30. Maze featuring Frankie Beverly – Live in New Orleans (1981)
Already stars in Black America, Maze became the ultimate if-you-know-you-know band among British fans of underground soul thanks to Live in New Orleans. It perfectly encapsulated their appeal: smooth but not slick, an awesomely tight band making breezily relaxed music, one fantastic song after another.
29. Hawkwind – Space Ritual (1973)
Live albums can often seem like an afterthought, a nice addendum rather than a pivotal part of a band’s career. But Space Ritual is the best way to experience Hawkwind’s unique melding of psych, proto-punk, electronics, motorik krautrock-like repetition: advertised with the fabulous line “88 minutes of brain damage”, it’s immersive, hypnotic and awesome.
28. Portishead – Roseland NYC Live (1998)
Capturing a one-off gig featuring Portishead’s standard decks/synth/guitar lineup supported by strings, woodwind and brass, Roseland NYC Live is magical. Rather than clutter their eerie sound, the orchestra augments it, the perfect setting for Beth Gibbons’ voice: the dramatic climax of Mysterons is worth the price of entry alone.
27. Laura Nyro – Laura: Live at the Bottom Line (1989)
Recorded years after her commercial peak, Live at the Bottom Line nevertheless offers a perfect summation of what made Laura Nyro special: it feels intimate and supple, ranging across her career and musical styles from soul to gospel to jazz. Her voice sounds amazing; whether classic or previously unreleased, the song quality never dips.
26. Grateful Dead – Europe ’72 (1972)
They didn’t invent the term cosmic American music, but no artists embodied it like the Grateful Dead in 1972, their sound split between freeform exploration, earthy blues and country-rock. Stuffed with incredible, hitherto unleased songs – He’s Gone, Brown-Eyed Women, Ramble on Rose – the triple Europe ’72 might be their greatest album full stop.
25. Otis Redding – Live at the Whisky a Go-Go: The Complete Recordings (2016)
Six CDs may seem de trop but this is still the best way to hear Otis Redding live. Deposited in a rock venue in an attempt to snag a white audience, he didn’t change his soul circuit approach but worked hard to win them over, with electrifying results.
24. Iggy and the Stooges – Metallic KO (1976)
Metallic KO is a mess: a low-quality recording of the Stooges on their last legs – frequently out of tune and time – before a crowd so hostile you can literally hear hurled bottles smashing on stage. But as a piece of rock mythology, an account of screw-you defiance in the face of disaster, it’s utterly gripping.
23. Sylvester – Living Proof (1979)
Disco was not a genre that produced many great live albums, but then Sylvester wasn’t just any disco artist: his joyous performance at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House hurtles from You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) to versions of Billie Holiday’s Lover Man and the Beatles’ Blackbird, his voice incredible throughout.
22. Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense (1984)
The visuals are what everyone remembers from the movie of Stop Making Sense: the big suit, the boombox. The album obviously strips them away, but what’s left is still remarkable: the vast majority of the songs here smoke their studio incarnations, variously sounding more urgent, more joyful, more writhingly funky.
21. Iron Maiden – Live After Death (1985)
Hailed in some quarters as the greatest live metal album full stop, Live After Death offers the sound of Maiden cresting their mid-80s imperial phase: everything you might conceivably want from a Maiden set of the era performed by a band firing on all cylinders, with Bruce Dickinson in full-on ringmaster mode.
20. Beyoncé – Homecoming: The Live Album (2019)
The live album feels like a dying art in the 21st century, but this sparkling recording of Beyoncé’s marching band-assisted Coachella performance carries a genuine sense of event and risk: it isn’t like anything else in her catalogue.
19. Sam Cooke – Live at the Harlem Square Club (1985)
There’s something very telling about the fact that Cooke’s label refused to release this 1963 recording at the time: it’s fast-paced, raw and incredibly intense, none of which fitted with the smooth pop image they were trying to project of the singer – all of which make it such an electrifying listen today.
18. Depeche Mode – 101 (1989)
A perfect snapshot of the point Depeche Mode ascended from synth-pop hitmakers to US stadium-filling alternative superstars, 101 also underlines why it happened: subtly tweaked and rearranged, these familiar songs hit harder in their live incarnations. Dave Gahan sounds imperious, as if he always expected to end up playing in front of 60,000 people.
17. Curtis Mayfield – Curtis/Live! (1971)
Mayfield was at a peak when he taped Curtis/Live! in New York. You can tell: it flits effortlessly between Impressions classics and fresh solo material, the gentle optimism of People Get Ready and the tough fatalism of If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Gonna Go, the aching I Plan to Stay a Believer and the supremely funky Check Out Your Mind.
16. Johnny Cash – At San Quentin (1969)
It could easily have been 1968’s At Folsom Prison, but San Quentin has, well, San Quentin, which the inmates compel Cash to play twice. The tumult the second performance occasions should be impossible to top, but Cash does it, thanks to another ace in his pocket, the live debut of A Boy Named Sue.
15. Elton John – 17-11-70 (1971)
Recorded weeks after his career-kickstarting gig at LA’s Troubadour Club and an education for anyone who only knows the hits, 17-11-70 offers the purest expression of his original vision for the Elton John Band, “a power trio with a piano” big on extended improvisation – even the ballads rock surprisingly hard.
14. Donny Hathaway – Live (1972)
A rule of thumb is that a great live album should sound substantively different from the artist’s studio work. That’s true here: Hathaway’s voice is as exquisite as ever, but his band sounds jazzier, looser, more given to jamming. The audience appear to be going bananas throughout: who can blame them?
13. Thin Lizzy – Live and Dangerous (1978)
You could argue that Live and Dangerous isn’t really a live album – producer Tony Visconti claimed that 75% of it was re-recorded – but you’d have a far harder time arguing against its quality: it captures Thin Lizzy at their pre-heroin peak, far punchier and more potent than even their best studio album.
12. Motörhead – No Sleep ’til Hammersmith (1981)
The suggestion Motörhead achieved everything they were put on Earth to achieve with No Sleep ’til Hammersmith irked Lemmy deeply, but it’s understandable: it’s nasty, speedy, brutish, gruff and utterly relentless, grabbing the listener by the neck from the moment Ace of Spades kicks into life and declining to let go for the next 40 minutes.
11. Joni Mitchell – Miles of Aisles (1974)
Miles of Aisles captured Mitchell at a moment of flux: at the height of her fame, but about to push her music in more expansive, less commercial directions. It’s a process that might have begun at these shows, as she radically rearranges songs from her earlier career in the company of a flatly incredible band.
10. Bill Withers – Live at Carnegie Hall (1973)
For a man who was still working in a factory 18 months before this album was recorded, Bill Withers sounds fabulously relaxed and loquacious on stage at New York’s Carnegie Hall: that he’d amassed a set of songs as incredible as the 14 here doubtless helped. It’s all wonderful, but the climax of Harlem/Cold Baloney is something else.
9. Bob Marley and the Wailers – Live! (1975)
Live albums can be a poor substitute for attending a gig, but Live! was taped in such a way that you feel you’re actually in the crowd. The Wailers’ performance is obviously amazing, but the way the recording captures the audience and the atmosphere is almost equally so. And the unedited deluxe edition is the way to go.
8. Nina Simone – ’Nuff Said! (1968)
Nina Simone’s discography is packed with incredible live albums – from 1959’s At Town Hall to 1976’s fraught Live at Montreux – but none have quite the emotional charge of Nuff Said’s recordings from Westbury Music fair, three days after Martin Luther King’s assassination: a performance that alternately mourns and blazes with fury.
7. The Who – Live at Leeds (1970)
Tommy had sent their career stratospheric but – as ever with the Who – caused turmoil: the album was treated like high art, a reception that ignored the band’s brutal, incendiary side. Live at Leeds was the solution, offering raw live recordings with no songs from Tommy. This was rock music as visceral and explosive as you could wish.
6. Van Morrison – It’s Too Late to Stop Now Vol 1 (1974)
Latterly, Van Morrison’s reputation as a live performer has often centred on his irascible attitude. It was not ever thus: the performances here are fluid, extraordinary things, the songs bent and shaped in the moment to sensational effect. Furthermore, it’s evidence for the claim that he’s the greatest white R&B singer of all.
5. Aretha Franklin – Amazing Grace (1972)
If you want secular live Aretha, 1971’s Live at Fillmore West should be your first stop. But for emotional heft and astonishing vocal power, her gospel performance on Amazing Grace – recorded in her father’s LA church – is absolutely unbeatable, regardless of your faith or lack thereof.
4. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Live at Monterey (2007)
There’s stiff competition for the title of the best live Jimi Hendrix album – not least from 1970’s Band of Gypsys – but Monterey just squeaks it, thanks to the almost tangible crackle of excitement about the show that introduced Hendrix to America, not to mention the chaos about the band’s feedback-laden performance.
3. Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series Vol 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The ‘Royal Albert Hall’ Concert (1998)
Bob Dylan’s Manchester Free Trade Hall show (initially wrongly credited on bootleg recordings as the Royal Albert Hall) may well be the most famous gig in rock history. The story is incredibly familiar (“Judas!”) but what’s amazing is how tensely gripping the recording is, even when you know what’s going to happen. NB: on Spotify, it doesn’t happen, because – wait for it – all the between-song chat has been edited out.
2. James Brown – Live at the Apollo (1963)
All three of Brown’s Live at the Apollo albums are essential, but the first volume clinches the prize: it’s atmospheric, electrifying, and it captures classic chitlin’ circuit soul, simultaneously raw and incredibly tight. The screams and cries from the audience that strafe its eight tracks only add to the experience.
1. Jerry Lee Lewis – Live at the Star Club, Hamburg (1964)
Live at the Star Club is a badly mixed recording of Jerry Lee Lewis on his uppers in every sense: his career has flatlined and his performance sounds like a 40-minute advert for the alarmingly invigorating properties of amphetamines. Songs start at an astonishing pace and frequently speed up; his backing band, Britain’s Nashville Teens, just about cling on by the skin of their teeth. It should be a disaster. Instead, it’s almost indecently exciting, capturing the feral essence of rock’n’roll like nothing else. “It’s not an album,” gawped Rolling Stone’s review, “it’s a crime scene.” They had a point.
