This album is a recording of Bruce's "MTV Unplugged show" which aired on TV for the first time on November 18 1992.
MTV had long wanted to get Bruce for the show and originally, the plan was for it to be an Unplugged show. Bruce’s touring band (different artists. Only Patti and Roy were there from "The E-Street Band") however wasn’t fully prepared and stopped Bruce from performing in a format in which he’d had much success in the past (Christic shows, "Nebraska" album). It was the second time Bruce appeared on live TV and neither occasions featured the full E-Street Band. MTV Producer Alex Coletti was very happy with the results, and related they had bent the rules because of whom they were dealing with.
"When you have the chance to work with Bruce Springsteen, he can do what he wants. It was a fantastic show, and it still had a lot of Unplugged's feel. It was very small, very intimate, very loose, and that's all part of what makes Unplugged special. But it was very loud!"
Eight of Plugged's thirteen tracks were taken from "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town", which resulted in criticism from cynics who accused Bruce of using the show to promote his last two albums. The show included two previously unavailable tracks, "Red Headed Woman" and "Light of Day" and also contains a full band rendition of "Atlantic City", teasing the Bruce fanatics who regretted that The E-Street Band was not present. The MTV producers also had the following to say;
"By the time we got the phone call, everything had been set. The taping was going to take place in Los Angeles. We were doing Bruce Springsteen Unplugged. It was a dream come true. And then the call came. His new band hadn't rehearsed enough in the acoustic format, so the show would have to be electric. We had never thought it could be possible to be lucky enough to televise a Bruce Springsteen concert and still be upset, but there we were. We started from scratch. We made the set look as un-Unplugged as possible. For lack of a better idea, we decided to call the show 'Bruce Springsteen: Plugged.' And Bruce did a promotional spot holding an acoustic guitar. 'I told MTV I was going to do Unplugged,' he said. 'Well, I lied.' And then he smashed his guitar."
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