II: THE DEATH OF THE LIVE ALBUM: HOW & WHY IT KILLED ROCK & ROLL

THE DEATH OF THE LIVE ALBUM 
(AND CONCERT FILM)     
PT. II

FRAMPTON "WASN'T" ALIVE

               Peter Frampton had already been associated with one of the best live albums in recorded history when he backed Steve Marriott's blues juggernaut Humble Pie for 1971's Rockin The Fillmore, but the guitarist had hit a big rough patch in his career (after leaving the Pie to go solo) and needed some type of boost.

              The singer just released a studio record with some improved songwriting, however the energy wasn't there and the few good songs Frampton had written lacked spontaneity, urgency or any significance.

              But after seeing the success of Kiss's Alive, Frampton's crew taped some late 1975 shows at Winterland in San Francisco and augmented it with 1960s studio tricks administered by Frampton, who credits himself as producer (Petey and his backing band overdubbing any mistake and trying to program "the perfect live record". The clues are in Peter's own words on the subject when he denied overdubbing anything "unnecessary": "the rule was, if it didn't make it to tape, we re-did it because it had to be done, and if it did make it to tape and if it sounded good, it stayed, other than that we fixed some things like the piano on 'I Want To Go To The Sun...') source: https://www.riverfronttimes.com/musicblog/2011/12/08/we-allege-peter-frampton-overdubbed-he-alleges-were-talking-out-of-our-asses

              Which inevitably causes me to ask this question: if he taped 4 shows in Marin County, San Raphael, at the Winterland, S.U.N.Y in Pittsburgh and on Long Island, how could he not get a proper take of any of those overdubbed songs (all of them) in four tries without cheating? Without piecemealing?
              However, even if you hate Frampton (I like 2 songs from the guy...sorry "Doobie Wah" sucks), you have to admit he succeeded in part, creating a wash of ultimate concert hall vibe: the echoing tower of Frampton's Les Paul screaming through a talkbox (an effect mainstream audiences weren't completely  used to (if they had never heard "Sweet Emotion", but this may have been the album which made the talkbox an iconic 70s sound) and the eternally brainless question of "do you-oooo feeeeel like I do?"

              Outrageously, Frampton Comes Alive sold like a monster: outselling all of his studio albums combined a few times over, AM Radio now playing these improved versions of "Show Me The Way" and "Baby I Love Your Way" constantly, finally proving live music wasn't just for the deepest crevices of FM radio.

              After Frampton Comes Alive made its  namesake a star overnight and  Kiss's Alive proved the lack of studio panache meant little to some fan-bases, coupled with the relatively minute costs of recording shows compared to the lasting profits, made every label-hound push for their artists to generate live records...if not for the buzz, then for the bucks.

             Not only were they becoming so commonplace that even John Denver had to rush out three in three years, Neil Diamond had to have a classic one (Hot August Night) and every AM wonder from America to Grand Funk Railroad had to have multiple and Paul McCartney's new solo vehicle Wings released an absolute bonafide hit, Wings Over America the triple-LP of their 1976 U.S tour (their first ever), the eternal live version of "Maybe I'm Amazed" (with its epic Jimmy McCullough guitar solo) emanating from FM radio stations to this day.
             Sales were doubling (even tripling) the profits made from a band: instead of one studio album costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to make and an expensive tour to follow to recoup finances and interest, now a band were also putting out a live album to bookend each new release, buying them time to rest, write and create for the next record and keeping interest at a fever pitch (if not bursting the bubble of hype and expectation the preceding studio record brought), in the end helping set themselves and their label chiefs up with ridiculous amounts of cash.

             And so began the mainstream "live album gold rush" as everyone seemed to come out swinging with their best onstage performances
containing their greatest songs, documenting their coolest tours frequently from 1976-1979, and the best were stuff like Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous, Aerosmith's ultimate Live Bootleg!, Little Feat's Waiting For Columbus (Led Zeppelin's favorite band), Neil Young's Live Rust, UFO's Strangers In the Night, Judas Priest's Unleashed In The East, Queen's Live Killers etc though every artist began throwing their hat in the ring due to the money piling sky-high as "vibe" and "myth" became simultaneously associated with what was being presented.

         The magic of live records was in the aural imagery of an arena about to collapse under the sonic weight and humanistic totality of a great band and their legion of dedicated fans at full fury, yet for others wanting more, the visual aspect was always left untouched.


ROCK GOES HOLLYWOOD
THE GREAT FOOTBALL ARENA
BOOTLEG SWINDLE

               I remember my father telling me about seeing Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same in 1976 or '77 at a drive-in theater, a momentous occasion that was felt by many a music fan in the late 70s.
              However it was quickly labeled a disappointment as the surreal, low budget and frankly ridiculous Zeppelin film gathered a cult following after mainstream viewers and critics dismissed the rare inside look at Led Zeppelin as "B-film trash" and labeled them as some of the worst Zeppelin live performances...completely unworthy of release, let alone our stoned attention.

              These accusations were mostly true, yet the film was a priceless provider of (especially at that time) sustained footage of a band that was too concerned with getting fucked out of their minds, deciding if "Dazed and Confused" would need to be 30 or 40 minutes (depending on how long it took them to get off backstage) and sexually disemboweling groupies (that I'm surprised hasn't made them #MeToo targets: google Lori Maddox) more than documenting their every move.

              In that time, most bands were only filmed for small promo spots for television, with penny-whistle budget camera crews barely filming more than the hit single at the time and closing up shop, such were the outrageous costs of filming live shows in the late 60s and early 70s....so needless to say, as under par as it still is, The Song Remains The Same served its purpose.

              There were others at the time, one of my favorites being Joe Cocker and Leon Russell's timeless ensemble tour,  live album and concert film extravaganza 1970's Mad Dogs and Englishmen, definitely a first of its kind while stealing some of the Woodstock documentary's multi-screen presentation and producing an absolute masterpiece in the format, there was 1974's Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper, the only full concert professionally filmed and released by the original band (the only Alice Cooper era that counts), a film that sparked wild interest in his legendary original lineup and sold out theaters far and wide throughout 1974 before completely disappearing off the face of the earth for nearly 25 years; there was the legendary David Bowie show on July 3rd at the Hammersmith, the supposed "farewell / Rock N Roll Suicide" show released as Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture, yet the film wasn't even widely released until the early 80s.  

               This is the crossroads at which theaters began showing live concert films like the aforementioned Good To See You, Alice Cooper and Song Remains The Same, Woodstock etc on weekends to stoned, raving audiences while the bands themselves didn't have to tour, letting the films tour for them.
               But rock truly went Hollywood in Martin Scorsese's film of The Band's unforgettable The Last Waltz, a titanic lightning in a bottle moment suffering from too much cocaine, too many blowjob faces from Robbie Robertson, too much Robbie Robertson, over-editing, oh yeah and did I say too many shots of Robbie Robertson?
              Imagine the nosebleeds backstage...

              Taking this cue, artists began filming more shows, amassing large archives full of mythical shows that only increased the demand when fans wondered amongst themselves "what happened to that footage? I saw cameras that night, didn't you?"

              Due to these artists creating souvenirs from their own shows, a big source of bootleg footage from the 1970s and early 80s comes from the invention of back projection screens in live arenas.
            The main locations using this technology was Houston's giganta-dome The Summit and Landover Maryland's Capital Centre with the collected footage that was stolen from either the band (or the venues themselves) making up those first visual bootlegs: shows like Led Zeppelin's 1975 Earls Court performances, CSNY's 1974 tour stop at the Capital Centre & Wembley Stadium (the first documented usage of these now commonplace screens), The Who's record breaking attendance at the Pontiac Silverdome 1975, etc (if you were there please comment and tell us your concert memories from the era).
            This invention not only helped the people in the back of these giant superdomes see the band, it was the only video source (and sometimes audio) for many of these legendary shows. 
             Interestingly enough, decades later when the Internet came around, we found out that certain smaller venues were doing this same thing but with a hidden, in-house camera crew, operating some 5 or 6 cameras, strategically placed within the dark auditoriums or theaters. 
            The greatest promoter of all time, Bill Graham of San Francisco's Winterland, Cow Palace, Fillmore West and New York's Fillmore East fame, was archiving performances at his venues since he could afford to do so, with a stunning 30 minute excerpt of a blistering Duane-era Allman Brothers set at the Fillmore East 1970 being the earliest indications of how many great shows by legendary acts could've been filmed by Graham (with and also most likely without the artist's knowledge or consent). 
              Weirdly, he wasn't the only one: yet again, the Internet turned up a treasure trove of gold nuggets when the historic New Jersey venue the Capital Theatre unleashed its own hidden / non-hidden camera archives, dumping out legendary sets from The Grateful Dead, Funkadelic, Rush, Bruce Springsteen and at the dawn of the early 80s The Clash, Talking Heads, Prince and Cheap Trick. 
              It wasn't just iconic venues understandably taking advantage of being the conduit of history, it was also TV station vaults and colleges like Hofner University who recently offered up their hidden (or non-hidden) camera shoots of an Allman Brothers Band on their first Duane-less tour in 1972 ("Ramblin' Man" in tow) and a brilliant extravaganza performance from the original Alice Cooper band on the School's Out tour from the same year and many more. 

               Always clamoring for more, the bootleggers became more accepted, now being called "tapers"; and while still considered "illegal", many fans filled in the gaps with their own souvenirs, creating a bigger demand than the record stores could house: and thus began the trading circles where fans met to trade and show off their own tapes, using concert arenas, record stores and every junior high and high school in America and the UK as meeting places, or the bootleg companies would advertise in magazines like Creem or Rolling Stone to offer their mail-order trading catalogs for fans living in more remote areas, too, 

              The live album ran the 70s, but in the 80s, home video became the real deal as VHS and VCRs became household appliances, those unseen bootlegs and concert films (that until then had only been seen in theaters) began leaking out, either through the band themselves or through bootlegging circles.

              Suddenly, the market was full of an underground culture of live music bootleggers that were networking in every shape or form and an audience who'd grown up with the myths and legends were now getting to sit back and see what all the fuss was about. 

              ...And the record label executives at the top weren't making a dime...

              So they created MTV...

THE HOME THEATER
 CONCERT HALL

              MTV was taking the promo films of the last decades and shooting them up with more steroids than a 1990 Oakland A's batting practice, displaying an all new way of promoting music: pop stars with an image were replacing musicians with a sound...however a lot of things remained the same and this new channel only expanded the pathway of this older music to be seen and heard, with the coming of VH1 aiding in these efforts as well. 

              Then, the new bands of the 80s and early 90s began releasing their own "home videos": VHS tapes haphazardly and shoddily collected, seemingly only a step above the bootlegs (ranging from boring backstage snoozle to altogether enlightening).
             Nevertheless, the format gave hungry fans that tabloid-esque peek behind the door that was only visible in the 70s through the imagination of a stoned journey through live album liner notes.

              These tapes became huge sellers and everyone from Metallica, Nirvana, Guns N Roses, Alice In Chains, Def Leppard, Van Hagar (the David Lee Roth era never saw an official video release), Pantera etc all began releasing them en masse.

If Bon Jovi had to release SIX VHS tapes in his 80s career, how much of a label-bitch was he?

               To seize upon this burgeoning new market, older bands began surveying their archival material and compiling their own live videos with shows from the 70s: The Rolling Stones' Ladies and Gentleman, Queen's Wembley Stadium shows, the Woodstock and Monterey documentaries, Cream's Farewell show in November 1968 and John Lennon's Live in NYC 1972 to name a few (with Aerosmith's Video Scrapbook being a personal favorite).

               Which brings us to the golden era of visual live rock and roll in your own home.

                The VHS and VCR gave rock and roll fans a front row seat to shows they either were too stoned to make, unlucky to miss or too young to go to and the never-ending carousel of live releases were in direct competition with an ever-improving bootleg market where cover art and audio quality kept reaching bigger and better heights and the race to circulate unseen footage from these legendary acts was at a gold rush level.

               This only got better for music fans where (even as rock and roll died in the mid to late 90s) live shows were circulating at near Escobar levels thanks to the best (or worst) invention in mankind's history: the INTERNET.  

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PT. III NEXT