Classic Vinyl Bootleg Revisited: 'E' TICKET, its very limited first edition, also known as the advanced release (Part 4 of 5)This article supplements and follows up on the previous posts on this bootleg in October 2014.

On June 23, 1979, the Billboard Issue reported a momentous
event—the Largest Recording Seizure in Los Angeles Ever: the
confiscated bootlegs included "E" TICKET, although the actual
album title was not given in the article (Note that Billboard has
released magazine issues into the public domain by releasing
them on Google Books and the Inernet Archive).

Arguably, "E" TICKET is one of the most famous and important releases in the history of Springsteen bootleg, emerging in the late 1970s and often pirated in the vinyl era. The sound quality is splendid as a bootleg, probably sourced from a demo cassette provided to a New York publisher in 1975 (see below). In addition, the bootleggers wisely avoided using a slick insert cover (the standard of bootleg back then) and borrowed a great outtake shot for DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN (as you know, officially used for the front sleeve of the U.K. 12-inch single off THE RIVER; see 12/22/2019). So, the album sleeve was quite appealing, looking like an official product as if it followed DARKNESS, although the material was nothing related to this album. And don't forget that this release was one of those bootlegs that upset the man and the record company in 1979, leading to one of the most famous lawsuits against bootlegging in the history of the U.S. music industry.

In 1978, FIRE ON THE FINGERTIPS was 
reviewed in two U.K. music newspapers by
Giovanni Dadomo in Sounds and Susan
Hill in Melody Maker.

Chronologically, it was the first illegal LP exclusively sourced from studio recordings of outtakes and unreleased tracks, including instrumentals. Perhaps FIRE ON THE FINGERTIPS came out and circulated earlier in the underground market. However, this equally important bootleg was not a full studio-recording bootleg and contained two live recordings among the five featured songs. Whether which bootleg appeared first may be the subject of the debate. Although not definitive, the reason I believe the above is that FIRE ON THE FINGERTIPS was picked up and reviewed in 1978 in two British music newspapers, Sounds (September 16 issue) and Melody Maker (November 11 issue), whereas "E" TICKET was reported as a subject of the lawsuit in 1979 in two major U.S. magazines, Billboard (June 23 issue; anonymously as an unauthorized album; see the image above) and Rolling Stone (September 6 issue; being mentioned the actual title).

The original picture sleeve of "E" TICKET has a printed spine, while 
as far as I know, all FIRE ON THE FINGERTIPS issues, including  
the original, have no such spine, except for a later copy shown here.

It is widely known that the source of the FIRE ON THE FINGERTIPS material is a six-track 12-inch acetate that was originally given to Intersong, a U.K.-based music publishing company, in 1973. Although the acetate also contained THE FEVER, this demo track was not included in the bootleg despite plenty of room for the inclusion (the complete content was later digitized properly and released in 1992 on a bootleg CD titled FORGOTTEN SONGS). In contrast, to my knowledge, there has been scarce information about the actual source of "E" TICKET, except for one case explained below. 

If I'm not mistaken, the second bootleg that featured unreleased
and studio outtakes from BORN TO RUN recording sessions was
ROULETTE, pressed in the U.S., and the third was VISITATION AT
FORT HORN, pressed in the U.K., although the latter bootleg
contained only one new track (i.e., a double vocal version of Night;
Linda Let Me Be The One was already included in the former).

Since the reunion tour in 1999-2000, I have stopped collecting bootleg CDs and occasionally downloaded what interested me from fan-based websites early in mp3 and lately in lossless formats. I remember, suddenly in early 2014, the fourteen tracks of the BORN IN THE STUDIO CD (see 06/01/2024), which included all the "E" TICKET tracks, were upgraded to high-resolution audio formats (in 16-bit/44 kHz and 24-bit/96 kHz) and distributed through torrent download websites. This was all thanks to the dedicated efforts of a group of American concert tapers/collectors known as JEMS, who told the tale of how they came to handle the source tape worth being upgraded in the text file attached with audio files (an excerpt; the full text available here at BruceBase Wiki):

Late last year [2013; annotated by this blogger], JEMS’ friend and fellow collector CB told us that he believed a cassette he had received from someone in the New York music publishing business not long after the release of Born to Run could likely be the original source tape for all subsequent copies and releases of this material.

I don't know of any other specific testimonies on the original source of "E" TICKET, although the information is still far from clear, and the details, such as the publisher's name, remain unknown. Mike Appel might have distributed such tapes to promote Springsteen and the then-forthcoming album (just my guess). However, even if this was true, he probably does not remember that.

— Continued to Part 5 / Back to Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3.