Is a "live" album really "live"?

[Freuds_Cat]

Beck Bogert Appice Live in Japan sounds undoctered but then Becks guitar playing is like Tiger Woods on a bad day....ie still genius just not as genius as usual.

Whitesnakes Live in the heart of the city double LP was 2 different shows I believe. (Hammersmith Odean and ....cant remember now) But sounded pretty clean to my previously delicate young ears. I'm not particularly a big fan of the post '87 Whitesnake so I cant say about the later stuff. I do remember Our drummer at the time having 2 copies of Saints and Sinners. One was a complete American re-production job of the original Euro-Australasian release. It was weird comparing the 2. The "For USA release only" one sounded so west coast, slick and syrupy I nearly  .  I remember being amazed at how much the production had trampled the actual music.

[Basvarken]

The Eagles Live outing is hugely doctored, especially as regards the vocals. Some of them were dubbed in a studio on the East Coast, others on the West Coast - Frey and Henley couldn't bear to even see each other back then. When Timothy B. Schmidt was asked in an interview whether The Eagles' backing vocals were always live because they are so pitch-perfect, he laughed and said: "Let's put it this way: The Eagles take great care that everything always sounds right!"

The live DVD from the Eagles "When Hell Freezes Over" has a lot of overdubs too.
A few years ago we were in a recording studio. The engineer showed us the live DVD in the control room. He disconnected a few speakers of the 5.1 system, so we only heard the center speaker signal. And all of a sudden some of the doctoring became very clear! You saw Don Henley sing and play the drums on Desperado. But a certain point he does a drum fill and you don't hear any drums, just vocals... If this would have been truly live you would have heard some bleed on the vocals.

[hieronymous]

The Ronnie James Dio live stuff that I had - Uwe mentioned Rainbow's On Stage, and also Black Sabbath's Live Evil - always has beautiful harmonies with the second vocal sounding incredibly virtuosic, like Mr. Dio himself...

The original vocals on the Grateful Dead live album Europe '72 were supposedly terrible (big surprise!  ), so somewhere I read that they duplicated their live setup on a soundstage and rerecorded the vocals under controlled conditions that felt somewhat like it was "live." But of course there are millions of audience-recorded live tapes out there, and the Dick's Picks and From The Vault series as well as other recent multitrack live releases are relatively undoctored - no overdubs, but often the track order is altered slightly, or two or three shows are combined to make it seem like one show, etc. Does anyone listen to the live Dead stuff for the vocals anyway?  Does anyone here even listen to the Dead??!!!!

[lowend1]

I do remember Our drummer at the time having 2 copies of Saints and Sinners. One was a complete American re-production job of the original Euro-Australasian release. It was weird comparing the 2. The "For USA release only" one sounded so west coast, slick and syrupy I nearly  .  I remember being amazed at how much the production had trampled the actual music.

Slide It In was done that way - are your sure that's not the one you're remembering? The Brit version was more keyboard and bass-heavy, with Micky Moody was playing guitar alongside the late, great Mel Galley. When John Sykes joined the band, he did some overdubbing, and that was included on the US release. Naturally that added a heavier, less bluesy flavor. Also the UK release had Colin Hodgkinson on bass (Neil Murray on the US version), plus an extra track ("Need Your Love So Bad")
Ever listen to the original versions of "Here I Go Again", "Fool For Your Loving" or "Crying In The Rain" compared to the re-recorded versions included on the "Posersnake" late '80s albums?

[Freuds_Cat]

Yep you are right Lowend1, it was Slide it in.  My memory from that period is fading faster than I'm comfortable with 

A whole bunch of Whitesnake fans here in Adelaide started referring to them (post '87) as HairSnake.

[lowend1]

Yep you are right Lowend1, it was Slide it in.  My memory from that period is fading faster than I'm comfortable with 

A whole bunch of Whitesnake fans here in Adelaide started referring to them (post '87) as HairSnake.

I'm all about stage presence an' all, but there should be no licking of bass guitars anywhere, by anyone at any time.

[lowend1]

Mmmm, BTW - just thought of another one that was great, but might have been diddled with - Foghat Live

[Freuds_Cat]

I can think of one live bass solo that definitely should have been modified in the studio........


Did anyone say Michael Anthony? 

[slinkp]

Ah, Live at Leeds! Brilliant stuff.  I'm well aware that it's far from a purist album. But you know, I have doubts about this story about the bass being re-recorded. Why?

* I haven't turned up anything else on Google claiming that the Leeds gig had the bass overdubbed.

* Two gigs were recorded: one at Leeds, one at Hull.  Wikipedia says about Hull, "technical problems with the recordings from the Hull gig — the bass guitar had not been recorded... "   Engineer Bob Pridden says the same thing at  http://www.thewho.org/leeds.htm .  So I wonder if the rumor started from that story, getting a crucial detail wrong as so often happens with rumors.

* At http://www.thewho.org/leeds.htm there's a lot about vocals being overdubbed, echo effects being added, cable noise being digitally removed from the bass track ... but no mention anywhere of the bass being re-played.  It doesn't seem like they're trying to hide anything, so why omit that?

* The original bass sound would have bled significantly into the vocal mics and drum mics ... into John's vocal mic at least, and probably Roger's too. There's a generally weird comb-filtery sound to a lot of the reissue that I think is due to all the bleed.  (A tangent: Bleed from the bass is really evident on the Isle of Wight DVD where the bass seems to have been under-recorded and you can hear the bass sound oscillating like crazy when Roger swings his mic around!)   What's my point?  That in almost 30 years of obsessive listening to Leeds in its several editions ... I have never noticed any bass guitar bleed that sounds like it doesn't sync up. Not even a hint of phantom bass.  I can't imagine anybody, including Entwistle, being able to play along with 120 minutes of that wild improvising style and nail every note so perfectly that no ghosts are audible.

* On the reissues, the bass sound is fairly consistent between the stuff that was on the vinyl version and the stuff that wasn't. I doubt they would have taken the time to overdub the entire concert's worth of material back in 1970, and I also doubt they could have done new overdubs in 1995 or 2001 that so closely matched such a quirky original tone.

I could be proven wrong, of course. But until some evidence turns up, I'm going to assume the bass tracks are original.

Sorry for the soapbox rant. Carry on 

[Chris P.]

I think I'm with Slinkp. I als heard about Entwistles vocals (and maybe bass?) in the first song.

There are botlegs out there without the tape echo of Pete's guitar (I believe 'officially' it's the sound of Pete's SG boucing to the wall and returning?!?) and the bass on those bootlegs could prove things.

Well, such threads are always a good reason to listen to the album again. And again:)

[godofthunder]

 A friend of mine in England told me that, how true it is I do wonder. The only difference I can find between versions of LAL is that the vinyl album version of my generation has a different bass solo than the expanded CD release version. I always had my doubts about the bass tracks being rerecorded. I hope I'm wrong !

[slinkp]

Now that's interesting. I don't have the vinyl anymore (it was my dad's and he sold his entire vinyl collection without even telling me!).
I don't remember the bass solo sounding different, but I haven't had a chance to play them side by side.

[rockinrayduke]

I'm going to assume the bass tracks are original.

Thanks Paul, my faith in Live at Leeds has been restored! And yes the bass solo on MG is different than the vinyl version.

[godofthunder]

 Does anyone else love MTHL  ? with out a doubt one of my favorite  live albums.  #1 Live at Leeds. #2 MTHL #3 Slade Alive (Slade is third because it is so early in their career the best songs were yet to come) Really MTHL is full of that teatering on the  edge excitment that you just don't find on live recordings anymore. Please tell me I'm not alone !

[lowend1]

Yeah, it's a great album - an old fave. The only problem is that Ariel Bender is on guitar instead of Mick Ralphs...

Two other killer (but underrated) live albums:
Bob Seger - Live Bullet
J. Geils Band - Blow Your Face Out