Reason for songs never played live

Has the band ever discussed any reasons for certain songs never being attempted live. On top of my mind i think it is The Price Of Love, Secret Dreams, To The Fire, Without Love, I Want You etc...

I mean they could have tried The Price Of Love back in 1985 since they pretty much played everything else, same for Without Love. I mean they are not really bad songs, Without Love and I Want You are very catchy. Most bands have a reason for certain songs not being played live ever. Either a band memeber doesn't like the song or they think the crowd wouldn't like it or something.

Also out of the list of songs never played live, which 1 song would you like to see them play live, you can only pick 1. For me it would be Without Love

Price of love for me,one of the best songs on the album imo and thought it would have been a good live song.I canunderstand secret dreams not being played live asi good as it is it just plods along without much change through the song.

I thought "I Want You" was played live. I want to say it was done acoustically once but I'm not 100% sure

Aloha !

The reasons songs don't get played live is because Jon tries out the ones he's most confident of first (either his own vocal capabilities or what he reckons works best with a crowd), and then when he realizes those are the ones that work, he's not willing to try out anything else unless there's serious demand from the fanbase for a certain song.

Another factor that comes to mind is with todays way of recording, often songs haven't been fully played live by the band ever as they have never demoed them as a band before recording. Drumcomputers, many different guitars layered one over the other and then none of it can be replicated live, especially not on top of Jon's doctored vocals nowadays.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

On top of what everyone else has said, it also has to do with the way the band writes albums. Even going back to Fahrenheit, the track-listing to their albums are usually constructed the same way: 3-4 songs included to be singles, album tracks that are written with the intention of being played live, and other album tracks much less likely to be played. So if those less likely "personal" songs don't get played on the support tour for their album, the odds of them popping up later are quite slim.


As for never played before song that I'd want to hear: no question it's Edge Of A Broken Heart.

I Want You was done at least in a short acoustic version:

Besides that and the reasons Seb mentioned, which mostly apply to the tunes of at least HAND onwards, I think it comes down to the band writing quite many songs in their earlier days. Once Jon said "I write all these songs and then forget about them".
Back then they were probably so focused on rehearsing and working out certain tunes for the live shows that track X and Y just went completely off the radar.

Nah.......

Maybe since The Circle. All songs from HAND and LH have been played live at least once.

hmm...never thought that existed. SOOOO MUCH BETTER than the album version. Woman in Love and that one are the 'skippers' on Faith. But the live version has soooo much more Springsteen in it. Maybe that's why it's done differently on the album....

Edit: Hah! I hadn't listened to this song in years....just brought all this silly teenage memories back when I was trying to date this girl who wasn't really into me, but then eventually I said something silly like 'I never wanted the stars, all I wanted was you blah!" my Goood so embarrassing. But, eventually, she said yes and we dated for a year and two weeks, before I broke up with her on a rainy Friday night that happened to be my 18th birthday

I think they didn't like them and/or think they would work live. Plain and simple. They tried some weird stuff over the years like fields of fire and cadillac man.

That applies for every song except Hearts Breaking Even, that one I think Jon didn't want to puke his throat out.