Over 70 Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of The Real Stories Behind Some Of The Most Memorable Live Music Performances
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Vote up the classic live performances you wish you could have been there to see.
There's nothing worse than going out to see one of your favorite musical artists and being crushed by a catastrophic performance. But a great live music performance can be a truly transportive experience. There's a sense of collective ecstasy and oneness as audience members witness artists performing at the peak of their powers. Not surprisingly, stories about the best concerts live on long afterward.
Even centuries ago, before the advent of recording, there were concerts so memorable that they've come down to us in the history books. More recently, classic live performances have been preserved on tape or digital media for future generations to enjoy. Here's a sampling of some of the most memorable concerts ever - from J.S. Bach to Elton John.
A 1970 poll by the UK music newspaper Record Mirror ranked Elton John the fifth most promising pop musician in the UK. Within a few years he was the biggest star in the world. One thing that happened in between? A series of legendary gigs at the Troubadour rock club in Los Angeles. Playing eight shows in six nights in August 1970, John electrified American audiences and catapulted his career to the next level.
Ray Williams, his manager at the time, recalled:
We’d played in Europe - got booed off the stage in France - and had good press. The Troubadour shows were probably a last chance to get things going… Our booking agent, Jerry Heller, asked if we’d do a gig at the Troubadour. I said, “How much?” He said, “$150.” You’ve got to be joking. But that gave us a platform to go to [music publisher] Dick [James], and he put up the money to do it.
Songwriter Roger Greenaway recalled John's arrival:
They land in LA, and the record label had gotten him an open-top bus, a British double-decker bus. On the side, it said, ELTON JOHN HAS ARRIVED. People thought “Elton John” was a new kind of toilet.
Among those present at John's first show were Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt, Brian Wilson, Randy Newman, and David Crosby - the cream of the L.A. music scene. Also attending was L.A. Times music critic Robert Hilburn, who recalled:
He seemed shy onstage. He played almost with his head down, like he was hiding. They were pretty songs, but he wasn’t selling them in any way. For the first 10 minutes, I thought, “This is gonna be a disaster.”… He knocked the piano bench down and did Jerry Lee Lewis-type antics. He went from a non-performer to an over-the-top performer.
The atmosphere during those nights at the Troubadour was electric. Something inside me just took over. I knew this was my big moment and I really went for it. The energy I put into my performance, kicking out my piano stool and smashing my legs down on the piano, caught everyone off guard. It was pure rock ’n’ roll serendipity. Even before the reviews came in, we knew that something special had happened.
According to Ronstadt, “It was like a ball of fire hit the Troubadour. When he got to ‘Take Me to the Pilot,’ the place levitated.”
Rejoice. Rock music… has a new star… By the end of the evening, there was no question about John's talent and potential. Tuesday night at the Troubadour was just the beginning. He's going to be one of rock's biggest and most important stars.
John's single “Your Song,” released that October, made it to No. 8 on the Billboard charts. Ex-Beatle John Lennon said it was “the first new thing that’s happened since we happened.”
John's Troubadour debut was dramatized, complete with levitation, in the biopic Rocket Man.
On June 18, 1967, the Jimi Hendrix Experience took the stage at the Monterey Pop Festival in California. The recently organized festival would have a major impact on the future of rock music; according to Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner, “Monterey was the nexus - it sprang from what the Beatles began, and from it sprang what followed.”
Hendrix, a veteran performer, had been honing his act in Europe but had not fully broken through in his home country. His band was put on the bill at Monterey due to lobbying by British music scenesters, including Paul McCartney and former Beatles press agent Derek Taylor. At the festival, Hendrix was introduced by the Rolling Stones's Brian Jones, who said he was “the most exciting guitar player I've ever heard.”
Hendrix's trio launched into a set that included future classics like “Foxy Lady,” “Hey Joe,” and “Purple Haze,” as well as a cover of Bob Dylan's “Like a Rolling Stone.”
The big finale was a performance of “Wild Thing,” immortalized in a photograph taken by 17-year-old Eddie Caraeff. Still a high schooler, he was there not to enjoy the music, but to take photos. A German photographer advised him to “save some film for this Jimi Hendrix cat.” As it happened, Caraeff had only one shot left on his film roll when Hendrix lit his guitar on fire right in front of the young photographer. He snapped the shot, creating one of the most famous images of rock 'n' roll.
Legendary impresario Duke Ellington had been a major figure in jazz since the 1920s. But by the ‘50s, jazz was on the decline, transitioning to its current status as an art form for the delectation of sophisticates, while rock ’n' roll was capturing the public imagination.
By 1956, the kids weren't listening to Ellington, Benny Goodman, or Louis Armstrong - they were listening to Elvis Presley and Little Richard. However, Ellington briefly recaptured jazz's former glory on July 7, 1956, on the third day of the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island.
As Ellington's band performed “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” Ellington's saxophonist Paul Gonsalves began an epic solo that would run for 27 choruses (lasting 6 minutes), building excitement to a near frenzy within the audience. "Halfway through Paul's solo, [the crowd] had become an enormous, single, living organism," recalled record producer George Avakian. A woman in the audience, Elaine Anderson, got up and started dancing, inspiring others to do the same. According to music critic Leonard Feather:
Within minutes, the whole of Freedom Park was transformed as if struck by a thunderbolt… hundreds of spectators climbed up on their chairs to see the action; the band built the magnificent arrangement to its perennial peak and the crowd, spent, sat limply wondering what could follow this.
The Beatles stopped touring in 1966, preferring to focus on making studio albums rather than trying to play above the sound of screaming fans at live gigs. But they did play live one last time, albeit in an unannounced, spontaneous way, and the only real audience members were passing pedestrians.
It happened on January 30, 1969, at the end of the Get Back sessions (and documentary filmmaking) that would ultimately yield the album Let It Be, the film of the same name, and, decades later, the Peter Jackson documentary Get Back. The band decided to try out a few of their new tracks (and a very old one, “One After 909”) on the rooftop of Apple Studios in London.
Alan Parsons, a sound engineer for the Beatles at the time, recalled that the event was triggered by the Let It Be/Get Back filmmakers' desire to end the documentary with a bang:
[T]he group was to go somewhere to record with a live audience. The band decided rather than to move everything, they would just do an outdoor concert on the roof, so we hit the stairs with a ton of cables from the basement and made it happen…
The concert was eventually shut down by the police for causing a public disturbance, and Beatles roadie Mal Evans was almost arrested, as described by Beatles scholar Kenneth Womack:
The police demand that they turn down the sound or stop the concert. They tell Mal they intend to arrest the Beatles. At that point, Mal turns off George Harrison’s amplifier. Of course, George is very unhappy with that and barks at Mal. As [Peter] Jackson’s Get Back documentary shows, the Beatles performed a brief, stilted version of Get Back, and then the concert was essentially over.
Evans's own diary adds:
On the way up to the roof, they arrested me, with one of the policemen putting me in his book. Paul [McCartney], being the public relations man that he is, apologised to the police and got me off the hook.
By the time Ludwig van Beethoven completed his Ninth Symphony in 1824, he was already completely deaf, though the medical reasons for this remain disputed. (Lead poisoning and Cogan syndrome are two proposed causes.)
Although Beethoven's musical knowledge was such that his deafness hardly impaired his compositional skill, he couldn't really take an active part in the performance of his works. Still, he was determined to have an onstage presence when his Symphony No. 9 in D minorpremiered at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna on May 7, 1824 (after only two full rehearsals). Beethoven gave tempo indications as the orchestra played, but the official conductor, Michael Umlauf, had ordered the musicians to ignore the composer.
According to anecdote, after one of the movements, Beethoven was unable to see the crowd cheering because his back was turned. Caroline Unger, one of the vocal soloists performing, turned him around so he could see the reception his music was getting.
Bob Dylan rose up in the folk scene of the early 1960s and developed a fiercely loyal following in his genre. By 1965, though, he was developing a harder-edged, rock-tinged sound, as evidenced by his new single “Like a Rolling Stone.”
On July 25, 1965, Dylan brought his new electric sound to the Newport Folk Festival, launching into a fast-and-furious rendition of the blues song “Maggie's Farm.” Not everyone liked the new sound, and many in the crowd booed. (There were also cheers.) He played only two more songs (including “Like a Rolling Stone”) before leaving the stage, though the festival manager coaxed him back for a few more numbers. He wouldn't play at Newport for another 37 years.
Dylan's electric appearance has been mythologized as a watershed moment in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, with folkie fuddy-duddies unable to comprehend their idol's new direction. It's been suggested, however, that some of the boos were simply because of the poor sound quality. Folk legend Pete Seeger recalled saying at the time, "Get that distortion out of his voice… It’s terrible. If I had an axe, I’d chop the microphone cable right now."
