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The Who: Live at Leeds

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: MCA Records
Released: 1970.05.16
Time:
 76:58
Category: Hard Rock
Producer(s): Jon Astley, Kit Lambert, The Who
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.thewho.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Heaven and Hell (John Entwistle) - 4:50
[2] I Can't Explain (Pete Townshend) - 2:58
[3] Fortune Teller (Naomi Neville) - 2:34
[4] Tattoo (Pete Townshend) - 3:42
[5] Young Man Blues (Mose Allison) - 5:51
[6] Substitute (Pete Townshend) - 2:06
[7] Happy Jack (Pete Townshend) - 2:13
[8] I'm a Boy (Pete Townshend) - 4:41
[9] A Quick One, While He's Away (Pete Townshend) - 8:41
[10] Summertime Blues (Jerry Capehart / Eddie Cochran) - 3:22
[11] Amazing Journey/Sparks (Pete Townshend) - 7:54
[12] Shakin' All Over (Johnny Kidd) - 4:34
[13] My Generation (Pete Townshend) - 15:46
[14] Magic Bus (Pete Townshend) - 7:46

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Roger Daltrey - Vocals, Harmonica, Tambourine, Engineer, Producer
John Entwistle - Bass Guitar, Vocals, Engineer, Producer
Keith Moon - Drums & Percussion, Vocals, Engineer, Producer
Pete Townshend - Guitars, Vocals, Engineer, Producer

Jon Astley - Producer, Remastering, Remixing
Kit Lambert - Producer
Chris Charlesworth - Executive Producer, Liner Notes
Robert Rosenberg - Executive Producer
Bill Curbishley - Executive Producer
Tim Young - Mastering
Andy MacPherson - Remastering, Remixing
Richard Evans - Art Direction, Design
Vartan - Creative Director

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded live at Leeds University, Leeds, England on February 14, 1970. Originally released on Decca (79175) in May 1970.



Long considered one of the greatest live albums ever recorded, the Who's Live at Leeds was originally edited and packaged to resemble the haphazard state of early-'70s bootlegs, then expanded and sonically upgraded in the mid-1990s. But this deluxe edition finally restores the blistering February 1970 Leeds University concert to its full running length by adding the band's earliest officially available live rendition of the then-fresh Tommy in its entirety. And while it isn't perfect (the Tommy tracks have been moved from their original slot in the show and resequenced to fit onto disc 2 here), this album now takes its place as the best available document of the Who in their truly ferocious prime, trumping the previously available Isle of Wight show (recorded some six months later) in both performance level and sound quality. It also begs a little revisionist pondering: Are these the true godfathers of punk? Pete Townshend's music and chord structures may have often been jazz-based, but they careen with an energy that seems at once feral and superhuman. Roger Daltrey's vocals snarl with palpable grit, while the rhythm section of John Entwistle and Keith Moon thunders menacingly along like an overheated locomotive. The Tommy heard here is still vital and alive, played by a band whose fervent, in-the-moment abandon is a wonder to behold.

Jerry McCulley - Amazon.com



In addition to making some of the finest studio albums in rock history (ranging in approach from proto-pop-punk to the first rock operas), the Who, live, epitomized the brash, electrifying energy that put a new face on the music in the 1960s. The original LIVE AT LEEDS album, released in 1970, looked straight into the eye of this hurricane on a single disc featuring six tracks. A 1995 reissue doubled the number of songs. The DELUXE EDITION, however, released in 2001, is the first document to feature the Leeds concert in its entirety. Spread out over two discs, this most recent update is definitive, and includes a 28-page booklet, sections of band-audience banter, and - most importantly - a full performance of TOMMY. The sound, enhanced here in a new mix supervised by guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend, is crystalline, without losing any of the group's swirling chaos and bone-crushing sonic impact. Though the Who later began to abridge TOMMY live, disc two features the entire opera, while the first disc houses "Substitute," "My Generation," and a blood-pumping cover of "Summertime Blues," among other singles. For any Who fan, this edition is essential.

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THE WHO Live at Leeds (MCA) This long-awaited CD reissue improves on the 1970 original by adding potent versions of ”I Can’t Explain,” ”Heaven and Hell,” and other goodies. Few bands ever moved a mountain of sound around with this much dexterity and power. If you ever wondered what made these guys a big deal, here’s where to find out. A+

Tom Sinclair - January 17, 2015
Copyright © 2015 Entertainment Weekly



Rushed out in 1970 as a way to bide time as the Who toiled away on their follow-up to Tommy, Live at Leeds wasn't intended to be the definitive Who live album, and many collectors maintain that the band had better shows available on bootlegs. But those shows weren't easily available whereas Live at Leeds was, and even if this show may not have been the absolute best, it's so damn close to it that it would be impossible for anybody but aficionados to argue. Here, the Who sound vicious - as heavy as Led Zeppelin but twice as volatile - as they careen through early classics with the confidence of a band that finally achieved acclaim but had yet to become preoccupied with making art. In that regard, this recording - in its many different forms - may have been perfectly timed in terms of capturing the band at a pivotal moment in its history.

There is certainly no better record of how this band was a volcano of violence on-stage, teetering on the edge of chaos but never blowing apart. This was most true on the original LP, which was a trim six tracks, three of them covers ("Young Man Blues," "Summertime Blues," "Shakin' All Over") and three originals from the mid-'60s, two of those ("Substitute," "My Generation") vintage parts of their repertory and only "Magic Bus" representing anything resembling a recent original, with none bearing a trace of its mod roots. This was pure, distilled power, all the better for its brevity; throughout the '70s the album was seen as one of the gold standards in live rock & roll, and certainly it had a fury that no proper Who studio album achieved. It was also notable as one of the earliest legitimate albums to implicitly acknowledge - and go head to head with - the existence of bootleg LPs. Indeed, its very existence owed something to the efforts of Pete Townshend and company to stymie the bootleggers.

The Who had made extensive recordings of performances along their 1969 tour, with the intention of preparing a live album from that material, but they recognized when it was over that none of them had the time or patience to go through the many dozens of hours of live performances in order to sort out what to use for the proposed album. According to one account, the band destroyed those tapes in a massive bonfire, so that none of the material would ever surface without permission. They then decided to go to the other extreme in preparing a live album, scheduling this concert at Leeds University and arranging the taping, determined to do enough that was worthwhile at the one show. As it turned out, even here they generated an embarrassment of riches - the band did all of Tommy, as audiences of the time would have expected (and, indeed, demanded), but as the opera was already starting to feel like an albatross hanging around the collective neck of the band (and especially Townshend), they opted to leave out any part of their most famous work apart from a few instrumental strains in one of the jams. Instead, the original LP was limited to the six tracks named, and that was more than fine as far as anyone cared.

And fans who bought the original LP got a package of extra treats for their money. The original album's plain brown sleeve was, itself, a nod and nudge to the bootleggers, resembling the packaging of such early underground LP classics as the Bob Dylan Great White Wonder set and the Rolling Stones concert bootleg Liver Than You'll Ever Be, from the latter group's 1969 tour - and it was a sign of just how far the Who had come in just two years that they could possibly (and correctly) equate interest in their work as being on a par with Dylan and the Stones. But Live at Leeds' jacket was a foldout sleeve with a pocket that contained a package of memorabilia associated with the band, including a really cool poster, copies of early contracts, etc. It was, along with Tommy, the first truly good job of packaging for this band ever to come from Decca Records; the label even chose to forgo the presence of its rainbow logo, carrying the bootleg pose to the plain label and handwritten song titles, and the note about not correcting the clicks and pops. At the time, you just bought this as a fan, but looking back 30 or 40 years on, those now seem to be quietly heady days for the band (and for fans who had supported them for years), finally seeing the music world and millions of listeners catch up.

The album was duly re-released on compact disc in its original six-track version early in the CD era. But the increasingly common practice of adding bonus tracks and going back to original source tapes eventually caught up with the Who. In the '90s, Live at Leeds was expanded twice, first as a superb 14-track single disc containing excerpts of their Tommy performance from that February 14, 1970, gig, along with all the non-Tommy music, and then in 2001 as a double-disc deluxe edition containing the entirety of the show. It's a treat to hear more (or all, depending on the edition) of this great performance, all in remastered sound, but there's something to be said for the original LP, which packed a lethal, lean punch quite unlike any other Who album. And what is equally amazing, hearing whatever form of the album one happens to have, is the nature of the performances - one realizes, hearing them do "Substitute," not how much it sounds like the record (though it does), but rather how amazingly fully the Who of 1965-1966 captured their live sound in that record; neither the Beatles, for certain, nor even the Rolling Stones ever nailed their live sound quite so well on their studio sides.

The same is true, in the expanded version, of "Tattoo," "I Can't Explain," "Happy Jack," etc., so that hearing this album - superb as it is in its own right as a self-contained musical entity - only elevated the level of respect one felt for the band across its entire recorded history. And then there were those extended jams, moving from "My Generation" and "Magic Bus" into new and expansive territory, and showing that numbers like "Sparks" and "Amazing Journey" on Tommy had not been side-filling studio indulgences, but honest studio captures of the kind of playing that Townshend, Keith Moon, and John Entwistle had been doing for years. And this album, especially in its original LP form and in the single-CD expanded version, also showcased exactly how much Tommy, and a year of performing it on-stage, had improved Roger Daltrey's singing in intonation, control, and sheer power. It was the greatest Who album heard up to that time, and one of the best live albums ever done by anyone - and ironically enough, was a stopgap release, to give the band time to finish its next project, the film Lifehouse. Even more ironically, the latter would never get completed, but in salvaging it the Who would create Who's Next, an album that came as close to matching Live at Leeds as any studio recording ever could.

Bruce Eder - All Music Guide



Anyone who owned the vinyl copy of Live at Leeds will barely recognize its digitized namesake. While the 1970 record offered a mere six selections, the 1995 CD reissue is fleshed out with a full 14 tracks. Reveling in the augmented Leeds prompts one to wonder why in the name of "Heaven and Hell" they didn't put out a double record in the first place. No matter. This Live at Leeds is actually superior to its revered predecessor. The Who are at their Maximum R&B peak here, bringing an almost proto-metal aggression to supercharged covers of "Young Man Blues," "Summertime Blues," and "Shakin' All Over" (all from the original record) and treating fans to originals familiar ("I Can't Explain," "My Generation," "Magic Bus") and less known ("Heaven and Hell," "Tattoo," "A Quick One"). An improved-upon classic.

Steven Stolder - Amazon.com



Live at Leeds is the first live album by English rock band the Who. It was the only live album that was released while the group were still actively recording and performing with their best known line-up of Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon. Initially released in the United States on 16 May 1970, by Decca and MCA and the United Kingdom on 23 May 1970, by Track and Polydor, the album has been reissued on several occasions and in several different formats. Since its initial reception, Live at Leeds has been cited by several music critics as the best live rock recording of all time.

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, music critic Nik Cohn praised Live at Leeds as "the definitive hard-rock holocaust" and "the best live rock album ever made". Jonathan Eisen of Circus magazine felt that it flows better than Tommy and that not since that album has there been one "quite so incredibly heavy, so inspired with the kind of kinetic energy that the Who have managed to harness" here. Greil Marcus, writing in Rolling Stone, was less enthusiastic and said that, while Townshend's packaging for the album is "a tour-de-force of the rock and roll imagination", the music is dated and uneventful. He felt that Live at Leeds functions simply as a document of "the formal commercial end of the first great stage of [the Who's] great career."

In a 1981 review, Robert Christgau asserted that, although side one is valuable for the live covers and "Substitute", the "uncool-at-any-length" "Magic Bus" and "My Generation" are not an improvement over their "raw" album versions. In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Bruce Eder felt that the album was seen as a model of excellence for live rock and roll during the 1970s; that it was the Who's best up to that point, and that there was "certainly no better record of how this band was a volcano of violence on-stage, teetering on the edge of chaos but never blowing apart." In a review of its 1995 CD reissue, Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly asserted that it shows why the Who were important: "Few bands ever moved a mountain of sound around with this much dexterity and power." Mojo magazine wrote that "the future for rock as it became, in all its pomp and circumstance, began right here." Steven Hyden, writing for PopMatters, said that it is "not only the best live rock ‘n’ roll album ever, but the best rock album period." Roy Carr of Classic Rock, reviewing the 2010 Super Deluxe Edition of the album, remarked how the new Live at Hull section "is noticeably more tight, more focused and even more aggressive" than the original recording, concluding that "we now have the two greatest live rock albums...ever."

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