’70s Classic Rock Live Albums

Very few bands (at least at the time) would have the balls to make the cover of their first live album their frontman impaling the guitarist with his own instrument, but AC/DC had the biggest balls of them all. While that song isn’t here, this high-voltage teeth-kicker runs through some of their most dangerous problem children. It’s lean and mean as you get – even the extended solos on “Bad Boy Boogie” and “Let There Be Rock” feel more like an extended brawl than any sort of musical indulgence.

Arch power poppers from Rockford, Illinois, Cheap Trick articulated the myriad dilemmas of suburban teenage boy life in the mid-20th century. Most of it revolved around girls, obviously. Their studio stuff was a little too weird for Americans to get, but apparently the Japanese loved them, and the thousands of screaming fans at Tokyo’s Budokan arena inject Godzilla-sized energy into their pithy adolescent anthems. The transformation of a simple rockabilly bop into a stadium-wide call-and-response catapulted “I Want You (to Want Me)” into classic rock radio immortality.

Former Humble Pie guitarist Peter Frampton stares slack-jawed at the crowd, a sharp contrast to Neil Diamond’s confident manhandling on the cover of Hot August Night. It sure struck a chord with mid-70s America, though. This thing sold like gasoline during the Carter administration. Despite little in the way of subsequent cultural impact for Frampton, there’s no denying that “Show Me the Way” and “Baby I Love Your Way” represent the pinnacle of the immensely popular light rock sound of the decade.

Led Zeppelin were the biggest band in the world at one point. Millions of spins of “Stairway to Heaven” earned them a posthumous reputation as the biggest dinosaurs, however. Well, the songs may remain the same, but this sprawling three-CD document of the band’s 1972 dates at the LA Forum and Long Beach Arena reanimates this Tyrannosaurus Rex. 2 ½ hours (including an almost half-hour-long “Dazed and Confused!”) of their very best early hits sped up, expanded, and enlarged to arena proportions – it makes the greatest songs in classic rock history feel fresh again.

This collection of the best performances from the Progeny: Seven Shows from Seventy-Two 14-disc box set works as an alternative version of the flawed Yessongs (drawn from the same tour). It also makes the band’s live prowess – and they’re at the height of their powers here – more accessible to those who don’t wish to listen to almost half a day’s worth of the exact same set list. Despite fluctuating sound quality, this presents prog rock’s prime act in their prime. The stellar musicianship makes it obvious why prog became popular in the first place.

After 2112, everybody’s favorite Canadian prog rock power trio needed something to stop the gap in their relentless release schedule while they prepared A Farewell to Kings. It was the 70s: that meant a double-LP live release. Not as polished as their later stage recordings, these distortion-soaked takes give the highlights from their first four albums a raw energy – especially the cuts from the underwhelming Caress of Steel. We would never quite see this side of them again but this last glimpse offered a lovely farewell as they transitioned into rock royalty.

Tragic how one of the 20th century’s greatest pop songwriters and performers has been reduced to a punchline, but one listen to this gorgeously-recorded two LP live document captured at the, ahem, height of the man’s potency will set the record straight. Backed by a group of ace session musicians and a full string section at the world-famous Greek Theater in Los Angeles (part of a 10 night stand in August 1972), Diamond’s warm, intimate renditions of all-time great singles like “Cherry Cherry” and “Kentucky Woman” confirm his place at the top of the pop rock pantheon. The difference between these and the studio versions are like night and day.

Having somehow survived the 1970s, Neil Young decided to hold himself a little retrospective party with a few thousand of his friends. Side one’s acoustic tunes are nice enough, but when he plugs in and Crazy Horse take the stage, things really get electric. Sides three and four especially: amping up his ode to a spicy woman and hurling waves of feedback at John Lydon uglier than anything ever fired by the Sex Pistols, Young proves beyond a doubt that, even though he didn’t die before he got old, in 1979 he wasn’t ready for the AARP yet.

Phil Lynott was one of the coolest cats to ever pick up a microphone and this doublewide document gets you (very) up close and personal with him and his fighting Irish friends. As with a lot of sprawling 70s dangerously live records, this presents the road-tested arrangements of pretty much all their greatest hits – in other words, the definitive versions. “Massacre” taught Metallica and Slough Feg how to dance a jig and “The Cowboy Song”’s transition into “The Boys Are Back in Town” always thrills, but those aren’t what make this such a classic. It’s the guitar solo on “Still in Love with You,” easily one of the top 10 most soulful things to come from six strings.

Contrary to the announcer’s claim at the beginning, KISS were not the hottest band in the world at the time of this 1975 recording. In fact, Alive! was a last-ditch effort to break the band – and, as we all know now, it allowed them to rock ‘n’ roll all night and party all day for the next five decades. Debatably live (even in their heyday, the band wasn’t known for their tight performances or, um, competence), these two LPs still capture the blood-spewing, fire-breathing thrill of one of their shows. There’s no doubt that this is where the KISS Army started their campaign for world domination.

The definitive live document from the definitive rock ‘n’ roll band has been released in a dozen different forms over the years – from the original 40-minute LP to a four-hour box set. The 77-minute 90s issue presents the most palatable option (unless you really love the entirety of Tommy). The on-stage interpretations and ragged blues covers explain their guitar-smashing bad boy reputations much better than the sleek studio versions. By the time you reach the middle of the hypnotic 15-minute “My Generation,” you understand why boomers thought everything peaked here. At least until “Magic Bus.”

Like a lot of its brethren, this beloved blues rock live double-LP saw the light of day due to this Southern sibling act’s ability to sell tickets but inability to sell records. Legend has it that studio brass wanted to cut the jams, which would be like cutting the desert scenes from Lawrence of Arabia. Cooler heads prevailed. That means two of the four sides consist of one song each, and while it’s probably excessive, originals like “Whipping Post” and covers like “You Don’t Love Me” only get better the closer to the sun the band flies.

Originally a space rock act, Great Britain-based UFO poached guitarist Michael Schenker from the Scorpions and embarked on a five-album run of hard rock domination. Strangers in the Night came at the tail end. This presents a portrait of a band tearing apart at the seams (Schenker left mid-tour) that gives a jolt of energy to already-classic tunes like “Rock-Bottom” and “Lights Out.” The studio versions were nothing to sneeze at, but the speed and sweat invested in these arrangements blazed the trail straight to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

A fitting sendoff for founding guitarist Uli John Roth, this 85-minute beast caps the German hard rockers’ first, pre-hurricane-rocked era in style. Bluesier than their later work but no less urgent, some of their finest tunes live in those first six albums. This provides a guided tour through an oft-overlooked period of their career via performances by a band at the top of their game. Roth shouldn’t sing, but when his guitar does the speaking (especially on “We’ll Burn the Sky” and “Fly to the Rainbow”), it’s love at last sting.

Released at the peak of their popularity (at least commercially; critics notoriously never had much use for them), Grand Funk Railroad’s second live set makes total sense: it was the Bicentennial party America wanted, even if it was a year early. The sound quality and song choices on Live Album made that one kind of a drag, but this has all the great early stuff along with the Rundgren-era hits blasted out by a road-sharpened crew. Big, dumb, and irrepressible, it makes the case that they weren’t just an American band; they were probably the American band.

If that’s the reaper their biggest hit tells us not to be afraid of, it makes it much more difficult to follow these Long islanders’ instructions. Released not too long after their first live record, On Your Feet or on Your Knees, to capitalize on the two huge singles that came in its wake (the aforementioned radio staple and the leadoff literal monster hit from Spectres), this laser-loaded stage document finds the band riding high off their success, loose and having a blast. The 2007 reissue doubles the length, adding in key performances of back catalog favorites, a few more covers, and an 8 ½ minute guitar jam – making it the version to seek out for amateur astronomers.

Hot on the heels of their monster success with Machine Head, the Mk. II lineup of British hard rockers Deep Purple decamped to Japan for three sold-out dates. The label wanted a live record from them. They didn’t want to do a live record. Which means that the transcendent performances captured here come from the band not trying to impress. That doesn’t mean they didn’t care, though – they brought in expert producer Martin Birch to handle the actual recording. The insane extended guitar and organ solos – and even “The Mule”’s drum debauchery – may seem indulgent when you look at the runtime, but when these highway stars shift into fifth gear you’ll never want them to hit the brakes.

While they often get dismissed due to their silly moniker, these boogie bandits locked into shockingly satisfying grooves on this sixpack. Their blues jams possessed so much soul it’s hard to believe they’re from England. “Slow Ride,” “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “Fool for the City” all shine, but their version of “Honey Hush” slams Aerosmith’s “Train Kept a Rollin’” cover straight into the trash.

Although nobody denies the potency of the Halford/Tipton/Downing writing team, Judas Priest’s first few studio records lacked punch on the production side. By 1979, their hellbent-for-leather touring lifestyle had honed them into a killing machine on stage, and although Unleashed in the East was originally intended as a Japan-only release, wiser heads prevailed after they heard Tom Allom’s razor-sharp production of the tapes. And make no mistake: these versions of “Exciter,” “Running Wild,” and “Victim of Changes” rip the originals to shreds.

Many bands have tried to capture the look of 70s sci-fi pulp paperback covers in sound form, but the only ones whose sonic attack truly captures that sublime combination of the surreal, profound, and ridiculous was this drug-fueled British collective. None of their studio recordings truly re-create the sense of a mad poet rambling in the middle of a jazz festival while aliens invade like this definitive live document does. Lemmy Kilmister, soon to deal cards in another outfit, provides the groove while the stars explode around him.