What was the greatest gig of all time? Not the biggest, not the plushest, but the most thrilling and unforgettable? Legendary concerts immediately spring to mind – Oasis at Knebworth in 1996, Slade rebooting their career at Reading Festival in 1980, Elton John at Madison Square Gardens, with John Lennon guesting, in ’74, Michael Jackson at Wembley Stadium on the BAD tour in ’88… Just to ask the question is to invite controversy.
Everyone has their own favourite live shows. Mine, personally, include seeing the Specials play their first ever gig as the Specials when they opened for The Clash at Aylesbury Friars in July 1978 (although they were even better in New York two years later). The Who at Charlton Athletic’s hallowed Valley ground in May 1974 was another personal fave, as were Hawkwind at Aldermaston circa 1970 and Bob Marley at the Lyceum, 1975. When I went to India with Finnish rockers Hanoi Rocks in 1982, their first performance in Bombay sparked a full-on police riot – the cops laid into the audience with lathi sticks for the outlandish crime of standing up. Not the greatest but decidedly memorable. But this isn’t about what I’ve seen. It’s about the best ever, so read on.
Top Tens like this are always subjective but I have tried to be as objective as I can. Tell me why I’m wrong.
10. The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Monterey Pop Festival, 1967.
Guitar genius Jimi was a rising star in the UK and Europe but had made little impact in his native USA until he played Monterey with his English rhythm section – bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. It was June 18, 1967, the final day of the fest and more than half their set consisted of covers, but Jimi’s unique style turned blues standards and Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone into something more explosive and radical. Magical even. Rory Gallagher called him “extraordinary”, Eric Clapton likened his playing to “Buddy Guy on acid”.
Adding theatre to the spell-binding performance, Hendrix closed with The Troggs’ Wild Thing and set his Fender Strat alight. He’d done the same before at the London Astoria but this time his showmanship and pyrotechnics were caught on camera. His debut album, Are You Experienced, went Top 5 in the US and Top 3 here. His own songs, like Foxy Lady and Purple Haze, remain classics.
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9. David Bowie. Hammersmith Odeon. July 3, 1973.
An incredible 160 minute set that ended with Bowie killing off his greatest character, Ziggy Stardust. Before the last song, in the third encore, David stunned the packed 3,500 audience by announcing “Not only is this the last show of the tour, but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do.” Then he started singing, ‘Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth’ – the opening lines of Rock And Roll Suicide. The atmosphere was simultaneously electric and mournful. People cried; people shrieked. There were shouts of “No!” and “Why?”, but no answers were forthcoming.
David’s words were widely misunderstood by the rock press. ‘Bowie Quits!’ bellowed the NME frontpage. But he hadn’t. He’d just buried Ziggy after arguably the greatest concert of his career. More avatars would follow of course – Aladdin Sane, The Thin White Duke – but none touched a generation of glam rockers and future punks as much as Ziggy Stardust, the icon he had dreamed up for his 1972 album, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders From Mars. The set, starting with an excerpt from Beethoven’s Nineth (as featured on Clockwork Orange) comprised of 20 songs, with guest appearances from Yardbirds guitar legend Jeff Beck on the encore performances of The Jean Genie, Love Me Do and Around And Around. Pre-encore, there were sixteen Bowie originals and mood-setting covers of Jacques Brel’s My Death and the nightmarish groove of The Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat.
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8. Johnny Cash. San Quentin Prison. February 24, 1969.
The day country music icon Cash played California’s biggest prison in front of 2000 hyped-up hollering convicts, including death row inmates. Johnny’s guitarist Bob Wootton later said that outsider Cash connected with that dangerous audience more than he did with any other. Johnny, aka The Man In Black, had written a special song for the gig, the powerfully brooding San Quentin, which opened with the lines: ‘San Quentin, you’ve been livin’ hell to me/You’ve hosted me since 1963/I’ve seen ’em come and go and I’ve seen them die/And long ago, I stopped asking why.’ The next verse started, ‘San Quentin, I hate every inch of you’ – and the cons cheered so loudly they almost drowned out the next line, ‘You’ve cut me and have scarred me through an’ through…’
The inmates chanted, “One more time!” Cash said, “All right, before we do it, though, if any of the guards are still speaking to me, can I have a glass of water?”
He followed that with Bob Dylan’s Wanted Man. The rest of the set packed in Johnny’s other jail-themed songs Folsom Prison Blues and Starkville City Jail, and favourites like Ring Of Fire (with the Carter Family), A Boy Named Sue (its first live performance), I Walk The Line and I Still Miss Someone. The atmosphere was electric. Cash had played San Quentin before and California’s Folsom State Prison, the previous year, but this night was special, low on jokes and high on intensity. Granada TV filmed it all and broadcast it the following September, including interviews with inmates and guards.
Blues legend B.B. King played Cook County Jail two years later, and 1979 saw Tyne & Wear punk band the Angelic Upstarts play Acklington Prison in the Northeast of England – I was at the latter show; the poor prison Chaplin had booked them because he’d assumed they were religious. The gig caused an outcry – largely due to a pig’s head being smuggled in – and was condemned by local MP Neville Trotter (honestly) on the front page of the Daily Mirror days later.
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7. The Cramps. Napa State Psychiatric Hospital, June 13, 1978.
How about the greatest punk gig of all time? You could make a strong case for the Sex Pistols’ iconic concert at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester in July 7, 1976 – the second of their two gigs there that summer which between them inspired the Buzzcocks, Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order), Mark E. Smith (The Fall), Morrissey (The Smiths) and many more to form bands. But arguably the most authentically punk gig of them all was when psychobilly legends The Cramps played a California asylum.
They performed on a patio above the courtyard to approximately 100 psychiatric patients. After opening with Mystery Plane, singer Lux Interior said, “We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City, and we drove 3,000 miles to play for you people,” adding “Somebody told me you people are crazy, but I’m not so sure about that – you seem all right to me.”
Their eight-song set of manic punked-up rockabilly mixed the dark-retro rock of originals like Human Fly and cranked-up closer TV Set with brooding covers of Roy Orbison’s Domino and the Top Notes’ Twist And Shout.
The delighted patients threw themselves into the thrashing urgency of it all. Lyrics like ‘Now I just can’t identify/With this world so I don’t try’ seemed to touch a chord. With head-turning but unsmiling Poison Ivy playing guitar alongside Brian Gregory and Lux twisting and cavorting like a psychotic Elvis, it was one of the most unforgettable performances of the era.
*Three incredible UK punk live shows: The Clash at the Rainbow on May 9th 1977 was another belter, wrongly described as “a riot” because a few chairs collapsed. The Jam’s super-charged and not-so-secret gig as John’s Boys at the Marquee, on November 2, 1979. And the Cockney Rejects two benefit gigs for the prisoners’ rights organisation PROP (Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners) in the Bridgehouse, Canning Town, the following summer. The large East End rock pub was packed way beyond the fire limits with an audience who, like the band themselves, probably considered the prisoners’ rights cause a shrewd investment for their futures.
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