The Sudden Death of the Live Album: Who Pulled the Plug?

The James Harman Band’s new “Strictly Live . . . in ‘85! Vol. 1” album has sparked many glowing memories for me, having seen the band countless times during that period, when it was one of the most consistently inspired and inspiring groups on the planet.

But beyond that, the record--on tiny, Orange-based Rivera Records--also points up the specialcharms of a once-great, now-vanishing music-industry species: the live album itself.

Remember the live album? Back in the dark, distant Vinyl Age, you could pick up Billboard’s Top 100 album chart and always find a handful of live recordings among the top sellers. Just about any rock fan over 10 can name a cherished live album by a favorite act, and start rhapsodizing about how remarkable that show/tour was.

From the unadulterated rock ‘n’ roll passion of Jerry Lee Lewis’ “The Greatest Live Show on Earth” to the nuclear power of the Who’s “Live at Leeds” to the frayed nerves exposed on Neil Young’s “Time Fades Away,” the best live albums have captured facets of the rock greats that were impossible to unlock within the confines of the studio.

But in the last few years, pop concert recordings have become as few and far between as courteous drivers on the San Diego Freeway.

“That’s definitely right,” agreed Billboard chart analyst Paul Grein. The popularity of the live album, Grein said, “peaked in about ‘78, when it was very common to have double live albums in the Top 10 and 20.”

That was the era when, for however short a time, Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive” reigned as the biggest-selling album of all time, racking up astonishing pre-”Thriller” sales of some 8 million copies. Nowadays, Grein says, the live album “isn’t competely dead, but I’m surprised when any of them reach the top regions of the chart.”

Other than Bruce Springsteen’s monumental five-record live set from 1986, which held the No. 1 spot for seven weeks, and U2’s “Rattle and Hum” double live album from 1988, it’s hard to think of any live albums in the last five years that have had any major impact on the charts.

So, in what well may be one of those chicken-egg dichotomies, major record companies are releasing fewer and fewer live sets.

“I don’t know why--ask Billy Joel,” said Bob Merlis, publicity director for Warner Bros. Records. Joel “is the biggest record-seller in world,” Merlis noted, “but his ‘Live in the Soviet Union’ album didn’t do nearly what his record company (Warner rival Columbia Records) hoped. I guess people want live live --they don’t want live on record. Maybe the live record has been supplanted by the long-form video.”

Indeed, the advent and proliferation of video music in the form of MTV, concert videos and cable television specials has been mentioned as one major reason why rock fans are less enthralled with live albums these days. If you can see your favorite group as well as hear it at any time of the day or night, why bother with just listening to an old concert?

In any case, making live albums is “not something we would encourage an artist to do,” Merlis said. “It also takes up time that a new legitimate album would occupy in the space of a career. Why fritter it away on something you’ve already done?”

That might be true in most cases. A few artists, however, have used the live setting to introduce new material. In fact, Frampton’s famous example featured songs mostly unfamiliar to his core audience. Emmylou Harris created one of the best albums in her distinguished career with “Last Date,” a collection of tunes she’d never recorded. And John Cale turned in some great moments with his “Sabotage Live” album, which featured all new material.

There may be a darker explanation why the live album has all but become extinct: Perfection-happy rock fans no longer may be willing to tolerate the mistakes or, more to the point, the unpredictability of the live music-making process. Because so many of today’s hit records are created and performed on programmable synthesizers and digital sequencers, which can play back one musically identical performance after another at the touch of a button, a “live” performance can sound so close to the “studio” version that you’d need a spectrum frequency analyzer, not a music critic, to judge the difference.

“Audiences have come to expect that--they kind of want it,” Merlis acknowledged. “If they want to hear an artist’s old material, they want to hear it the way they are accustomed to hearing it, hence the rise of the boxed-set retrospectives.”

But oh, what we would have missed if this had always been the mind-set. No Bob Dylan screaming “You go your way and I’ll go mine !!!” with the Band on “Before the Flood.” No Van Morrison pulling the heart and soul out of “Tura Lura Lural” at the “Last Waltz” concert. No Eric Clapton searing his guitar strings on “Crossroads” from Cream’s “Wheels of Fire.” No B.B. King rhapsodizing about his “sweet li’l angel” from his timeless “Live at the Regal” album.

If we try to eliminate all the variables that come with the live setting, we run the risk of losing those unique moments when music rises above the expected, beyond the predictable. As Harman says in the liner notes to his new album, “It’s all here, everything a live recording needs . . . feedback, stuff falling down, people talking and yelling, (guitarist Hollywood) Fats’ noisy volume control, three guys playing harmonica in the front row, bartenders ringing bells and my favorite . . . some would-be percussionist clanking glasses or ashtrays together--out of time--all the way through the slow blues.”

Sure, sometimes it’s messy, and it’s never perfect. But that’s life.