The 16 Greatest Live Rock Bands of All Time
Some built cathedrals of scaffolding and screens, others just plugged in and played for four hours. Where do you stand?
1Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Three-to-four-hour sets with no setlist fixed in advance, and the act Rolling Stone readers voted the best live act of all time.
1000pts
2Metallica
Four decades of arena headlining, and the band that made the in-the-round stage standard.
809pts
3Queen
Twenty-one minutes at Live Aid in 1985 that are still the reference point for a festival set.
560pts
4The Who
The loudest band of their era by measurement, and the one whose live album is better regarded than most of its studio catalogue.
560pts
5Iron Maiden
A travelling stage set, a mascot, and a frontman who flies the band's own plane between cities.
485pts
6Grateful Dead
Never played the same set twice, and taped every show for an audience that collected them.
485pts
7Guns N' Roses
Capable of the best show of the decade or a two-hour wait, sometimes on the same night.
485pts
8AC/DC
Same two guitars, same volume, same cannons, for five decades without a bad night.
485pts
9The Beatles
Played Shea Stadium in 1965 and invented the stadium show, then quit touring in 1966 because nobody could hear them.
397pts
10Pink Floyd
Turned the rock show into staged theatre — the wall, the pig, the quadraphonic sound.
397pts
11The Rolling Stones
On the road since 1962, with the touring model — the stage, the crowd size, the run length — largely built to their template.
291pts
12Led Zeppelin
Three-hour shows with no support act and long improvised passages that bore no relation to the records.
291pts
13Pearl Jam
Rotating setlists across a tour so completists have to attend every date.
291pts
14Radiohead
Reworked their own catalogue on stage to the point where the live versions became the canonical ones.
291pts
15U2
Built each tour around a different piece of architecture, from the Zoo TV screens to the Claw.
162pts
16Nirvana
Short, unstable, frequently shambolic sets that captured a moment better than any polished tour could.
162pts
Comments
No comments yet. Be the first!
0/1000