I remember getting Wings Over America out for weeks at a time from the Pembroke Public Library‘s AV section — because eight year-old me could never afford the triple-record set. Still can’t, really.
After a while one of the discs went missing, but I still kept taking the thing out until I’d saved enough paper route money to finally get it and triumphantly paste the poster on my bedroom wall.
There were three songs on that album I wasn’t familiar with — Go Now and Richard Cory featuring Denny Laine on lead vocal, and the mysterious Soily which closed the album. Go Now was a hit when Laine was a member of The Moody Blues in 1964. Richard Cory is a Simon & Garfunkel cover. But Soily is a Wings original that you couldn’t find on any studio album.
The band attempted several takes of it in studio in 1974, but it was never released until it was thrown onto a DVD for the remastered Band On The Run box set in 2010, as well as on the bonus disc included with the remastered edition of Venus & Mars. And that version is just a really good studio runthrough. See it here:
I would have much rather had that track on Venus & Mars in place of You Gave Me The Answer. Come to think of it, I’d rather have 2:15 of silence between Love In Song and Magneto & Titanium Man.
But I’m not here to make fun of Macca today. I’m here to talk about songs which musicians or bands only released in a live format. This is just the first one that came to mind.
The band which does this more than any other, I think, must be Phish. They have dozens of live songs which were never attempted in the studio. Their forefathers, The Grateful Dead, have around 25 songs which were only released as live tracks. In addition, about half of Anthem Of The Sun (1968) is actually live recordings. So the number is actually around 30 songs. For example, five of the songs on the famed Europe ’72 triple-album never had studio recordings issued: Mr. Charlie, Brown-Eyed Woman, Jack Straw, Ramble On Rose and Tennessee Jed.
Close runners-up to The Dead would probably be Frank Zappa, Soft Machine or Neil Young. The whole second side of Rust Never Sleeps is live and so too are two of Neil’s bonafide classics: The Needle and the Damage Done and Sugar Mountain. Neil also put out a live album of almost entirely new material (except one song) — 1973’s Time Fades Away, which includes the awesome L.A.
The other thing that might count, it occurs to me, are pseudo live and studio albums. For example, Tom Waits’ Nighthawks At The Diner was recorded in a studio, but in front of a group of invited guests, sitting at tables like a nightclub. Joe Jackson’s Big World album was recorded live in front of a crowd told not to applaud, and Jackson Browne’s classic Running On Empty is predominantly live on stage. The MC5’s killer 1969 debut Kick Out The Jams is a live album, so its epic title track (which Henry Rollins covered) has no studio version.
Unless you consider Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel a recording studio, John & Yoko’s 1969 single Give Peace A Chance is a live song with no studio version.
King Crimson’s 1974 lineup routinely performed a song called Dr. Diamond, which was finally included on reissues of Starless And Bible Black as a bonus track and on Collector’s Club #15. They never did a studio version.
On Boxing Day 1980, Warren Zevon put out a live album called Stand In The Fire. The title track, as well as another called The Sin, never had a studio recording released.
I saw Peter Gabriel in concert last year. The best stuff he did was from his new — and, at that time, still unreleased — album I/O. But, as a kid, one of my favourite tracks was the new wave-funk bass-riff cut I Go Swimming, from his Plays Live double album. That song can only be found there. He first started playing it live in 1980 and played it constantly that year and again throughout the 1982 Security tour. Strange that it wasn’t on Security. He hasn’t played it live since October 1983.
The same year, Talking Heads put out the live album and film Stop Making Sense. It included a new song which doesn’t have a studio version — at least not one I’m aware of. That song is What A Day That Was. The year before, Talking Heads issued a double live album of their earlier music called The Name Of This Band is Talking Heads. The track A Clean Break was also never released as a studio recording.
The classic Jimi Hendrix track Machine Gun, from his 1970 Band Of Gypys album with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox, never had a studio version.
One could argue that quite a few of the releases by The Stooges are technically live recordings, at least in-studio. But their official 1970s live album Metallic K.O. includes the song Rich Bitch, which has no studio version.
In my column about period-related songs I included Dolly Parton’s PMS Blues. There’s no studio version of the hilarious track that I’m aware of.
Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged album has a bunch of Meat Puppets covers and, of course, the cover of David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World on it. These don’t exist in studio format, in fact, the acoustic arrangements are unique to this album. But Nirvana have another live track which has seen no studio release — Talk To Me, which was issued on their 2004 box set With The Lights Out.
In 1974, Joni Mitchell put out a curious live album called Miles Of Aisles from her Court And Spark tour, which she did with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express as her backing band. The live album doesn’t include performances of Court And Spark hits, but it does include two new songs that had no studio versions at the time. Love Or Money, which closes the double album, never had a studio release. The other track, Jericho, was eventually recorded in the studio for Joni’s 1977 album Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter.
In 1989, Bruce Springsteen issued that big box set collection of live stuff from 1975 to 1985. The single from that album was a cover of the Edwin Starr / Temptations classic War, which was popular in their set during the Born In The USA tour. The band never issued a studio version of the cover. The box set also includes an original track which never had anything more than an instrumental studio outtake — Paradise By The “C.”
In 1966, Bob Dylan and The Band created controversy by “going electric.” During that tour — documented several times, including on the Bootleg Series Vol. 4: The Royal Albert Hall Concert — Dylan performed Tell Me Momma, which never had a studio release.
If you managed to catch any of Roger Waters’ 1999 In The Flesh tour, or bought the related live album, you would have heard the track Each Small Candle. There’s no studio recording of this song.
In their early years, Queen performed a song called Hangman. Some say a studio version was recorded but never released. In 2004, the band started the Top 100 Bootlegs project, which aimed to make official releases out of the best heavily circulated bootlegs. You’ll find versions of Hangman on two of those — Procession, from Colston Hall, Bristol in 1973 and First Live Attack, from Budokan Hall, Tokyo in 1975.
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
