1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 185. The Who – Live At Leeds (1970)

 

Once again I shall repeat my usual caveats about live albums: One, they are often just compilation albums that are acceptable to music snobs, and Two, if they are good they capture the feel of a particular time and place, otherwise they’re just albums tracks with applause at the end. Johnny Cash In Folsom was good at actually capturing the vibe, while, say, Ellington At Newport really didn’t, at least not the original release. Coming off that point is, how well does the album capture the event that you can feel like you were there, even if you weren’t?

And then, more specifically, how well does this particular live album work?

I listened to the extended version, which comparing the track listings is probably a much better experience than the original, very truncated, release. It was performed at Leeds University, according to Daltrey in one of his audience asides, their first gig in the UK for a long time. The sound is hard and heavy, with full-on wall of noise bass, and they do some covers of old Rock and Roll hits like Summertime Blues (but not as heavy as the Blue Cheer version), as well as Who classics like Substitute, My Generation, and Magic Bus. Missing from the original are a medley of tracks from Tommy (although apparently the band did the whole lot), and the live version of My Generation continues as a jam that includes some further themes from Tommy, including the Hear Me, Feel Me refrain. The crowd sounds really small from the applause, this may simply be bad recording of the ambients (when Daltrey talks to the audience he’s often mixed really quietly as well), but The Who give it their all even if (or perhaps because of) the small venue (although I just checked, the venue can host 2100 people, so not that small). Blame the sound engineer; this is probably also why Daltrey says that “we normally feature Keith Moon singing, but today we just have to feature him”.

There’s a track on the extended version, I’m A Boy, which sounds to modern ears like a really progressive approach to transgender identity – the singer is treated by their parents as a girl but actually claims to be a boy (“but my Pa won’t admit it”). Reading up on that, though, because I was curious, it stems from an abandoned idea for a rock opera where parents can choose the sex of their child, and one couple order four girls but get a boy in the mix by mistake whom they treaty as a girl. So the singer actually is male, forced into a female identity. I guess… it kinda still works, although it’s not Lou Reed levels of gender fluidity.