Live at Leeds

Honestly one of the best live albums I've heard in my life so far. The sound quality was surprisingly great, I enjoyed it a lot. And it was a first album from this list that made me listen to it twice and not just once.

3.5/5.0: Very Good

great musicians who sound great live

I'm 4 songs in and this album feels very much like just generic rock and all very samey-same to me. Perhaps this was a great show in 1970 in its own context and time.

Young Man Blues is pretty good and is the first song that sounds like its own song. All of the previous tracks sounded like one long song.

Moving into the stuff from Tommy makes the album more enjoyable for me

Overall, a pretty meh and disappointing album from a band I like

Pretty solid

Never really been a The Who fan, but this is pretty awesome. Just don't care for all the various Tommy rock opera stuff.

Álbum en vivo sin más. Le salva del 2 que sea The Who y haya canciones chulas.

Canción destacada: My Generation

Man that guitar tone explodes on Heaven And Hell. Young Man Blues is rad. An absolutely beautifully mixed record. Summertime Blues is great. Magic Bus is a great closer.

To approximate the original release as closely as possible, I created a playlist with the tracks taken from the 1995 expanded edition that appeared on the original LP. I know that approach is counterintuitive to Pete Townshend's original intent of having Live at Leeds be a double album, which the expanded edition and 40th anniversary super deluxe edition satisfy. But I wanted to take this album as it originally was because that's the version that got all the critical acclaim, to begin with.

With that in mind, Live at Leeds in its basic form is a solid collection of live tracks, performed with a more hard rock edge than what The Who previously did in the studio. It's apparent from the get-go with their cover of Mose Allison's "Young Man Blues" that they were playing with a great deal of ferocity in Pete's guitar licks, the uptempo rhythm section particularly in Keith Moon's drum banging, and Roger Daltrey's charismatic vocals. They were having fun with these covers alongside their original material, like the sprawling 15-minute medley baked into "My Generation".

I'd say the one track I didn't care about was "Substitute". My feelings for that song have soured over time, as the lyrics have not aged well as a meandering list of what objects or people Pete would want to change. Instrumentally it's passable, and live it's done in under two and a half minutes, but I could've gone with a different track.

Overall, I'm glad I listened to Live at Leeds and caught a glimpse of the raw, sonic energy that The Who displayed in their live shows.

Never heard this before even though I have seen the Who live and like their studio work. This is a great album. The individual musicianship is all high but superlatives cannot describe Moon. Surely a man who was born to die young. If not from the drugs, then surely from exhaustion! perhaps the legend wouldn't have been so great had he lived, because the man surely couldn't have continued to drum with this energy into his 40s. Extraordinary

JUST thinking about how this is my favorite WHO album, unfortunately, the original vinyl running order isn't available (apparently) on Apple music. There are (it looks like) three versions of what is called "Live at Leeds" on Apple Music, one of them a heart wrenching 4 hours in length. All are remastered and have material that wasn't on the original, mostly the rest of Tommy stuff. This was a time in their history when they played the entirety of Tommy at their shows, along with extended jams of My Generation, blues covers, and it was the most exciting thing in rock. Better than the theatrics of Led Zeppelin, I would argue, because of the pure spontaneity and intensity The Who brought to those performances. Singular.

So are we thinking about albums or are we thinking about The Who's live performances from this era? Whoever is managing the music post 2000s wants us to hear the whole concert and ignores the single LP as the sonic explosion that it was. The Tommy stuff is intellectually stimulating, but I think the original LP RIPS YOUR FACE OFF from front to back, whereas throwing some of the softer more thoughtful stuff onto the second half sort of moistens the whole proceedings.

Subject two - if you see films of this stuff, try to watch Keith Moon and how his playing intersects with Pete. Ungodly. Absolutely some of the best rock music ever created.

Oh, fuck off with the goddamned live albums. I'm not a groupie traversing the US in search of the perfect permutation of a Grateful Dead track, I want to listen to a thousand genre defining albums. This is just wank. "Uh, we'd like to carry on [...] quite what that means I don't know"- Fuck you, and fuck your meandering 15 minute version of decent tracks.

I like The Who, but I want to listen to the best version of their tracks - and live shit is just never gonna cut it.

Somehow, Live At Leeds is my favorite album by The Who. I do not say this about a lot of bands/artists (in fact, i have pretty much never said it until now) but i genuinely think that The Who's live performances are better than their studio albums if the albums i have listened to in both fields are anything to go off of. I feel that The Who is not exactly the best when it comes to producing their albums so this album not really having any production at all actually sorta helps it. The songs here all generally have a fun, raw sound which i really like and the album never got tedious due to it's short length. This is one of the better live albums i have looked at for this project.
Best Song: Magic Bus
Worst Song: Substitute

This was a really good live album. A good collection of their earlier stuff, we'll mixed, and well performed. 5/5

The Who at their best - skip the fussy stuff and the overwrought concepts and get right to the rocking. John Entwistle is just a pure monster in the bass rampaging all over the place with a powerful rumble, Pete Townsend isn't that good of a guitar player but just rips hard into some unbridled noise, Keith Moon slams the drums like they banged his mum, and Roger Daltrey is fine, doing classic classic rock guy stuff, but happily gets out of the way to let the band cook.

Live alben haben selten einen Mehrwert für mich. In diesem Fall auch nicht.
Songs der Playlist hinzugefügt: Keine

Cool. More 70s rock. C’mon, man. The new Kendrick Lamar dropped yesterday and I have to listen to this trash. FML.

It’s whatever. Watered down classic rock.

Live albums are not my thing, unfortunately. But I am awed by the fact that a 15-minute long track is nothing short of amazing rock goodness. Wish the inbetween talking and the audience cheers were cut, but the overall album is incredible.

Best tracks: Amazing Journey / Sparks, My Generation
Worst tracks: Happy Jack, I'm A Boy

My interest in The Who has waned quite a bit over the years, but this is a kick-ass live recording. Even I can't hate on this. Every track is a classic banger. Entwistle's tone is off-the-charts fantastic.

Voilà une chronique qui, je le sens, va me coûter quelques lecteurs. On s'attaque à un monument, une relique sacrée, un pilier du temple rock'n'roll. Le "Live at Leeds" des Who. L'album que tout bon rock critic se doit de porter aux nues, la performance scénique ultime gravée sur cire, le Saint Graal du rock en direct, l'incarnation de la "puissance" et de la "fureur" d'un des plus grands groupes de tous les temps. Le genre de disque qui, si tu oses dire que tu n'aimes pas, on te regarde comme si tu venais d'avouer que tu mettais du ketchup sur tes huîtres.

Eh bien, sortez les fourches et les torches. Préparez le goudron et les plumes.

Ma note : 1 sur 5.

Oui, vous avez bien lu. Un. Un misérable petit point, presque par politesse, pour saluer la performance technique et le fait que, oui, des mecs ont bien branché des guitares et tapé sur des fûts ce soir-là à l'Université de Leeds.

Pourquoi une telle infamie ? Pourquoi ce blasphème ? Pourquoi chier dans les bottes d'une légende ?

La réponse est simple et elle tient en une seule idée, une conviction que mes années passées à user mes jeans derrière le comptoir d'un disquaire et à hanter les studios d'une radio libre ont forgée en moi : un album live, ce n'est pas une porte d'entrée. C'est une récompense.

Laissez-moi m'expliquer. Un album live, pour moi, c'est l'aboutissement d'une relation. C'est le moment où, après avoir saigné les albums studio, après avoir mémorisé chaque riff, chaque break, chaque putain de silence, on s'offre le dessert. C'est la madeleine de Proust du mélomane. On connaît les morceaux par coeur, et le plaisir réside justement là : dans la surprise d'un solo rallongé, dans la ferveur du public qui chante en choeur, dans la voix du chanteur qui déraille un peu, dans cette version plus rapide, plus lente, plus hargneuse. C'est une conversation intime avec un groupe qu'on aime à la folie. C'est un album pour les fans, les vrais, les dévots.

Et voilà tout le problème. Avec les Who, je ne suis pas un fan. Je ne suis même pas un sympathisant. Je suis un spectateur distant, poli, qui reconnaît l'importance historique du groupe comme on reconnaît l'importance du théorème de Pythagore, mais sans que ça me fasse vibrer la moindre fibre. C'est un groupe anecdotique dans mon panthéon personnel.

J'ai 55 balais. Ma culture musicale s'est faite à l'adolescence, dans les années 80. Mon Olympe à moi, c'était The Cure, The Smiths, Joy Division, le post-punk froid et les mélodies noyées dans la réverb. Les Who, pour moi et pour les gamins de ma génération, c'était déjà des vieux. C'était la musique de nos parents, ou de nos grands frères qui portaient des pattes d'eph'. C'était Woodstock, la boue, les idéaux hippies qu'on regardait avec un mélange de curiosité et de cynisme.

Quand je bossais à la radio, je passais les Who, bien sûr. C'était un "classique". Un passage obligé. Pour moi, ce disque n'a jamais été autre chose qu'un document historique. Une pièce de musée. Et on n'écoute pas une pièce de musée pour le plaisir, on la contemple avec un respect distant.

Alors, bien sûr, je l'ai écouté pour ce projet. Et qu'est-ce que j'entends ? Du bruit. Un bordel sonique formidablement exécuté, c'est un fait. Ça sue, ça cogne, ça explose. On sent l'odeur de la bière et de l'ampli qui chauffe. Daltrey hurle, Townshend fracasse sa guitare en moulins à vent, Moon défonce sa batterie comme si sa vie en dépendait et Entwistle tient la baraque avec une basse en béton armé. L'énergie est là, indéniablement. Mais elle me laisse froid. C'est une débauche de décibels qui ne me raconte rien. Aucune de ces chansons ne fait partie de la bande-son de ma vie. Aucune n'est liée à un premier baiser, une cuite mémorable, une rupture douloureuse ou une virée en bagnole la nuit.

C'est une performance virtuose, mais vide de sens pour moi. C'est comme regarder la vidéo du mariage de gens que tu ne connais pas. Tu vois bien qu'ils s'amusent, mais tu t'emmerdes poliment en attendant le gâteau.

J'ai mis un petit 2/5 à Tommy, que je trouve être un bon album, mais sans plus. Ce live ne mérite même pas ça. Il n'a, pour moi, strictement aucun intérêt, si ce n'est celui de cocher une case dans ce foutu bouquin. Une case que je coche avec un bâillement sonore.

Les Who ont hurlé "My Generation", un hymne pour une jeunesse qui n'était pas la mienne. Moi, ma génération, celle qui a grandi avec le spleen comme boussole et le cynisme comme bouclier, avait une solution plus radicale et définitive pour la musique qui ne lui parlait pas, pour ces DJ qui nous bassinaient avec des sons qui ne disaient rien sur nos vies. Une solution chantée par un autre prophète, bien plus proche de mes angoisses :

« Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
It says nothing to me about my life
Hang the blessed DJ »