Release History
The original release was a single LP with a cover featuring Picasso's Three Musicians. A greatly expanded version of the album was released in 1978 on 4 LPs as Return to Forever Live: The Complete Concert, 4-Record Set, showcasing the entire 2.5+ hour concert. This ...Complete Concert... release features a plain dark blue cover with a stylized "RTF" logo and contains the entireties of pieces that had been edited down for the original one LP release, including a version of "Spanish Fantasy"; the intro to which was released as "Chick's Piano" originally. Also included are spoken introductions to songs by Clarke, including one in which he is heckled by the audience for announcing the concert's final piece.
Different versions of ...The Complete Concert... have been re-issued on CD - in both 2 CD and 3 CD sets. An early Japanese 3 CD version, Return to Forever Live: The Complete Concert, 3-Record Set, contains the complete recording exactly as found on the original 4 LP version, even keeping "The Endless Night" and "Musicmagic" as two separate parts each. Corea's introduction of the musicians is appended to the end of "The Endless Night (part 2)". The first US (2) CD version was released by Columbia Legacy (C2K 47479) in 1992 with the stylized RTF logo on a red background titled simply, Return to Forever Live, and was subsequently reissued with a blue cover in 2000 (468923 2) titled, Return to Forever Live: The Complete Concert. Both of these US CD releases contain the edited versions of "The Musician" and "So Long Mickey Mouse" that were on the original single LP, while removing both the four-minute introduction of the musicians by Corea after "The Endless Night" and several extended passages of audience noise. "Chick's Piano Solo" and "Spanish Fantasy" are combined into one track, as are the two parts of "The Endless Night" and "Musicmagic". The 1992 edition has Corea's introductions at the start of each track whereas the 2000 version has them at the end of the previous track. Both versions have been digitally remastered directly from the original master tapes to restore the low frequencies which were rolled off on the vinyl version to minimise tracking problems.
In June, 2011, Columbia (Sony) released a 5-CD boxed set, Return to Forever, The Complete Columbia Albums Collection which includes the entire 1977 Live, The Complete Concert recording on 3 CDs together with 1976's Romantic Warrior and 1977's Musicmagic.
Read more about this topic: Live (Return To Forever Album)
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