The Who Live at Leeds (1970)

From The Times 18 May 1970

The importance of The Who lies not only in their excellence, but in the crucial attitude of their leader, Pete Townshend.

Despite being a member of the art school generation which spawned Lennon, Jagger, and many of the British rock aristocracy, Townshend has invariably held true to a set of musical values which places the emphasis on supreme honesty.

The band’s music has seen few changes over the past five years. Townshend has no need of the over-cerebral experiments of others: his style, and the band’s, was formed in the earliest days, and he has rightly seen no excuse to make radical changes. Their rock cantata, Tommy, for instance, was ambitious only in its physical and emotional scope; the music itself was compounded of the same elements as their first hits – it was an amalgam of the most basic rock techniques, using the highly specialized styles of the players to add the personal element.

That is why, on their new album Live at Leeds. The Who play Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’ and Johnny Kidd’s ‘Shakin’ All Over’, a pair of venerable classics from an era when rock was altogether more naive and unassuming. This is the music which gave birth to The Who, and from which the group is still drawing life and taking direction. These days, when Lennon sings ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, you know that he is trying to recharge his batteries, to purify his music, which has become clogged up with complexities, albeit honourable ones. But Townshend and The Who have been mining this seam for years, and they can play the old songs as a celebration of the values they have always held to be true, rather than grasping at them with a nostalgia which yearns for simpler days. They inject their collective personality through the notes, rather than change the notes to fit them.

Townshend needs the band and the band needs him. He gives them an identifiable body of material, matched to their particular capabilities, and they give him a context, a living workshop for his ideas. They have also managed to retain their vitality add volatility, and spend much of their time touring because they are, and always have been, a performing group whose members enjoy playing together in front of a crowd. This is the element which the wandering minstrels of the “super-groups”, whose members chop and change each month in a desperate effort to discover a musical nirvana, are trying to recapture, and once again it is an element that The Who have always held intact.

The new album is not perfect. I feel that the choice of Mose Allison’s ‘Young Man Blues’, from his delightful Back Country Suite, was a mistake, because the passivity of its outlook (“A young man ain’t nothin’ in this world today”) is the direct antithesis of singer Roger Daltrey’s position, which has him as the youth well able to override any authority which stands in his way. The recording, too, lacks the dynamism of a Who concert because the applause has been faded and, for the most part, edited out. This is a commendably modest touch, but it does lend a feeling of anti-climax at some points.

Instrumentally the band is superb. Townshend himself is one of the most underrated guitarists in rock, eschewing showy quasi-modern effects in favour of a more reticent, more organic style which does not preclude a certain amount of strenuous cursing, The way he’s altered the background riffs of some of the older songs (listen to the brief but electrifying ‘Substitute’) is extraordinarily subtle. John Entwhistle’s bass guitar underpins the ensemble with lean, highly mobile lines, and Keith Moon’s drumming provides the necessary Baroque ornamentation. Moon is an extraordinary stylist. But what comes out is perhaps the most sophisticated drumming in the entire genre, adding a driving rhythmic counterpoint which acts as catalyst to the whole band. Daltrey is a singer of surprising range able to tackle material of considerable technical and emotional variety while retaining a stance of mock arrogance.

The second side of the album contains a long track which begins as ‘My Generation’, their classic anthem, and then goes into a kind of Tommy medley, encapsulating a great deal of excellent guitar. ‘Magic Bus’, the final cut, is an enjoyable compendium of Rhythm and Blues styles from John Lee Hooker through Howlin’ Wolf to Bo Diddley, overlaid with their own particular funky exuberance.

The Who’s Live At Leeds (1970) – the story behind the “definitive hard-rock holocaust”

From loudersound.com  Classic Rock Magazine (Classic Rock) May 16, 2018

By the beginning of 1970, The Who were road-hardened and sick of playing Tommy. So they took it back to basics with an album that set the bar for live albums in the 70s

It’s hard now, to imagine or recreate the impact that The Who’s Live At Leeds had on its release on May 23, 1970. 

The record itself was just six tracks, three of which were covers – Johnny Kidd’s Shakin’ All Over, Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues and Mose Allison’s Young Man Blues – along with Substitute, My Generation and Magic Bus. 

It wasn’t short – My Generation was 16-minutes long and included snatches of See Me, Feel Me, Listening To You, Underture, Naked Eye and The Seeker, while Magic Bus was a blistering seven-and-a-half minutes – but it was simple, crude, brutally loud for the time and wrapped in a simple brown sleeve. 

It could have seemed like a misstep from a band whose last album, Tommy, had lifted them out of the legions of 60s pop acts clogging up the top 40 and appearing on Ready, Steady, Go.

The truth is, Tommy had changed everything.

To promote the album in 1969, The Who had gone on an extended world tour and decided to record the shows for a live album. When they got back, the band’s sound man Bob Pridden waded through the tapes for three weeks and reported back that they were all good. He didn’t know where to start. With a deadline looming, it was decided that the easiest way forward was to record two shows that coming Valentine’s Day weekend – in Leeds and Hull.

After months on the road playing a rock opera, the band were at their peak and ready to let loose. Bassist John Entwistle had tired of what he saw the band becoming. In the book The Complete Chronicle Of The Who, Entwistle is quoted: “We were better known for doing Tommy than we were for all the rest of the stuff. I mean, all the guitar smashing and stuff went completely out of the window. We’d turned into snob rock. We were the kind of band that Jackie Onassis would come and see.”

Live At Leeds had no artsy concept. It came in a brown card sleeve had three cover versions and several lengthy jams. Its statement, if there was one, was about the sheer power and energy of rock music.

“I knew we had hit a roll,” Townshend told Classic Rock’s Mick Farren. “This mainly depended on Moon, of course. He was at the apex of balance between his drug use and youthful good health. Five years later he would start to slide. Moon as a musician was a great listener, and followed what John and I played. Roger feels, looking back, that Moon followed what he did vocally as well. So Moon was everywhere in these times, but playing with great affection. We also all seemed to have boundless energy.”

Roger Daltrey agrees that the band were on a decisive roll by the time the Leeds and Hull shows were recorded. “It was our playing peak, that came out of playing Tommy in its entirety on stage – or almost in its entirety,” he says. “Talk about a sixteen-round boxing match. New things were happening at just about every gig.”

Hull was expected to be the live recording, with Leeds as warm-up and back-up. And the band remembered Hull as being the better of the two shows, with the City Hall offering warmer acoustics. 

Roger Daltrey: “Hull was a better gig than Leeds. I remember it like it was yesterday, although in retrospect ‘Live At Hull’ doesn’t really trip off the tongue.” 

Pete Townshend agreed. “It was a better performance from me – no bum notes. I was stone-cold sober, I think. At Leeds I had a drink or two.”

The problem? John Entwistle’s bass was entirely missing from the Hull recording (or so it seemed – Townshend didn’t listen to the whole thing). 

“I didn’t even listen to Hull all the way through,” he told Mick Farren. “The first few songs had no bass. So I didn’t even know the bass had been recorded on some songs. I just moved straight on to Leeds and mixed it. The Leeds night was covered in clicks, and most of them I literally cut out of the master tape with a razor blade. A lot of them were so bad I couldn’t fix them. It’s easier today with computers.

“I mixed Live At Leeds in my tiny home studio where I had recorded all my demos thus far, Thunderclap Newman and some stuff with the Small Faces. What distinguishes it from most other Who mixes is that the electric guitar is very loud.”

The Hull mixes were later included on a reissue (with bass from Leeds added on the missing tracks). “Even on the new Hull mixes the guitar is mixed a shade too low for my taste,” said Townshend.

The album has been remixed, reissued and expanded many times. Of the three versions available to stream on Apple Music right now, none have just the original 6 tracks. If you want to hear it as it originally sounded, you have to find an old copy or make your own playlist.

It’s worth it to hear it’s the short sharp shock that, on its release, saw it acclaimed as the greatest live album ever made. In the New York Times, Nik Cohn wrote that, “Without exception, [the songs] are shatteringly loud, crude and vicious, entirely excessive. For the first time, the full force of the group has been caught on record, their un equaled ferocity and power. Somehow, whenever they’ve gone into the studio, they have softened up…

“With Tommy,” he wrote, Townshend had created “rock’s first formal masterpiece and now, with the live album, he gets the definitive hard‐rock holocaust.”

As Mick Farren wrote in Classic Rock issue 152, Live At Leeds “reveals a band at the peak of honed chops and fluid energy. Suddenly everyone in the world wanted to see Maximum R&B for themselves, and The Who were boldly precipitated into a then very new rock’n’roll superstardom where only The Rolling Stones had gone before. The record was the band’s portal to an unreal world where audiences numbered in the tens of thousands, and Keith Moon could blow up hotel rooms and drive limousines into swimming pools.”

Farren said this to Daltrey, and the singer took exception to his description of  The Who as a ‘rock’n’roll band’. 

“The Who were a rock band,” he said. “I used to hate it when people called us a rock’n’roll band. The Stones were a rock’n’roll band. The Who were always a rock band. Listen to Eddie Cochran’s version of Summertime Blues and our version. The tempos are completely different. Where the beat is is different.” 

He laughed and echoed James Brown: “It’s on the one!”

The Who ‘That’s When They Were on Fire’: Inside the Who’s ‘Live at Leeds’

From yahoo.com February 14th 2020

On the 50th anniversary of their most legendary show, longtime sound engineer Bob Pridden reflects on capturing the group at their peak

It was 50 years ago today that the Who walked into the University of Leeds Refectory in Leeds, England, and played what many rock fans consider to be the greatest concert of all time. At the very least, the album they recorded that night — Live at Leeds — is one of the most celebrated live albums in the genre’s history, up there with the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East, Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York, the Band’s The Last Waltz, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band’s Live Bullet, and Cheap Trick’s Live at Budokan.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Live at Leeds, we phoned up the Who’s longtime sound engineer Bob Pridden to chat about the momentous gig. He joined their ranks in 1966 and, amazingly, stayed on the road with the Who until 2016 when he decided that half a century traveling around with a rock band was enough. “It was getting hard,” says the 74-year-old. “I wasn’t getting any younger. The pressure each night was getting hard for me.”

Pridden witnessed well over 1,000 gigs during his life with the Who, but he says they reached their peak in the late Sixties and early Seventies. “That’s when they were on fire,” he says. “The were working all the time and just on top of their game. As a unit of just four people, a band couldn’t be any better.”

It was his job to mix the sound every night for the room, but actually recording the shows for posterity wasn’t even a thought for the band in their earliest years. Tragically, that means that the hundreds of gigs they did between 1963 and 1968 have been completely lost to history beyond little bits here and there.

“About two years before Live at Leeds, I thought I’d try recording them with a couple of microphones plugged into a tape recorder,” Pridden says. “I brought an Akai seven-and-a-half–inch reel-to-reel and started taping shows on it. We went from that to a Vortexion where you can take a D.I. [direct input] into it and then put two mics into it and mix them in together.”

The enormous success of 1969’s Tommy forced the band to think more seriously about recording their shows. The rock opera gave them a huge new audience, but it was largely a studio creation that didn’t capture their explosive onstage sound. When they headed to America in the fall, Pridden was instructed to tape 30 shows for a live album that was envisioned as the perfect follow-up to Tommy. (Bootlegs were also becoming big business at this point, and the band wanted to beat the pirates at their own game.)

In Pete Townshend’s memoir Who I Am, he recalls speaking to Pridden after the tour and realizing he hadn’t taken any notes about the relative quality of each show. “There wasn’t enough time for us to wade through 30 shows again,” he wrote. “Plus we now had an additional eight that Bob had recorded in England — including the most recent show at the London Coliseum. For me to listen to 38 shows would take five days in a studio. Even with notes I would lose track. The live album was never going to happen if we didn’t do something, and fast.”

This was early in February 1970, and the band had only two gigs coming up before a long break, at Leeds University on February 14th and Hull’s City Hall the following day. “‘Hire an eight-track rig, record the shows, I’ll mix them both at home on my new eight-track machine, and the best of the two nights will have to do,’” Townshend instructed Pridden. “Bob was looking anxious again. ‘What do I do with the live tapes from the tour?’”https://www.youtube.com/embed/XhGyq2YjSiI?feature=oembed

In a move he’d later label “one of the stupidest decisions of my life,” Townshend told Pridden to burn the tapes so that they’d never wind up in the hands of bootleggers. Pridden remembers the moment well all these years later. “I burned them in a dustbin in the back of a cottage I had,” he says. “I put them in the bin, dropped a match and that was it. I felt weird, but we were already planning on playing another show. I didn’t think that 20 years on people would be crying out for these things. But it couldn’t have been everything because some of them did eventually surface and they got used.”

Pridden’s bonfire put immense pressure on the Who as they headed to Leeds and Hull. They had just two nights to capture a perfect concert after thinking they could simply pick the best out of 30 in America. Making matters worse, the mobile recording kit that Townshend envisioned the label sending over wound up being “a bunch of bits and pieces in military-grade boxes” that arrived in a van. This equipment was set up in the cafeteria one floor below the general assembly hall where the Who were performing.

“They played in the room where students would get together and the headmaster or the teachers would talk from the stage,” says Pridden. “There were no seats at all and it was really packed. People were hanging off the side of the wall and onto things. It was packed to the gills. I don’t think these days that amount of people would even be let in.”

The set featured the vast majority of Tommy along with earlier hits like “I Can’t Explain,” “Happy Jack,” and “Substitute,” along with covers like “Fortune Teller” and “Summertime Blues,” and a nearly 16-minute version of “My Generation.”

“I played more carefully than usual and tried to avoid the careless bum notes that often occurred because I was trying to play and jump around at the same time,” Townshend wrote. “The next day we played a similar set in City Hall in Hull. This was another venue with good acoustics for loud rock, but it felt less intense than the previous night.”

When Pridden listened to the tapes, he was horrified to discover that John Entwistle’s bass parts somehow weren’t recorded at Hull. “Forget about Hull then,” Pridden recalls Townshend telling him. “Concentrate on Leeds.”

That show had its own problems though. In addition to intermittent clicks, the backing vocals weren’t recorded properly. “I arranged a session at Pye studios,” Townshend wrote, “played the show back, and John and I simply sang along. We covered the backing vocals in one take, preserving the immediacy of the live concert.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/kcVmJGkMTgc?feature=oembed

Townshend tried slicing out the clicks with a razor blade and quickly realized it would be impossible to get all of them. But subpar-sounding bootlegs were flooding the market at this time, so the band just added a note to the label saying the clicks were intentional. The cover was a faded stamp reading “The Who: Live at Leeds” on brown paper, mirroring the look of illegal vinyl bootlegs of the era.

The original Live at Leeds, released May 23rd, 1970, featured just six of the 33 songs played at the show, and not a single one of them was from Tommy. It wasn’t until 1995 when a CD version arrived containing 14 of the songs, and the complete gig wouldn’t see the light of day until the release of a deluxe edition in 2001.

All this time, the master tapes for Hull sat in storage. They were presumed to be worthless because of the issues with Entwistle’s bass parts, but when prepping a 40th anniversary of Live at Leeds a decade ago, Pridden listened to the full Hull show for the first time. “That bass wasn’t there for the first five or six numbers,” he says. “Then all of a sudden it kicked in and stayed.”

He went to Townshend with his discovery. “Let’s get someone to overdub a bass on it,” Townshend said. “We can use it.” Horrified at the idea of someone else attempting to replicate John’s bass parts, Pridden came up with a better solution. “I thought to myself, ‘They did exactly the same set both nights,’” says Pridden. “‘Maybe we can lift the bass from the first few numbers on Leeds and drop it in.’ This is when Pro Tools was on the go.”

He tasked an audio engineer, Matt Hay, with the delicate task of lining up the Leeds bass parts to the Hull recordings. “We went in and set up an eight-track machine, which Hull was recorded on, and lifted the bass from Leeds and dropped it onto the track with Pro Tools,” says Pridden. “Poor Matt was running for two days and nights marrying the bass from Live at Leeds. But when we did, it was fantastic.” (Live at Hull was released on the 40th-anniversary edition of Live at Leeds in 2010 and as a standalone disc two years later.)

After the Leeds and Hull shows, the Who slowed down the pace of their touring considerably so they could focus on the creation of complex studio releases like Who’s Next and Quadrophenia. Their tours after 1971 were shorter affairs marked by private planes, drug binges, and sloppier sets, especially when it came to the work of Keith Moon. These were still incredible gigs by the standard of most any other band, but the magic of Live at Leeds — the culmination of seven years of relentless road work — was never quite achieved again.

After Moon died in 1978, the group never again played as a four-piece band, despite coming close in 1999 and 2000 when Daltrey, Townshend, and Entwistle were joined only by drummer Zak Starkey and keyboardist John “Rabbit” Bundrick.

“They are still fantastic, though,” says Pridden. “I went to the concert at Wembley last year. It was certainly different with the orchestra, but it was magical. Maybe the next thing they’ll do is go back to a four-piece, but I don’t think there’s a chance in hell it’ll happen. It would be amazing, though.”

And looking back at Live at Leeds five decades later, Pridden says he and the band were moving so quickly they didn’t realize what an amazing legacy they were leaving for future generations to discover. It was just another show.

“We were making history,” he says. “But we weren’t history. We never thought about making history. We were just wandering minstrels out there having fun.”

The Who – Live At Leeds album review

From loudersound.com

By the beginning of 1970, The Who were road-hardened and sick of playing ‘Tommy’. So they took it back to basics with an album that set the bar for live albums in the 70s

It’s hard now, to imagination or recreate the impact that The Who’s Live At Leeds had on its release on May 16, 1970. 

The record itself was just six tracks, three of which were covers – Johnny Kidd’s Shakin’ All Over, Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues and Mose Allison’s Young Man Blues – along with Substitute, My Generation and Magic Bus. It wasn’t short – My Generation was 16-minutes long and included snatches of See Me, Feel Me, Listening To You, Underture, Naked Eye and The Seeker, while Magic Bus was a blistering seven-and-a-half minutes – but it was simple, crude, brutally loud for the time and wrapped in a simple brown sleeve. 

It could have seemed like a misstep from a band whose last album, Tommy, had lifted them out of the legions of 60s pop acts clogging up the top 40 and appearing on Ready, Steady, Go.

The truth is, Tommy had changed everything.

To promote the album in 1969, The Who had gone on an extended world tour and decided to record the shows for a live album. When they got back, the band’s sound man Bob Pridden waded through the tapes for three weeks and reported back that they were all good. He didn’t know where to start. With a deadline looming, it was decided that the easiest way forward was to record two shows that coming Valentine’s Day weekend – in Leeds and Hull.

After months on the road playing a rock opera, the band were at their peak and ready to let loose. Bassist John Entwistle had tired of what he saw the band becoming. In the book The Complete Chronicle Of The Who, Entwistle is quoted: “We were better known for doing Tommy than we were for all the rest of the stuff. I mean, all the guitar smashing and stuff went completely out of the window. We’d turned into snob rock. We were the kind of band that Jackie Onassis would come and see.”

Live At Leeds had no artsy concept. It came in a brown card sleeve had three cover versions and several lengthy jams. Its statement, if there was one, was about the sheer power and energy of rock music.

“I knew we had hit a roll,” Townshend told Classic Rock’s Mick Farren. “This mainly depended on Moon, of course. He was at the apex of balance between his drug use and youthful good health. Five years later he would start to slide. Moon as a musician was a great listener, and followed what John and I played. Roger feels, looking back, that Moon followed what he did vocally as well. So Moon was everywhere in these times, but playing with great affection. We also all seemed to have boundless energy.”

Roger Daltrey agrees that the band were on a decisive roll by the time the Leeds and Hull shows were recorded. “It was our playing peak, that came out of playing Tommy in its entirety on stage – or almost in its entirety,” he says. “Talk about a sixteen-round boxing match. New things were happening at just about every gig.”

Hull was expected to be the live recording, with Leeds as warm-up and back-up. And the band remembered Hull as being the better of the two shows, with the City Hall offering warmer acoustics. Roger Daltrey: “Hull was a better gig than Leeds. I remember it like it was yesterday, although in retrospect ‘Live At Hull’ doesn’t really trip off the tongue.” 

Pete Townshend agreed. “It was a better performance from me – no bum notes. I was stone-cold sober, I think. At Leeds I had a drink or two.”

The problem? John Entwistle’s bass was entirely missing from the Hull recording (or so it seemed – Townshend didn’t listen to the whole thing). “I didn’t even listen to Hull all the way through,” he told Mick Farren. “The first few songs had no bass. So I didn’t even know the bass had been recorded on some songs. I just moved straight on to Leeds and mixed it. The Leeds night was covered in clicks, and most of them I literally cut out of the master tape with a razor blade. A lot of them were so bad I couldn’t fix them. It’s easier today with computers.

“I mixed Live At Leeds in my tiny home studio where I had recorded all my demos thus far, Thunderclap Newman and some stuff with the Small Faces. What distinguishes it from most other Who mixes is that the electric guitar is very loud.”

The Hull mixes were later included on a reissue (with bass from Leeds added on the missing tracks). “Even on the new Hull mixes the guitar is mixed a shade too low for my taste,” said Townshend.

The album has been remixed, reissued and expanded many times. Of the three versions available to stream on Apple Music right now, none have just the original 6 tracks. If you want to hear it as it originally sounded, you have to find an old copy or make your own playlist.

It’s worth it to hear it’s the short sharp shock that, on its release, saw it acclaimed as the greatest live album ever made. In the New York Times, Nik Cohn wrote that, “Without exception, [the songs] are shatteringly loud, crude and vicious, entirely excessive. Without exception, they’re For the first time, the full force of the group has been caught on record, their un equaled ferocity and power. Somehow, whenever they’ve gone into the studio, they have softened up…

“With Tommy,” he wrote, Townshend had created “rock’s first formal masterpiece and now, with the live album, he gets the definitive hard‐rock holocaust.”

As Mick Farren wrote in Classic Rock issue 152, Live At Leeds “reveals a band at the peak of honed chops and fluid energy. Suddenly everyone in the world wanted to see Maximum R&B for themselves, and The Who were boldly precipitated into a then very new rock’n’roll superstardom where only The Rolling Stones had gone before. The record was the band’s portal to an unreal world where audiences numbered in the tens of thousands, and Keith Moon could blow up hotel rooms and drive limousines into swimming pools.”

Farren said this to Daltrey, and the singer took exception to his description of  The Who as a ‘rock’n’roll band’. “The Who were a rock band,” he said. “I used to hate it when people called us a rock’n’roll band. The Stones were a rock’n’roll band. The Who were always a rock band. Listen to Eddie Cochran’s version of Summertime Blues and our version. The tempos are completely different. Where the beat is is different.” 

He laughed and echoed James Brown: “It’s on the one!”

The Who Live At Leeds (1970)

From johnmcferrinmusicreviews.org

The studio version of The Who was a great band, with good-to-great albums and great singles, but that version of the band wasn’t the whole story. The Who were a band whose live persona and sound were extremely different from their studio counterparts, and it’s just as well, because there are a lot of people (myself included) who consider The Who the greatest live rock band they’d ever heard. This album, along with Isle of Wight, is a fixture in my overall top ten, and I suspect that if the band put out any more full archive releases from around that time, they’d all get 10’s or F’s as well.

A note about the album before I proceed. There have been three different incarnations of Live at Leeds through the years. The first was a 6-track, 40-minute single LP version released back in 1970. In 1995, the band released an expanded 70+-minute, 14-track, 1-CD version, containing all of the non-Tommy material of the evening, plus a performance of Amazing Journey/Sparks. Then, in the early 2000’s, the band released the entire concert, placing all of the non-Tommy cuts on the first disc and the Tommy performance on the second. The 1995 version is the one I became acquainted with first, and it’s the one that largely converted me into a Who fan, so I (admittedly arbitrarily) am primarily considering that version in reviewing this album. Yes, this means that I’m essentially treating half of the final release as “bonus” material, but the Tommy performance doesn’t seem to have been given the same re-mastering treatment as the rest, so I don’t feel too unjustified in that.

Back to the album, the most superficial evidence that The Who live bore little resemblance to the band that had done A Quick One and Sell Out is that, aside from the performance of Tommy (which is somewhat abridged), only three tracks tracks on the album had previously appeared on Who studio albums (My Generation, A Quick One While He’s Away, Tattoo). Otherwise, the band dips heavily into its hit-singles catalogue, and also relies heavily on covers of oldtime rock-and-roll/blues numbers. They even kick off the show with a song, Heaven and Hell, that never made it onto any regular studio albums, and which was written primarily for the purpose of live performance. But more than the track listing is the sound: live, the band was LOUD, yet ferociously tight, and the sound demonstrates an awesome crunch without ever devolving into directionless noise. The instrumental dynamics are really something to behold; Pete mostly uses some of the most ferocious rhythm playing I’ve ever heard to lay down a foundation over which Moon and Entwistle can dominate the sound with amazing drum and bass lines, but he also puts out some great solos when needed. This album largely shows that Pete may not have always functioned as a “lead” guitarist in the purest sense, but there’s no question that he leads the direction of the songs at any point, and that Keith and John had an incredibly well-developed ability to follow his lead. And one mustn’t forget Roger, who, despite obviously not being in top condition (he sounds a little under the weather), still sounds incredible overall, introducing the fierce voice that would first manifest itself on a studio album with Who’s Next.

The familiar songs all receive major transformations, emphasizing that the band wasn’t content just to play its songs exactly as they were in the studio. The rendition of Tommy strips away all of the quiet acoustic aspects of the studio version (and I liked the quiet acoustic aspects, mind you), grabs onto the great riffs and turns the tracks into simply ferocious rockers. The highlight of this performance of Tommy, to me, is definitely the Amazing Journey/Sparks combination, with monstrous basslines and feedback in the latter, but while some of the rest shows the band as slightly tired and exhausted, most of the other Tommy numbers are great as well. The ending portion of We’re Not Gonna Take It goes down especially well, though I should note that Roger had to re-record his vocal track at a much later date, thus slightly marring the “authenticity” of the performance.

The non-Tommy material gets largely reborn as well. I Can’t Explain, Substitute, Happy Jack and I’m a Boy all get turned from cute little power pop ditties into full-blown hard rockers with Pete, John and Keith taking turns trying to blow my speakers out. My Generation kicks off a 15-minute medley, with Pete pulling out amazing guitar lines one after another (there’s a moment when the sound goes quiet and then Pete starts playing this shimmering guitar line that has to be one of my favorite moments in all of rock music, and definitely one of my favorite Who moments) and the others showing an amazing ability to follow suit (incluing Roger, who sings a reprise of the See Me Feel Me section and a variant of it at a later point). Magic Bus, which closes the show, turns into a 7 minute theatre piece, with Roger and Pete engaging of what has to be one of the most infamous (and rightfully so) vocal back-and-forths in the history of rock music. A Quick One … changes drastically from the excessively sissified original, adding power to the instrumental parts, some really terrific singing from everybody, a hilarious atmosphere and just enough clumsiness to work with the song. Tattoo breaks the pattern in that it’s done closely to the original, but it sounds great, so I’m not going to complain.

Oh, and don’t forget the great opener. Heaven and Hell gets sung by John, and it immediately demonstrates the unbelievable level of power and tightness in the band’s live sound. Pete gets off a FANTASTIC solo in the middle, but it’s in his function as a rhythm player that he shines most in this track, and Keith and John do a good job of showing why they could make a strong case as the best rhythm section in rock.

And then there’s the covers, three of which were on the original six-track version. Fortune Teller (which segues into Tattoo) may be a little sluggish at first, but it has enough power to make it work, and once it picks up steam, it equals any other version I can imagine. Young Man Blues, one of the band’s signature stage pieces in the era, starts with some terrific vocal-guitar call-and-response, then breaks into a frantic instrumental break featuring Pete soloing at a breakneck pace and then going nuts trying to squeeze sounds out of his Gibson SG, before coming back together for a huge finish. Summertime Blues, then, makes a good case for being the band’s best cover, and the best version of the song ever done. Let’s face it, it would be hard for another version of it to surpass the powerful and tight playing of this, or especially for somebody to a better “boss voice” than John does (Boris strikes again!). And finally, as the liner notes say, there is “the best pre-Beatles British rock’n’roll song bar none,” Shakin’ All Over. It’s just more great rock’n’roll with more great howling from Roger, more insanity from Keith and John, and more great soloing from Pete.

Now, for a long time, I considered this their best album bar none, and figured that when I got around to making one of these sites, this would be getting the top grade. The problem to me is that, for the time, this was actually a pretty average show from the band, and didn’t showcase them at their very best. This was their first performance in England after six weeks of touring the US, and they were playing a full length Tommy every night and (presumably) starting to get a little sick of it. In fact, if you read the excerpts from an interview they did that day (included in the liner notes), you will see that the guys, particularly Pete, were really getting tired of performing. Plus, as mentioned, Daltrey, while sounding great, still sounds like he’s not at his very best. On the other hand, though, I guess these problems speak more to the band’s credit than anything else; if a substandard Who concert can be considered the standard for live concert albums for almost 30 years, imagine how these guys would do on a good night!

The Who Live At Leeds (1970)

From sfloman.com

The Who were arguably the greatest live rock band of all-time. Want proof? Look no further. After the ambitious (some would say “overblown”) epic that was Tommy, the timing for this back-to-basics release was perfect, as it showed a side of the band – The Who as a hard rock band – that hadn’t yet really been captured on record.

Even the album’s packaging, with its brown bootleg-like cover, was inspired, and the album showed off their incredible band interplay, precocious individual personalities, and strong sense of humor better than any of their previous offerings. Along with Live At The Isle Of Wight Festival 1970, this is the best (legally available) album that showcases their live prowess; I’d also recommend checking out The Kids Are Alright DVD/soundtrack.

Live At Leeds captures The Who at their primitive best, and the band’s tremendous energy and impeccable chemistry overwhelm flaws such as shoddy production (largely corrected on the ’95 reissue), at-times less than perfect vocal harmonies, occasionally meandering songs, and some leaden guitar work from Townshend.

Taken from two shows at Leeds University when The Who were at their absolute peak as road warriors, this set shows off both their fierce power and catchy popcraft, and its best moments are simply stunning. For example, cover songs such as “Young Man Blues” (Mose Allison) and “Shakin’ All Over” (Johnny Kidd and The Pirates) are excellent examples of the band’s “maximum r&b” side, with suitably violent, exciting performances that approach heavy metal.

Their cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” was even more inspired and would widely be considered the definitive version of the song, highlighted by Pete’s grungy power chords, Roger’s commanding vocal performance, and of course John’s tongue-in-cheek, deep bass vocal spotlights. Perhaps “Substitute” doesn’t offer much that the original studio version didn’t, but it’s still an excellent song and performance, and “My Generation” and “Magic Bus” are completely transformed from their original versions.

Really, “My Generation,” which runs for 15:46 and segues into several other songs, most from Tommy but some unrecognizable as Roger ad-libs some r&b shouts as the band thunders away behind him, was, in Pete’s own words, an “attempt to mix all the bits of our history together in a one great, huge deafening din.”

Despite some of the aforementioned meandering indulgences and leaden riffing, consider the attempt a rousing success, and “Magic Bus” is likewise extended far beyond its original running time (7:48), though it mostly sticks to the familiar melody. Still, this chugging beast of a song was tailor made for The Who’s live skills, as the band recklessly (and heavily) charges ahead, adding exciting ad-libs (catchy call and response vocals, stellar harmonica wailing by Roger) along the way.

It’s quite the spectacular finish to a spectacular live album that only got better with the 1995 reissue, which expanded the original’s mere six songs into a robust fourteen, with markedly improved sound quality as well. Again, as with “Substitute,” the versions of “Tattoo,” “I Can’t Explain,” “I’m A Boy,” and “Happy Jack” don’t really add much to the studio originals aside from grungier presentations, but “Heaven And Hell” was a terrific Entwistle offering never correctly captured in the studio, and more stellar maximum r&b came in the form of Benny Spellman’s “Fortune Teller.”

This version of “A Quick One, While He’s Away” is world’s better than the studio version (though the best version is the one on The Kids Are Alright), and likewise “Amazing Journey/Sparks” showed just how much heavier and more powerful Tommy came across on stage. In short, in 1995 one of rocks greatest live albums just got a whole lot better. Play it LOUD. Note: In 2001, the band also released the double cd Live At Leeds: Deluxe Edition, whose first disc contained the non-Tommy part of the show and second disc was comprised of the Tommy performance.

Take your pick; my preference is for the 1995 reissue above the other two, but you can’t go wrong with any of them.

The Who Live At Leeds (Deluxe Edition) (2001)

From sputnikmusic.com

February 14th, 1970 was one of the most important days in rock and roll history. Why you ask? Well, because of one concert, performed by The “Horrible” Who, “Live At Leeds”. “Live At Leeds” is said by some, including myself, that it is the best live concert album ever. The sound is great, the quality is excellent, and the band’s playing is exceptional. Now, I’m not trying to give a rundown on how the performance sounded, but it was pretty damn good.

But I’m not here to talk about the bass dominated Heaven and Hell, Magic Bus, or even the 15:00 minute My Generation rendition. I’m here to talk about the side of Live At Leeds that only some people know, the epic second disc to the concert, the disc they do a rendition of Tommy. The second disc of “Live At Leeds” is what makes this album the best live album ever. The Who played the rock opera Tommy between A Quick One, While He’s Away and Summertime Blues. Now on to the review……..

The Story of Tommy
I’m going to give a brief summary of what Tommy is about. Tommy is about a boy who is deaf, dumb and blind. At the beginning of the story, Tommy’s father, Captain Walker, was supposed to be lost. While Captain Walker is supposedly lost, Tommy’s mother finds a new boyfriend. One day, Captain Walker comes home while Mrs. Walker’s boyfriend is there. Captain Walker kills him, which leads to Tommy becoming deaf dumb and blind.

Even though Tommy is deaf dumb and blind, he learns the game of pinball, and instantly becomes a pinball wizard. While Tommy is kicking peoples assess at pinball, Tommy’s parents try to find a cure for the boy, but nothing helps cure his problem. After seeing numerous people, Tommy’s parents get fed up, and they break a mirror. Because of this, Tommy somehow becomes free. He is instantly becomes a star. He soon throws away his stardom, and realizes his love for his family.

Quote:
By the New York Times”the best live rock album ever made.”

The second disc starts with the applause and talking of Townshend that is very common in the first disc. After a bit of talking and fooling around from the band, the music starts with the beginning of Tommy, Overture. Overture is a musical intro to get the album started, combining parts from 1921, See Me, Feel Me, Go to the Mirror, Christmas, and We’re Not Gonna Take It. Towards the end of Overture, a guitar solo takes over the song. Pete eventually shouts out “Captain Walker didn’t come home, his unborn child will never know him. Believe him missing with a number of men, don’t expect to see him again.” Pete quickly wraps up the solo, as the band goes into It’s A Boy. The Ox (John Entwistle, for those of you who don’t know.) starts off 1921 where the piano would start it on the studio Tommy disc.

Roger takes the helm at vocals, booming strong lyrics through the microphone. Amazing Journey comes next, and is by far one of the best on the album, mainly because it sounds more free flowing than on the album. Pete pulls out some great riffs, and John has the thunderous bass sound going as well. Roger sounds great, singing: “Sickness will surely take the mind where minds can’t usually go. Come on the amazing journey and learn all you should know.” Amazing Journey leads into the monstrous instrumental Sparks. The layering of the guitar and the bass is exceptional, as each have stellar parts. Sparks is probably the darkest track thus far on the album, but is still exceptional. Eyesight to the Blind is filler, as well as my least favorite on the second disc. The lyrics are annoying, even though Roger does a good job with them. Once again the guitar and bass is great, as it makes up for a crappy song.

Christmas is up next. It is about Tommy’s worried parents, and how they want to find a cure for him as soon as possible. Christmas has one of the most upbeat tunes on the album, even though it goes in and out of darker parts. Roger’s emotions grow more intense as the song goes on, leading to an abrupt ending. There is an odd transition from one of the most upbeat songs on the album, Christmas, to one of the most solemn and depressing sounding songs, the Acid Queen. It starts with a mysterious sounding guitar part, as the bass and drums soon follow. The lyrics are haunting, adding another aspect to the song. “I’m the Gypsy the acid queen. I’ll tear your soul apart. Gather your wits and hold on fast, Your mind must learn to roam. Just as the Gypsy Queen must do, You’re gonna hit the road.”

At this point in the story, Tommy’s parents are taking him to a gypsy to see if she can cure him using drugs. Next is the classic off Tommy, Pinball Wizard. Everybody knows the guitar part to this song. Keith does some excellent drumming, and John’s bass is stellar throughout, making Pinball Wizard one of the best sounding songs on the second disc.

The next two songs, Do You Think It’s Alright, and Fiddle About, deal with Tommy’s uncle, Uncle Ernie. Tommy Can You Hear Me follows, as the band sings. “Tommy can you hear me, can you feel me near you? Tommy can you see me, can I help to cheer you? Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.” Pete sings the next song, There’s A Doctor. The husband finds a doctor that can supposedly cure Tommy. The results follow in Go To The Mirror, as the doctor finds that Tommy is “incurable”. Roger’s vocals are strong, and Pete’s guitar part as well as John’s bass part blends nicely together to create another solemn sounding song. Smash The Mirror follows, with smooth vocals, and a bass driven part. At this point in the story, Tommy’s parents are fed up with Tommy, and throw him at the mirror, where he becomes free.

Miracle Cure is a simple song where Pete is singing “Extra, extra read all about it, pinball wizard, in a miracle cure. Extra, extra read all about it, extra.” Sally Simpson is a four minute filler that is mostly guitar driven. That leads into one of the best songs on the album, I’m Free. I’m Free is a lot faster than the Tommy version. Pete’s guitar goes well with Roger’s vocals, making a nice mix. Tommy is singing about how he has become free.

Tommy’s Holiday Camp is a one minute filler that Uncle Ernie (a.k.a. Pete) sings. The last song on the second disc is by far my favorite of the album, We’re Not Gonna Take It. Its got the same tune from the opening of the album. Roger vocals are fitting in the first part of the song, as Pete and John rock out. After the first part of the song, the song becomes darker, as it goes into See Me, Feel Me.

Roger sings “See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me” four times at the beginning, then goes into a more sophisticated part, where Roger sings “Listening to you, I get the music. Gazing at you, I get the heat. Following you, I climb the mountains. I get excitement at your feet. Right behind you, I see the millions. On you, I see the glory. From you, I get opinions. From you, I get the story.” Everybody intensifies as the song grows more and more, until it slows down when Roger sings the last verse, and the other guys play the last notes of the opera, which then brings Tommy and the second disc of “Live At Leeds” to an end.

Only two words can describe the awesomeness of the second disc of “Live At Leeds”: mind blowing. As I said earlier, the sound is excellent, and the band’s playing is exceptional. If you don’t already have “Live At Leeds”, I would suggest getting this, the deluxe edition, because aside from getting the first disc, you get this one as well.

Even though the first disc of “Live At Leeds” is a classic, you really can’t judge Live At Leeds as the best live album ever until you’ve heard the second disc of “Live At Leeds”.

The Who Live At Leeds (1970)

From starling.rinet.ru

I realize it’s a common place – calling Leeds the best live rock album, but hey, what can I do? It’s stronger than me… In case you’re not competent: The Who may have been the third best studio rock band ever, but they were certainly the best live rock band ever. At least, at the time when Leeds was released. The old version included only six songs, three of them covers. The recent remastered version adds a whole eight more, thus making it a much more efficient and finished product.

The effect you get from listening to this stuff is awesome. I mean, at first it sounds like a horrible cacophony; but after a couple of listens, when your ears grow used to the sound, you’ll slowly come to realize that the murky noise generated by the band is actually just a shield under which resides some masterful riffing, fantastically fluent bass lines, steady drumming and powerful singing. And the next stage is to recognize that the ‘murky noise’ actually helps produce such a magnificent effect on the listener; namely, if Townshend weren’t drenching all of his riffs and solos in that dirty distortion, loudness and quasi-chaos, the band would have hardly been any more interesting on stage than, say, Iron Butterfly.

Most of the songs on here are old hits, but I assure you they are very hard to recognize. ‘Happy Jack’? It isn’t a lightweight, bass-dominated pop ditty any more – it’s a powerful rock tune with a roaring guitar and Daltrey sounding as if he was singing ‘Rule, Britannia!’, not ‘Happy Jack wasn’t tall, but he was a man’. ‘I’m A Boy’? Where are those sissy backing vocals and soft guitar lines (not that I have anything against these in the studio version)? They are replaced by powerful windmills!

‘Sparks’? Oh, yeah, ‘Sparks’? Where’s that classical guitar strumming? No, no, be prepared for a monstrous assault on your eardrums, like a thousand wild rhinoceros! It’s hardly possible to think that that thunderstorm on stage was being created by just two guitars and a drumset, but it is so – no overdubs.

‘Magic Bus’? The former three-minute Bo Diddley-ish single has been transformed into an 8-minute theatrical piece with Roger and Pete bartering for the right to drive the magic dingus. And Pete’s riffing at the beginning of the track, when he duels with his own echo coming off the walls, is probably the best example of his amazing guitar technique on the album… maybe even in general. Meanwhile, John sticks to his simple bass riff, distorting it so far that he almost gives the impression of steadily, calmly drilling the stage. Listening to it intently in headphones drives you crazy.

‘My Generation’? Forget it! It’s a 15-minute suite, built on loads of driving riffs, some taken from Tommy, some probably invented right on the place! Oh, that Pete! He knows how to produce a carefully placed riff now and then. More important, he knows how to make a 15-minute improvisation really interesting: unlike Cream, he doesn’t just stick to a monotonous, occasionally boring solo, but instead leads the band into a set of different grooves, all built on these captivating riffs.

Some will sneer and say that he does that only because he simply cannot solo like Clapton, but that’s all right by me. He finds the perfect substitute. Not that he can’t solo at all, mind you: the few solos he plays are no slouch, either. The opening ‘Heaven And Hell’ (an apocalyptic tune written by Entwistle) should put Jimmy Page to shame, not because it’s more perfect technically, but because it really gets your blood pumping without being too self-indulgent and show-off-ey.

The best thing about this furious rock machine, however, are the three covers (the re-mastered version adds a fourth one, ‘Fortune Teller’, but for me it’s really a letdown: it starts off slowly and boringly, and even though it kicks off in the middle, it’s too late to get interested already. The Stones made it much more efficient, I’m forced to admit). Mose Allison’s ‘Young Man Blues’ is my favourite live number by the band (although I prefer the version on Kids): menacing sharp opening riffs, Roger’s famous vocal battle with Moon’s drums, and then the furious middle passage with Pete squeezing everything out of his Gibson. To me, this is what rock’n’roll was all about: fast, angry, uncompromising and intoxicating, with a good deal of teenage angst thrown in so that the fury and anger wouldn’t seem pointless or aimless.

Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’ is also reshaped beyond recognition and also turned into a hard rock fiesta, this time with all the band on parade: Pete beating out that famous eight-note riff, Roger screaming out the lines about the kid who didn’t go to work, Keith crashing his cymbals as usual and John adding incredible bass runs and the deep-voiced ‘boss lines’.

Finally, the Pirates’ ‘Shakin’ All Over’ closes off the covers with Roger overdoing himself (who could have thought it was the same guy that whined James Brown’s ‘I Don’t Mind’ on their debut LP and roared the mighty ‘SHAKIN’ ALL OUUUUUVEEEEEEEER!’ on here?) and Pete having fun with a chaotic guitar solo.

Oh, I forgot one more thing. Remember what I said ’bout that ‘A Quick One’ mini-opera on their second LP? Well, it might have sounded feeble there, but this concert version redeems it totally. It’s been slightly shortened, some of the most stupid bits have been thrown out, the rest has been speeded up and tightened, and the result is eight minutes of pure fun, powerful guitar and great harmonies. Unfortunately, the mix does not do justice to the singing; for a truly unique live version of ‘A Quick One’ check out Kids again.

There is, however, a slight sense of uncertainty and tiredness beaming through the general excitement. You won’t be able to notice it if you haven’t heard any live stuff from 1969, but if you have, you’ll be able to notice that Pete’s playing is somewhat more ‘generic’ and less improvised than it used to be. Considering the fact that he ought to have been trying hard that evening (after all, they were recording it), this is even more foreboding. And if you read the interview given on that day (included in the booklet), you’ll see that the band certainly wasn’t on cloud nine at the time. Sad, but true: Leeds was at least several months late.

They were already beginning to exhale, and playing Tommy for the billionth time wasn’t much of a consolation, too. Oh well. ‘You can’t always get what you want’, as fellow Mick once said. At least we got Leeds! And now, come to think of it, we got that other one, too… just take a look forward…

The Who Live At Leeds

From Sputnikmusic.com

This is one of those albums that no review will ever do it justice. To understand how incredible this recording is you have to – sit down, put in the disc and be blown away by one of the greatest bands in history.

I first heard Live at Leeds when I was in my early teens. At the time my CD player consisted of Rage Against the Machine and Nirvana. This album came on and it drifted through my ears without me paying the slightest bit of attention to it. It wasn’t as heavy as contemporary music. So back on went the Korn cd! What can I say? I was young and niave. Well put it this way, I’m going to say(without sounding like an ass) that if you like good music then this is an essential.

I can’t describe the power of this album. What amazes me the most is the fact that this was recorded before The Who had even touched on their greatest albums to date in “Who’s Next” and “Tommy”. Im not going to deny it though, I am a huge Who fan so my views will obviously be different to someone new to the band hearing this album for the first time. Im still stuck for words though – If you are remotley interested in rock music or “great music” then this is an album for you. Throughout, the album is laced with witty comments and remarkable musicianship.

Heaven and Hell(4:30)
Muffled talking, background noise and cheers from the crowd are the cliched start to a live album although I wonder if that cliche began with this recording? As soon as you here Entwistle’s thundering bass tone stamp out the notes E,A,D,G you know the magic is about to start. Bursting in with a powerful riff and mind-blowing drum beat, this is the perfect way to start the performance. Written by Entwistle, this song was never recorded in the studio which baffles me as it would have fitted perfectley onto Who’s Next. The greatest song to never have been recorded in the studio. 5/5

I Can’t Explain(2:16)
Starting exactly the same as the Clash’s “Clash City Rockers”, this is classic Who. This is an absolutley timeless song that was at the fore front of the Who’s set for 25 years. The orignal recording also featured Jimmy Page on second guitar. Not my favourite Who song but that doesn’t stop it being a true rock classic that shows the Who at top form. 5/5

Fortune Teller(2:34)
Originally performed by Billy Spellman and covered by numerous other artists including the Rolling Stones. This is a great Rock n Roll song that is driven by Daltreys vocals. Although the song starts quite slow, it begins to rock halfway through. 5/5

Tattoo(2:51)
My favourite song on the album that I hadn’t previously heard before. The lyrics are smart and witty with an incredibly catchy chorus. This also demonstrates the Who’s great use of backing vocals that benefit the song greatly.5/5

Young Man Blues(4:56)
Another cover song which was originally done by Mose Allison. As the title suggests, this is a more bluesy song. With it’s stop start feel and great vocal lines, you can see why they chose to cover it and make it their own – chosing songs to cover seems to be a talent the Who posesed as their choices were exceptional. Can I give this song 5/5 as well? I guess so. 5/5

Substitute(2:07)
Many favour it as being one of the greatest songs ever. Im one of them. 5/5

Happy Jack(2:13)
Continues straight on from Substitute, this is another of the Who’s hits. Again demonstrates the Who’s great use of backing vocals and Townshend’s great song writing ability 5/5

I’m a Boy(2:40)
Starts off with vocals from Townshend until Daltry comes crashing in to rock out. Another great, great song. Not much else to say really. 5/5

A Quick One, While He’s Away(8:25)
This is a small rock opera about an old engine driver who seduces a little girl. Breaks off into lots of different sections that all remain great to listen to. 5/5

Amazing Journey/Sparks(7:34)
Another two songs that I hadn’t previously heard. Starts off slightly weak but picks up pace and begins to rocks out hard. Another strong performance. 5/5

Summertime Blues(3:20)
So powerful, so catchy – this is a highlight of the album which can be seen by it being used on the Who collection album. Unbelievable. 5/5

Shakin All Over(4:15)
Another catchy song. Ive found now that every song is getting 5/5 so i’ll keep the song by song reviews a little shorter as they are all classics. 5/5

My Generation(14:45)
Bursts in a lot faster than the studio recording. It’s reputation speaks for itself – My Generation is the Who at they’re very best. 5/5

Magic Bus(7:22)
When I first looked at the album I noticed this was a strange choice for the last song but when I heard what this song was like live, I understood why. Great way to end an unbelievable concert. 5/5

Ok so I gave all the songs 5/5. Some will say that this doesn’t give a true review of each song but there isn’t a bad song on this album or a song that deserves less than full marks. Make your own judgements on the songs and go and buy this album. An epic performance from an epic band.

You honestly can’t understand how remarkable this album is until you hear it for yourself. 5/5

The Who Live At Leeds

From BBC Music

Following the worldwide success of Pete Townshend’s rock opera, Tommy, consolidated by their blistering appearance in the movie of the Woodstock festival, the former Shepherd’s Bush mods were now a bona fide ‘serious’ albums act and were freed from their tag as 60s singles merchants. Their stage shows now lasted well into the three hour mark, usually involving an entire performance of Tommy and a host of oldies and blues and rock ‘n’ roll chestnuts, all boosted by Pete’s guitar pyrotechnics, John’s Entwistle’s thundering bass and Keith Moon’s apoplectic drumming. What’s more, singer Roger Daltrey had grown into the role of charismatic, mic-twirling frontman. Aside from the Rolling Stones (who had released their own masterful live document, Get Yer Ya-Yas Out, the previous year), the Who were now the most exciting live act on the planet. If you need proof, listen to this…

With too many tapes from the year’s touring to go through (they ritually burnt them in the end) and with Townshend’s ambitious Lifehouse project running into early difficulties, the band decided to do the sensible thing and make a proper document of how damn good they were on stage. With this in mind they booked two nights at Leeds University and proceeded to give a performance of their mighty stage act at the time. Whittling the gig down to just six tracks at the time of release, the album came wrapped in a mock bootleg, brown paper sleeve with a free ephemera of their 60s ‘Maximum R’n’B’ Marquee club heydays – showing just how far they’d come.

With a 50/50 mix of Townshend numbers and standards the album kicks off with Mose Allison’s “Young Man Blues” and never looks back. Keith Moon may well be remembered for his schoolboy antics with hotel rooms and Rolls Royces, but to hear him here in full flow is an object lesson in rock trio drumming. It’s a measure of the band’s power that they can take hoary old standards like Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” and Johnny Kidd’s “Shakin’ All Over” and make them their own.

It all climaxes with the band’s “Magic Bus”; a grade B single in 1967 now turned into a monster rocker complete with comic call and response and Daltrey’s fearsome blues harp. Subsequent reissues of the album for the CD generation gradually added the entire setlist from the night, including the entire Tommy suite, “A Quick One While He’s Away” and John Entwistle’s underrated “Heaven And Hell”, the best opening number any live band ever had. Rolling Stone hailed it as the best ever live album, and they may still be right…