LIVE AT LEEDS

One take.

That's what The Who had left from their extensive tour after the "Tommy" release.The idea of making a live album was decided during the 1969-1970 tour and tapes from a lot of concerts were considered to create it.

When the band was confronted to the daunting task of selecting the best numbers of all these concerts to compile them into a solid live album, The Who were too lazy to listen to all these reels and preferred to burn the tapes (according the legend to avoid these from being bootlegged) and they scheduled two new shows, one at the University of Leeds (February 14th) and the other in Hull (February 15th).

For technical reasons (the bass was not recorded on the tapes) the Hull concert could not be considered for the final recordings; so only the Leeds ones had to do it. Needless to say that the conditions of the "concert hall" were not at all ideal. The concert was recorded in the refectoire of the university and nor the sound nor the visual conditions were great (to say the least).

Anyway, here we go for what I consider one of the greatest live rock albums of all times. In-line with "Made In Japan", "Uriah Heep Live 73", "Rock'n'Roll Animal" and "Slade Alive!". In terms of prog, I would add "Genesis Live" and "Keys To Ascension I".

Just bear in mind that "Live At Leeds" was released well ahead all the other ones.

The Who were one of the best live act in the rock history. Extremely violent. Not only because Pete was smashing his guitar on stage, but the whole band were really disjointed for the era (mid to late sixties).

I purchased the original vinyl version in 1971while I was twelve. This contained only six numbers of which three were rock or blues classics ("Young Man Blues", "Summertime Blues" - superb rendition to be honest, and "Shakin' All Over"). "Substitute" was formatted as the original but "Magic Bus" was quite extended (almost eight minutes) and the version of "My Generation" featured here is rather disjointed. If you doubt about the hardness of a Who live concert, just listen to this piece of music. It definitely has influenced some excesses of the Purple on stage.

The original album was just over thirty-five minutes lenght.

Years later (in 1995), a remastered version saw the light and clocked at almost the full CD capacity, including their first attempt of a mini-rock opera : "A Quick One, While He's Away" released in 1966 on their studio album "A Quick One" (not easy to perform live, I would say). This version is far much heavier and rockier than its studio counter-part. A great moment of music, indeed. When you listen to intro of this number (about FIVE minutes), you'll be immediately brought into Peter Gabriel's world while he was introducng most of the Genesis classis. Again, this was recorded in February 1970, earlier than any weird little stories from Peter...

A bit of "Tommy" (more to come) with "Amazing Journey/ Sparks", a bit of Who standards with "I Can't Explain", some good Who songs as well with "Tatoo", "Happy Jack", "I'm A Boy" as well as a great version of "Fortune Teller" were of course more than welcome.

But the real big thing is the deluxe two CD edition released in 2001 which features almost the whole of "Tommy" in an incredible live version. Of course, "Underture" is not played but this recording is really extraordinary. Of course, when "Tommy" is mentioned, I am completely biased. I just adore this album so I can only advise you to grab the deluxe edition.

You'll get a typical Who concert like the one from Woodstock, also available (but in boot format) and the Isle of Whight one. On both of these, the sequence of the original concerts are kept (which is not the case on Live At Leeds).

Four numbers were played after "Tommy" : "Summertime Blues," "Shakin' All Over," "My Generation," and "Magic Bus" but maybe for consistency reasons, the whole of "Tommy" was placed on the whole of the second CD.

This fully expanded "Live At Leeds" is GORGEOUS and I will rate it with five stars (while the original would probably deserve three and the remastered version four).

This live album has of course nothing to do with prog. It is wild, it rocks like hell and a like it an awful lot.

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