Before There Was ‘Tommy,’ There Was the Who

The Who’s 1970 “Live at Leeds” album showcased the power and glory of rock ‘n’ roll so well that it alone was probably enough to make you want to form your own rock band, or at least become a disciple of the music.

One of three live albums from the ‘70s that have been re-released in deluxe editions by the Universal Music group, it highlights this week’s edition of From the Vaults.

The Who’s “Live at Leeds,” MCA. In the liner notes to this two-disc edition, veteran British rock journalist Chris Charlesworth points out that the original LP version of this album was designed to remind rock fans of the group’s hard-rock side at a time when its identity was being blurred by its entry into the more ambitious world of the rock opera “Tommy.”

Charlesworth repeats a frustrated comment from the period by Who bassist John Entwistle: “Some people think the band’s called Tommy and the album’s called ‘The Who.’”

“Leeds,” then, was a documentation of the Who’s great power live--a power that was underscored when the surviving members of the band virtually stole the show at October’s Concert for New York City from a cast that also included British rock vets Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney.

The original, explosive version of “Live at Leeds” contained just six songs on one vinyl disc--”Young Man Blues,” “Substitute,” “Summertime Blues,” “Shakin’ All Over,” “My Generation” and “Magic Bus.” The last two were extended versions that ran almost 25 minutes together.

When the album was reissued on CD in the mid-’90s, additional songs from the concert (mostly non-”Tommy” material) were added, giving the album more emotional balance. This edition gives us the entire Leeds concert, including the “Tommy” tunes, and it’s a marvel.

Part of the fun is that you can turn it into three separate listening experiences.

By programming the CD player to give you tracks 5, 6, 10, 11, 12 and 13, you can listen to the original, high-octane version of “Live at Leeds.” Or you can just listen to “Tommy” by playing Disc 2. The final option, of course, is to listen to the entire concert.

Prince’s “The Very Best of Prince,” Warner Bros. If “Live at Leeds” demonstrates the power of a rock group onstage, the heart of this 17-track retrospective demonstrates the genius of Prince in the studio.

Because he can still draw on this classic material, Prince remains a strong concert draw, even though his recordings in recent years have been so unreliable that you no longer look forward to his new output.

In these vintage tracks, Prince fuses R&B;, funk, gospel and rock in ways that are musically stirring and sociologically provocative. The disc would have been stronger if Warner Bros, his old label, had included some of his album tracks as well as the hits. Many of the classic tunes are here, from the early “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and “1999” to “Kiss” and “U Got the Look.”

For someone looking for a quick hit of Prince’s most popular work, this single-disc package is a solid investment. But Prince has been such a prolific artist that you’d need several of his albums in a truly comprehensive pop library. This one would be redundant in that company.

Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “One More From the Road,” MCA. If you grew up in the South in the mid-’70s, this album might have been as much of a motivator as “Live at Leeds.” Until the Allman Brothers made the music fashionable, the idea of a best-selling Southern rock band was as unlikely in the 1970s as a best-selling Southern rapper was in the 1990s before Master P.

Though Skynyrd wasn’t as magical as the Allmans, the Jacksonville, Fla., group brought a greater and more consistent sense of Southern identity to its songs, including “Sweet Home Alabama,” its celebrated response to Neil Young’s biting “Southern Man.”

By the time the original “One More From the Road” was released in 1976, Skynyrd already had four gold albums, but this was the band’s defining record. The album, recorded during the band’s three-night run at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, featured liner notes by film director Cameron Crowe, who was then a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine.

In the notes, which are reprinted in the reissue booklet, Crowe wrote, “It can be said very simply: On stage, Lynyrd Skynyrd are as white-hot as a band can get. This is the first album to record them exactly that way.”

This edition includes eight alternate versions of songs on the original album, including three previously unreleased ones.

Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive!,” A&M.; There’s not much reason to listen to this two-CD-set album unless you were one of the 6 million people who helped keep it No. 1 for 10 weeks in 1976 and want to hear it again, along with some previously unreleased tracks. The music always seemed a bit too generic for lasting value, and time has proven that impression correct.

Al Green’s “Testify: The Best of the A&M; Years,” A&M.; Green may be my favorite soul singer and performer ever, but this isn’t his classic work. The essential material is the pop-soul hits, including “Tired of Being Alone” and “You Ought to Be With Me,” that he recorded in the ‘70s with producer Willie Mitchell for Hi Records. Green made some appealing recordings in the ‘80s for the gospel label Myrrh before signing with A&M; in 1985 and reuniting with Mitchell. Little of the A&M; music, however, recaptures the spark of his earlier work.

The Rockets’ “The Rockets,” Varese Sarabande. The album’s subtitle pretty much defines the potential audience for this reissue: “The band that became Neil Young’s Crazy Horse.” The Rockets were contemporaries of Young’s Buffalo Springfield in 1968 when this album was released on White Whale Records, home of L.A. hitmakers the Turtles.

According to the reissue’s liner notes, Young was a big fan of the Rockets and often jammed with them. You can sense in the group’s bluesy, somewhat ragged, psychedelic style what interested Young so much that he eventually took three of its members--guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina--on the road with him. The music’s not memorable, but it is interesting in the context of Young’s history.

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Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, can be reached at robert.hilburn@latimes.com.