Bruce Springsteen stopped by The Tonight Show to talk with host Jimmy Fallon about his new box set The Ties That Bind: The River Collection.

He opened up on the arduous process of recording the classic record.

"We handed in a single record first," he began. "And I panicked after we handed it in, and I took it back.

It didn't feel like quite enough. So I took it back and spent another year, in tears, making the double album. I shed man tears."

Despite the hard times, Bruce says the effort paid off, as The River became his first number one record.

"This was the record where women started to come to the shows," he joked, adding that "previously we played to a lot of young men, due to the homosexual undercurrents in my music.

But we had a hit record, and when we had a hit record, that means it's date night.

Women listen to Top 40 radio — at least my daughter does — and so finally people came and brought their dates. Girls came, and it was a much nicer scene."