The 50 Best Live Albums of the 1970s
The concert industry exploded in the 1970s, and the live album, a stopgap project once reserved for only the biggest artists, became a compulsory ritual and a pivotal moment for many artists. Live albums captured legendarily loud bands like The Who and The Ramones in their natural element. Once obscure regional acts like Bob Seger, KISS and Cheap Trick exploded into the mainstream with live albums. The Band, The Stooges, and Velvet Underground put their final gigs on vinyl. Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young (as his ongoing archive series shows), and Jackson Browne recorded entire sets of new songs onstage. The Grateful Dead released several official live albums (and continue to do so) that only made fans want to bootleg shows on their own more.
With the 50th anniversary of a landmark live album, The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East, coming up on July 6, here’s a look back at the best of the best of the decade of decadence. This list only features albums recorded and released during the 1970s – which is to say the various live albums recorded at Woodstock and released in the ‘70s aren’t included, nor are more recent releases that feature archival recordings from the ‘70s.
There’s no shortage of live albums in the last few decades, but they never mattered quite as much as they did in the ‘70s.
50. The Velvet Underground – Live At Max’s Kansas City (1972)
In the summer of 1970, The Velvet Underground recorded Loaded and played a legendary nine-week residency at Max’s Kansas City in New York, with Lou Reed quitting the band before the final show. The band still owed Atlantic Records another album on their contract after releasing Loaded, and instead of keeping the Doug Yule-led group on for their next studio album, the notorious Squeeze (which doesn’t include Reed, is hated by many fans and not considered a true VU album by others), the label opted to release a recording of the last VU show with Reed. It’s a polished set with some fairly uptempo renditions of VU’s avant-rock classics, with Yule’s brother Billy sitting in on drums for a pregnant Moe Tucker. Reed opens the proceedings by describing “I’m Waiting for the Man” as “a tender folk song from the early ‘50s about love between man and subway.” Live At Max’s Kansas City also marked the first release of the original “Sweet Jane” bridge that had been edited out of the release of Loaded.
49. Janis Joplin – In Concert (1972)
Two years after Janis Joplin’s death, Columbia Records assembled a double album of her legendary live performances. One LP featured the band she rose to fame with (Big Brother and the Holding Company) and the other included the band she recorded her final studio album, Pearl, (with Full Tilt Boogie Band). A few tracks on the first half were recorded in 1968 (hence the asterisk to our all-‘70s rule) and the audio quality on some of the recordings are a little low, but the electricity of Joplin’s performances shines through.
48. Elvis Presley – Having Fun with Elvis On Stage (1974)
One of the most infamous live albums of the ‘70s is barely music at all. In the King of Rock and Roll’s less profitable final years, his manager, Col. Tom Parker, came up with the incorrect theory that he could self-release an album of Elvis Presley’s stage banter from concerts without violating the singer’s RCA contract if it didn’t contain any songs. The result is a bizarre, disjointed series of vignettes where Presley jokes with the audience and tells stories, occasionally humming or breaking into a melodic “well…” to lead into a song. His most appropriate comment comes early on the album with “By the time the evening’s over I will have made a complete total fool of myself.” Once RCA caught on to Parker’s ruse, they re-released Having Fun with Elvis on Stage and it actually charted, but an embarrassed Presley asked them to withdraw the release, sealing its fate as a campy black market curio.
47. Ted Nugent – Double Live Gonzo! (1978)
Few multi-platinum artists of the 1970s feel so distinctly of their time as Ted Nugent. Although cock rock has flourished in many decades, only in the ‘70s could a guy in a loincloth calling himself the “Motor City Madman” have sold millions of records wielding his guitar like a phallus on songs with titles like “Yank Me, Crank Me” and “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang.” Even the hair bands of the ‘80s seem subtle by comparison. For better or worse, Double Live Gonzo! is a perfect distillation of the Nugent phenomenon, a collection of bawdy anthems recorded in seven different cities, which he’d attempt to top with 1981’s Intensities in 10 Cities.
