Live 05 Nov 1980 version
Wait a minute!
Wait a minute!
Wait a minute!
Wait a minute!
Oh, now
Hey little dolly with the blue jeans on
I wanna ramrod with you, honey, till half-past dawn
Let your hair down, sugar, pick up this beat
???!
Come on and meet me tonight down on Bluebird Street
I've been working all weekend to my neck in hock
Come on out everybody let the ramrod rock
Well she's a hot stepping hemi with a four on the floor
She's a roadrunner engine in a '32 Ford
Ah Steve!
Late at night when I'm dead on the line
I swear I think of your pretty face when I let her unwind
Well look over yonder see them city lights
???!
Come on out everybody go ramrodding tonight
Whoa!
Well I said come on, come on, come on little baby
Come on, come on let's shake it tonight
Come on, come, come on little sugar
Dance with your daddy, we'll go ramrodding tonight
Are you ready?
Big Man!
Hey little dolly won't you say you will
Meet me tonight up on top of the hill
Just a few miles 'cross the county line
Whoa, there's a cute little chapel nestled down in the pines, yeah!
Say you'll be mine little girl, I'll put my foot to the floor
Come on Steve!
Give me the word now, sugar, go ramrodding forever more
Alright!
Oh yeah!
Alright!
Alright!
Oh, ramrod
The above lyrics are for the live 05 Nov 1980 performance of RAMROD at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ, during The River Tour. The show was held at the university's Activity Center. The song was played in its full-band arrangement.
Video of the entire live 05 Nov 1980 performance of RAMROD from the upcoming The Ties That Bind: The River Collection box set debuted on 05 Nov 2015, streaming on Backstreets.com. It was simultaneously posted on Bruce Springsteen's official website and Bruce Springsteen's VEVO YouTube channel.
During The River Tour, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band performed a concert at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ on 05 Nov 1980. The concert was held at the university's Activity Center. It was professionally shot on three-quarter-inch U-matic videotape for promotional use. 24 songs were released on The Ties That Bind: The River Collection box set in 2015. The footage was originally produced and directed by Barry Rebo and the 2015 released video was produced and edited by Thom Zimny. "All the footage that was available from Tempe was used," Zimny told Backstreets.com. "No one, for instance, cut 'Racing in the Street' because they didn't like it ─ there was no editing in that sense. We used every frame of what we had available, down to the DVD menus."
Audio for the remaining 10 songs was officially released in December 2015 on Live.BruceSpringsteen.net. It was mixed from the multitrack tapes by Bob Clearmountain in December 2015 and mastered by Adam Ayan at Gateway Mastering Studios in Portland, ME. The missing ten songs were released in response to fan feedback. "We saw the petition. We read the tweets. We heard it loud and clear," Brad Serling, founder and CEO of Nugs.net told Backstreets.
The Ties That Bind: The River Collection is a Bruce Springsteen box set released in 2015 on Columbia Records to celebrate the 35th anniversary of The River album. The 10"x12" box set contains four CDs, two Blu-Ray discs or three DVDs, and a hardcover 148-page coffee table book featuring 200 mostly unseen studio and live photographs, pages from Springsteen's notebooks, single covers, images and outtakes from the original album package, and other memorabilia documenting the album, plus a new essay by Mikal Gilmore. The box set was announced on 16 Oct 2015 and released to retail on 04 Dec 2015.
The first two discs consist of the 2014 remastered version of The River album. The third disc contains The River: Single Album, a 10-track album originally planned for release in 1979, under the title "The Ties That Bind". "The songs lacked the kind of unity and conceptual intensity I liked my music to have. So we went back in the studio," Springsteen wrote in his 1998 book Songs. He scrapped the project and went on to rework some of the songs and write and record some others, leading to the double-disc release the following year. All but one of these ten tracks were previously released.
| 1. | THE TIES THAT BIND | Different version previously released on The River |
| 2. | CINDY | Previously unreleased |
| 3. | HUNGRY HEART | Previously released on The River |
| 4. | STOLEN CAR | Previously released on Tracks |
| 5. | BE TRUE | Previously released as a B-side and on Tracks |
| 6. | THE RIVER | Previously released on The River |
| 7. | YOU CAN LOOK (BUT YOU BETTER NOT TOUCH) | Different version previously released on The River |
| 8. | THE PRICE YOU PAY | Different version previously released on The River |
| 9. | I WANNA MARRY YOU | Previously released on The River |
| 10. | LOOSE ENDS | Previously released on Tracks |
The fourth discs contains The River: Outtakes, a 22-track album collection consisting of outtakes from the 1979-1980 sessions that didn't make the cut for either the single- or double-album versions of The River. The CD is divided into two parts, "Record One" (the first 11 tracks) and "Record Two" (the remaining 10 tracks). The former consists of unreleased songs while the latter consists of previously released songs.
| 1. | MEET ME IN THE CITY | Previously unreleased |
| 2. | THE MAN WHO GOT AWAY | Previously unreleased |
| 3. | LITTLE WHITE LIES | Previously unreleased |
| 4. | THE TIME THAT NEVER WAS | Previously unreleased |
| 5. | NIGHT FIRE | Previously unreleased |
| 6. | WHITETOWN | Previously unreleased |
| 7. | CHAIN LIGHTNING | Previously unreleased |
| 8. | PARTY LIGHTS | Previously unreleased |
| 9. | PARADISE BY THE "C" | Live version previously released on Live/1975-85 |
| 10. | STRAY BULLET | Previously unreleased |
| 11. | MR. OUTSIDE | Previously unreleased |
| 12. | ROULETTE | Previously released on Tracks |
| 13. | RESTLESS NIGHTS | Previously released on Tracks |
| 14. | WHERE THE BANDS ARE | Previously released on Tracks |
| 15. | DOLLHOUSE | Previously released on Tracks |
| 16. | LIVING ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD | Previously released on Tracks |
| 17. | TAKE 'EM AS THEY COME | Previously released on Tracks |
| 18. | RICKY WANTS A MAN OF HER OWN | Previously released on Tracks |
| 19. | I WANNA BE WITH YOU | Previously released on Tracks |
| 20. | MARY LOU | Previously released on Tracks |
| 21. | HELD UP WITHOUT A GUN | Previously released as a B-side |
| 22. | FROM SMALL THINGS (BIG THINGS ONE DAY COME) | Previously released on The Essential Bruce Springsteen (2003 3-disc edition) |
The fifth disc contains the 60-minute documentary, The Ties That Bind, produced and directed by Grammy and Emmy-winning filmmaker Thom Zimny. The documentary features an intimate interview with Bruce Springsteen as he reflects on writing and recording of The River. The film transitions between Springsteen telling the stories behind the music ─ and illustrating them with solo acoustic guitar performances ─ interspersed with period concert footage and rare photos of him and the band in and out of the studio.
The sixth disc (on the Blu-Ray release) or sixth and seventh disc (on the DVD release) feature(s) The River Tour, Tempe 1980, a new professionally shot film consisting of 24 songs from Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band's 05 Nov 1980 concert at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. The film uses four cameras and is recorded in multitrack audio and clocks at 2 hours and 40 minutes. The tapes were edited by Thom Zimny and the audio was mixed by Bob Clearmountain and mastered by Bob Ludwig.
The ten songs that are not included on The River Tour, Tempe 1980 (DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN, INDEPENDENCE DAY, FACTORY, RACING IN THE STREET, CANDY'S ROOM, THE TIES THAT BIND, STOLEN CAR, WRECK ON THE HIGHWAY, POINT BLANK, and BACKSTREETS) were later officially released on Live.BruceSpringsteen.net.
The last disc also contains The River Tour Rehearsals, which consists of a 5-song 20-minute bonus footage from Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band's private rehearsals in late September 1980 at Clair Brothers Audio in Lititz, PA. Springsteen and the band can be seen working through live arrangements of what was then unreleased material from the upcoming album.
List of available versions of RAMROD on this website:
RAMROD [Album version]
