Tom Dunne: U2 herald the end of an era and the death of the live album
Bono of U2 on stage at Slane in 2001, one of a series of filmed gigs the band are putting up online Picture: PA/Chris Bacon
RIP.IE: 'At home, peacefully, surrounded by friends and family: The Live Album 1950-2021.'
They came, they saw, they conquered and they recorded the best bits. As long as no one at the eulogy in tempted to throw in a quick, "Remember how he used to ask, 'Any of you girls got any Irish in you?'" (Phil Lynott: Live and Dangerous) we’ll be fine. We’re here for a wake, not a woke.
The nail in the Live Album’s coffin was U2’s announcement last week that it would be steaming a series of its gigs exclusively on its YouTube channel. Radiohead have been doing it for a while now for that is where the Live Album resides these days: on the internet, for free, with enhanced visuals and remastered audio.
It wasn’t always like this. Live albums were once like scintillating glimpses of a world beyond your imagination. It was the sound of mayhem, wild excitement and astonishing musicianship. The studio albums were one thing, but the live album captured danger in air, the whiff of cordite.
They seemed barely legal: The Who’s Live at Leeds, Rory Gallagher’s Irish Tour 1974 and Queen’s Live at the Rainbow. Recordings of great artists feeding off the energy of the audience and driven to ever increasing heights.
A great live album could make a band. Peter Frampton Comes Alive or Cheap Trick at Budokan transformed their careers. Thin Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous even more so. It caught a band who had toiled and struggled to get a foothold, now stepping out triumphantly onto the world stage.
U2’s Under a Blood Red Sky is the greatest case in point. The early recordings had not captured their incendiary power. Red Rocks was one last roll of the dice to let American radio hear what it had been missing. You can hear that urgency in every note.
Strangely some artists eschewed live performance. Joni Mitchel claimed that being asked to tour was like asking Van Gogh to produce The Starry Night every evening for a live audience. Kate Bush toured in 1979 and said never again. Yet Miles of Aisles and Before The Dawn are two of the most heart warning albums you will hear.
I suspect both underestimated the transformative effect of an audience on their performances. It is like alchemy. In the live performance something new is created, far greater than the sum of its parts. Listen to Bush’s reaction to the overwhelming applause after The Morning Fog. “Oh my gosh,” she exclaims, stunned by the outpouring of love.
Sinead O’Connor, who appears to have no ‘definitive’ live album (how can that be?), once told me that the inspiration behind her priest phase was her feeling that what happened on stage was bigger than her. She felt she was the vessel through which these great songs were communicated to the audience, like a priest saying mass, representing a higher power and acting as its conduit.
Artists at the peak of their powers are the ones to seek out. U2 Live in Madison Square Garden just after The Joshua Tree, REM’s only gig of 1992 for Automatic or the People or Nirvana’s majestic MTV Unplugged. Stunning performances, the artists heady with validation, power and confidence.
Yet, and this is the point, the first two of these are available free: U2’s with The Joshua Tree, ‘Super Deluxe’ edition and REM’s with Automatic For The People, 25th anniversary edition. Oh, Live Album, how you have fallen.
But the best are still out there like little tiny time capsules of brilliance. Bill Withers live in 1972, one year after he’d been making airplane parts in a factory. Aretha returning to her roots to play Gospel music at a small church in Los Angeles. The Velvet Underground, 1969, Live in New York and still utterly unknown.
Or Frames Live at Vicar Street. Real success had been proving illusive but the audience in that room knew greatness when they heard it. The feeling you detect is gratitude. Gratitude from the band to be valued. Gratitude from audience to witness it. Those Christmas gigs were sublime.
But best of all, for me, is Sinatra Live at the Sands. It is 1966 and The Beatles are in the ascendancy. But tell that to Frank, or to the Count Basie Orchestra, or his new young musical director, Quincy Jones. Frank is on top of his game, the stories, the wit, the performances, the song catalogue and above all the voice. Read ‘em and weep.
No flowers to the house.
