LIVE AT LEEDS

This review is of the 2001 deluxe edition of the album. If it were of previous versions, I'd have probably knocked half star off. Whilst it is a legendary loud and noisy album, the first disc of the 2001 edition (which more or less conveys the content of the expanded 1995 edition, with the Tommy track moved to the Tommy performance) is actually a bit hit and miss. When it's good, it's fantastic, but there are little niggles here and there that stop me getting into it. First off, all the between-songs banter has been preserved, and whilst this does give an honest look at what the live performance was like it also occasionally drags on for too long - the worse instance of this is the intro to A Quick One While He's Away, which is absolutely interminable (and, when the band start sniggering about underage girls being "seduced" by old men, really kind of disturbing in retrospect). Also, when the band try to play some of their lighter, gentler, airier studio material, their naturally raucous stage presence means it doesn't quite come across right.

However, the absolute top reason to acquire the 2001 deluxe remaster is the full performance of Tommy presented on the second disc - truly what most Who concert-goers were turning out to see at that point in time - and that's where you get your money's worth. Songs which seemed limp and lifeless to my ears on the studio disc are invested with a thunderous, all conquering-power that makes this my preferred version of the Who's most famous rock opera. Two and a half stars for disc 1, three and a half stars for the Tommy disc, three stars overall.