4. The Who, ‘Live at Leeds’ (1970)


4. The Who, ‘Live at Leeds’ (1970)
The Who spent most of 1969 and 1970 on the road, playing their rock opera, Tommy, as the centerpiece of epic concerts. They'd become a fearsomely powerful live band, as fluid as they were brutal: four wizards at separate corners of the stage, raising a golden demon together. The original version of Live at Leeds, recorded at a college gig on Valentine's Day, 1970, was three cover songs and three transfigured Who standards, packaged to look like a warts-and-all bootleg LP (which explained the crackles from a faulty cable). As singer Roger Daltrey later put it, it's "the end of a two-and-three-quarter-hour show…it's just the jamming bit at the end." Tommy itself was omitted, although some of its riffs show up in the course of a 15-minute jam that evolves out of the proto-punk headbanger "My Generation." Later editions have gradually added the other 27 songs played that night. Douglas Wolk