Jane Scarpantoni, Jere Flint (cello); Clarence Clemons (saxophone, background vocals); Jerry Vivino (tenor saxophone); Edward Manion (baritone saxophone); Michael Spengler, Mark Pender (trumpet); Richie Rosenberg (trombone); Roy Bittan (piano, pump organ, Mellotron, keyboards, Kurzwell synthesizer); Danny Federici (Farfisa); Max Weinberg (drums); Haji Nazir Afridi (tabla). Audio Mixer: Brendan O'Brien. Recording information: Hensen Recording Studios, Hollywood, CA; SOuthern Tracks Recording, Atlanta, GA; The Sound Kitchen Recording Studios, Franklin, TN; Thrill Hill Studios, NJ. Photographer: Danny Clinch. Considering that the last time Bruce Springsteen collaborated with the E Street Band for a full album of new material was on 1984's epochal BORN IN THE USA, it's entirely appropriate that their 2002 album THE RISING should be forged from images strongly linked to the events of September 11th, one of America's most trying times. Virtually every song here is related to that tragedy either directly or indirectly. Some, like the surging "My City in Ruins" and the melancholy "Empty Sky" largely eschew metaphor, while others approach the situation from more oblique angles. "Mary's Place" is a rousing roots-rocker about finding joy in the face of sadness, while both the Eastern-flavored "Worlds Apart" and the homegrown "Let's Be Friends" address the need for communication and understanding between disparate entities. Musically, many of THE RISING's songs are in wide-screen, anthemic mode, as Bruce and company attempt to rally their wounded country with positivity and clear-eyed optimism without shrinking from unpleasant reality. The interstitial ballads take the poignant storytelling mode Springsteen employed on his last new album, 1995's THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD, and apply it to THE RISING's more universal themes. Whatever the format, the enthusiastic camaraderie of the E Streeters and their Boss is audible and infectious. Although the unusual status of the E Street Band in Bruce Springsteen's career (more than a backup group, less than full-fledged partners) has been understood by his audience practically from the beginning, Springsteen's own attitude toward them, particularly with regard to his recordings, has been ambivalent. While they accompanied him and even earned co-billing on his tours and played in various combinations on his records, they have been credited on the covers of only the two concert albums on which they appear (Live 1975-1985 and Live in New York City). Even while keeping them on retainer, he released Nebraska, on which they were not featured, and, of course, he largely dropped them for nearly ten years between 1989 and 1999. One of the most welcome aspects of the 1999-2000 world tour was that Springsteen finally seemed to have embraced the E Street Band as a permanent part of his legacy, and in turning the production reins for his 12th studio album, The Rising, over to Brendan O'Brien, known for his work with Pearl Jam and Neil Young & Crazy Horse, he seems to have deliberately intended to emphasize that Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band are to be understood as a musical unit. The album's songs invariably have band arrangements that emphasize the cohesion of this group that first played together in 1975, with some of its associations dating back further than that. O'Brien also brings a fresh perspective to Springsteen's traditional sound, however, helping to integrate into it choral and string arrangements, a Middle Eastern introduction on "Worlds Apart," and obvious editing effects. The Rising may audibly be the work of the band that made The River and Born in the U.S.A., but it is also an album of the 21st century. Such a combination of the familiar and the contemporary is appropriate to the album's contents. One may speculate what sort of album Springsteen would have made if the September 11 terrorist attacks had not taken place; when they did, he seems to have understood immediately that his unique position as a veteran East Coast-based singer/songwriter whose work has always addressed the concerns of his generation obligated him to treat the subject of the disaster in his music. Before September 11, Springsteen was the bard not only of the kind of working-class people who make up the uniformed services, but also, oddly enough, of the upper-class stockbroker types who filled the higher floors of the World Trade Center. These twin constituencies took the hit on September 11, and Springsteen could no more ignore the event than Picasso could have avoided painting Guernica. Such a reference is not idly made, either. As an artist, Springsteen possesses both the gravitas and the understanding of the issues necessary to turn The Rising into a cathartic experience for his listeners. He does not flinch from evoking the catastrophe, singing in the voices of those who died and of those who survived, but were traumatized. Nor does he hesitate to transform the anguish of the tragedy into anthemic, uplifting choruses that proclaim a determination to recover. In the past, the depth of despair expressed in some of Springsteen's songs sometimes may have seemed exaggerated, just as those marathon concerts could make you suspect, somewhere in the fourth hour, that he kept playing because he couldn't figure out how to stop. But on The Rising (which clocks in at 73 minutes), he has a subject that justifies his tendencies toward length and seriousness, and does it justice. The Rising is an album for Springsteen's region, where it has come to seem that everyone knows someone who died on September 11, and it is an album for his nation, which continues to try to understand the tragedy and to learn and recover from it. ~ William Ruhlmann

Rolling Stone (12/26/02, p.110) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Best Albums of 2002" - "...In the grainy force of Springsteen's voice and the muscular exultation of the music, the power of ordinary men and women to build anew, atop so much loss, rings loud and true." Spin (1/03, p.71) - Ranked #14 on Spin's list of 2002's "Albums of the Year" - "...A boldly corny, plainspoken album by a songwriter who sincerely believes that working stiffs deserve a spokesman who's not a jingoistic yokel." Entertainment Weekly (12/20-27/02, p.126) - Ranked #5 on EW's list of 2002's "Albums of the Year" Entertainment Weekly (8/2/02, pp.71-2) - "...His voice is in robust, throat-clearing form...the post-Sept.11 world has refocused his songwriting....the songs grab hold and don't let go..." - Rating: A- Q (12/02, p.68) - Included in Q Magazine's "The 50 Best Albums of 2002." Q (9/02, p.111) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...A compassionate celebration of the human spirit, one bolstered by the strength of family, community and individual heroism..." Uncut (1/03, p.94) - Ranked #2 in Uncut's "100 Best Albums of the Year" Uncut (9/02, pp.102, 103) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...a brave and beautiful album of humanity, hope and hurt from the songwriter best qualified to speak to and for his country." Mojo (Publisher) (1/03, p.73) - Ranked #11 in Mojo's "Best Albums of 2002" Mojo (Publisher) (9/02, p.94) - "In the end THE RISING's message...is one of indomitability." NME (Magazine) (8/10/02, p.34) - 6 out of 10 - "...His best for some time..."

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