15 perfect live albums that are almost as good as being at the show yourself

18 July 2025, 12:26 | Updated: 19 July 2025, 12:27

The Best Live Albums of All Time. Picture: Alamy

By Mayer Nissim

You can't go back in time to see these amazing concerts, but these live albums are a pretty good substitute.

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Humans have been recording music for less than a couple of hundred years, but we've been playing the stuff since we first sharpened some bone flutes and tried to express ourselves and impress our friends tens of thousands of years ago.

Nowadays there are millions and millions of gigs that take place every single year, and there's nothing quite like being there in person soaking up the sound as its being made.

But without a teleporter and time machine, you're not going to be able to see some of the greatest live performances that have taken place.

In 1950, Benny Goodman released The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert, said to be the first ever live album. Now, even if you weren't lucky enough to be there in person, you could get a real taste of those lightning-in-a-bottle live shows from the comfort of your own home.

But what are the best ever live albums? Below we round up the ten best live albums in history and rank them all the way to the very greatest.

Peter Frampton – Frampton Comes Alive! (1976)

Baby, I Love Your Way (Live)

"Everybody in the world has Frampton Comes Alive! If you lived in the suburbs you were issued it. It came in the mail with samples of 'Tide'."
So said Wayne in Wayne's World of the absolutely massive success of Peter Frampton's live album, which not only topped the US albums chart but also sold eight MILLION copies in the States alone and spawned the hit singles 'Show Me the Way', 'Do You Feel Like We Do' and of course, 'Baby, I Love Your Way'.
Recorded at a number of live shows between June and November 1975, it's the record that has cemented Frampton's legacy and make the talk box the must-have guitar FX of the moment.
The Rolling Stones – Got Live If You Want It! (1966)

Not Fade Away (Live)

We're well aware that The Rolling Stones have completely disowned this live album. We also know that the ten concert recordings here have been twiddled with and two completely studio recordings have been added, along with some fake crowd noise.
We know that everyone but everyone says that you should go straight to 1970's Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! instead.
But despite its fakery, Got Live If You Want It! captures the 100mph bluesy rock 'n' roll of the Rolling Stones in their earliest days as good as any other document.
The Who – Live at Leeds (1970/1995/2001)

My Generation (Live / Medley)

The only live album recorded featuring the entire classic lineup of The Who: Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon.
The 1995 re-issue expanded the package and the 2001 discs gave you the whole show, but the reputation of Live At Leeds rests on the raucous six tracks collected on the original 1970 release.
Recorded at the University of Leeds Refectory on Valentine's Day that year, after the studio excesses of Tommy, Live At Leeds found the band stripping things down and rocking harder than they ever had before.
Bill Withers – Live at Carnegie Hall (1973)

Lean on Me (Live at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY - October 1972)

Recorded in 1972 and released the following year, Live at Carnegie Hall captures Withers at the very peak of his powers and includes all of his very best songs, including 'Ain't No Sunshine' and 'Grandma's Hands' back-to-back and a soaring version of 'Lean on Me'.
Bill Withers was always a stunning presence on record, but it was on stage where you got another layer to the pure heart of his music.
While his records sometimes felt a little too smooth, here he gets to stretch things out with a sense of jagged soul..
Queen – Live at Wembley '86 (1992)

We Are the Champions (Live At Wembley Stadium / July 1986)

Everyone talks about Queen at Live Aid and with good reason. There's a fair argument that it really is the greatest rock performance of all time.
But for all the difficulty of playing to a not-necessarily-your-fans audience of a billion people, holding Wembley Stadium in the palm of your hand for a full-length concert is an altogether different challenge.
A year after Live Aid, Queen returned to the same venue and blew everyone away for just under two hours of banger after banger after banger. Rock perfection.
Elvis Presley – Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite (1973)

Can't Help Falling In Love (Live at the Honolulu International Center)

Thanks to Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley never toured outside North America in his whole career. A terrible shame.
But he still got out on the road in the US and played some groundbreaking shows. There was the 1968 Comeback Special, of course but as a live album we're opting for the Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite, released just a couple of weeks after it was first recorded and broadcast on January 14, 1973.
A career-spanning 24-track album of Elvis classics, it remains proof that despite his ups and downs, Presley was an artist with real value in the 1970s.
Aretha Franklin – Live at Fillmore West (1971)

Respect (Live at Fillmore West, San Francisco, February 5, 1971)

When Aretha Franklin rocked up to the Fillmore West in San Francisco on March 5, 6, and 7, 1971 to record a live album, producer Jerry Wexler urged her to take on a number of "hippie" classics to win over the local crowd.
Aretha being Aretha, she absolutely made every single one of those songs her own, giving them so much raw power and soul you'd have assumed she wrote them, whether it was The Beatles' 'Eleanor Rigby' or Simon & Garfunkel's 'Bridge over Troubled Water'.
She opened the set with Otis Redding's 'Respect', a song she'd already taken full ownership of, and the opening double header of the second side – 'Dr Feelgood' and 'Spirit in the Dark' showed that her own songs could hold up in this esteemed company.
Bob Dylan – Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (1998)

Like a Rolling Stone (Live at Free Trade Hall, Manchester, UK - May 17, 1966)

JUDAS!
As everyone now knows, the "Royal Albert Hall" Concert actually took place at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester (the actual Royal Albert Hall show would later emerge, but this is still the one worth having in your collection).
Bob Dylan had already gone electric by this point, but he was straddling a couple of worlds. Side one is acoustic, Side two is electric and ends with that breathtaking version of 'Like A Rolling Stone' ("Play it f**king loud!").
What's sometimes forgotten is the tension over the whole record, with even the acoustic half rippling with energy and tension as Dylan drags the folkies kicking and screaming into a new paradigm.
Gary Numan – Living Ornaments ’79/’80 (1981)

Are 'Friends' Electric? (Live 1980)

Actually two live albums in one box. Living Ornaments '79 and Living Ornaments '80 were available separately, but there was no good reason to not get the package when it was released in 1981.
One of the keys to making a perfect album is to record it (and release it) at just the right time in an artist's career. That's just what Gary Numan managed and the Living Ornaments albums still sound like the future.
Recorded in Hammersmith, where he was born, these records captured Numan at the very peak of his live powers and showed that despite pushing the boundaries of electronic sounds in the studio, his sound was very much alive.
Expanded standalone versions of '79 and '80 would later follow, as would a new album '81. The original stripped-down double is still the essential listen, though.
Johnny Cash – Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968)

Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom State Prison, Folsom, CA - January 1968)

When Johnny Cash released 'Folsom Prison Blues' in 1955, he went on to show that his lyrical concerns were more than just playacting and posturing.
He was willing to put himself up there in front of actual inmates, and got invited to perform at prisons all across the US including, Folsom Prison itself in 1968.
Cash had actually been on something of a downturn at the time, but backed by the Tennessee Three, Carl Perkins and his then-wife-to-be June Carter he gave the performance of a lifetime that helped get him back on track.
Joni Mitchell – Miles of Aisles (1974)

Blue (Live at Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, CA, 8/14-17, 1974)

Joni Mitchell made a surprise and welcome return to live performance in 2022 but in the years when she had stepped away from the stage, we could at least content ourselves with Miles of Aisles, one of the all-time great live albums.
Ostensibly touring her Court and Spark album with backing band The LA Express on sides one and four, split by a couple of sides of solo Joni, Mitchell in fact took a healthy smattering of her classics from across her career to that point.
That means we get incredible live versions of songs like 'Blue', 'Woodstock' and 'The Circle Game', while this is actually the album that made 'Big Yellow Taxi' a hit.
James Brown – Live at the Apollo (1963)

Medley: Please Please Please/You've Got The Power/I Found Someone (Live At The Apollo Theater,...

Mr Dynamite, the amazing Mr Please Please Please, the Hardest Working Man In Showbiz, Soul Brother Number One! James Brown was explosive on record but you could shift that up an order of magnitude when he stepped out onto the stage.
James Brown is said to have funded the recording of this hottest of hot live albums, taped at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in October 1962 and released the following spring. Both he and his manager Bud Hobgood had to bully their label King Records into actually releasing it, and thank heavens they listened.
Supported by The Famous Flames (Bobby Byrd, Bobby Bennett, and Lloyd Stallworth), Brown serves up some of the tightest, hardest R&B you'll ever hear in your life.
David Bowie – Santa Monica ’72 (1994)

Ziggy Stardust (Live)

On July 3, 1973, David Bowie killed off Ziggy Stardust with a farewell concert at the Hammersmith Odeon, not that the fans (or half the band) knew that it was the end till his shock announcement at the show's finale.
Heavily bootlegged, that set was released a decade later as Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture and that's a solid, important document. But the much better Bowie live album was Santa Monica '72.
Again, its legend grew first as a bootleg, then a semi-official release in the mid-1990s, before a belated EMI/Virgin version in 2008.
Unlike the Motion Picture the setlist isn't muddied with too much Aladdin Sane material, and the sound is better, too, Without the weight of history, the powerful glam of the performance stands completely by itself.
Simon & Garfunkel – The Concert in Central Park (1982)

America (Live at Central Park, New York, NY - September 19, 1981)

An album not recorded at Simon & Garfunkel's commercial peak in the 1960s, but instead a much more emotional moment – their unexpected and incredibly powerful reunion concert in their spiritual homeland of New York's Central Park.
The duo had parted ways at the start of the '70s, and while they had the occasional collaboration in the decade that followed, nothing would really stick as tensions continued to simmer.
Then on September 19, 1981, they played a free benefit concert on the Great Lawn in the Park for an estimated half a million people.
Apparently Simon and especially Garfunkel didn't love the performance, but in truth it was absolutely stunning, and along with their five records did as much as anything to cement their legacy.
They followed up the show with a world tour before tensions ripped them apart again, and their on-off-ing has continued to this day.
Sam Cooke – Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 (1985)

Chain Gang (Live at the Harlem Square Club, Miami, FL - January 1963)

Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 was recorded on January 12 of that year and supposed to be released soon after under the title One Night Stand.
But it didn't see the light of day for over 20 years, His label RCA Victor apparently thought it was just too raw, and would undermine the gentler image they had marketed for Cooke at the time.
They would release the perfectly fine but frankly too smooth Sam Cooke at the Copa a couple of months before his tragic death in 1964, but when it finally emerged in the mid-1980s it was clear that Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 was the one.
As well as the song selection 'Twistin' the Night Away', 'Cupid', 'Chain Gang' and the rest, the album is the perfect showcase of the gritty, truly soulful side to Cooke that he didn't always get to share completely on his records. A perfect recording of a perfect performance.