Beatles live albums didn’t really used to be a thing. They came off the road in August 1966 and the group’s first official concert recording, The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, wasn’t released until 11 years later.
Three Beatles had issued live LPs in the meantime: John Lennon with 1969’s Live Peace in Toronto, George Harrison with 1971’s The Concert for Bangladesh and Paul McCartney with 1976’s Wings Over America. The knockoff Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany 1962 had only arrived a few months before the Hollywood Bowl recordings.
Not much. Then the next decade would see exactly one Beatles live album released – Lennon’s posthumous Live in New York City from 1986. But then something incredible happened: Nine concert recordings were released in the ’90s, including Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band, McCartney’s Tripping the Live Fantastic and the Beatles’ Live at the BBC.
That’s almost twice as many as arrived in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s combined. Seven more Beatles live LPs were issued in the 2000s, then five more in the years that have followed. Suddenly, there’s now a robust sampling group for the following ranking of Beatles live albums.
As the last surviving Beatles, McCartney and Starr have put out far more live albums than were issued by the group as a whole or their late bandmates. But they shared the stage with others at different points in their careers, first with Paul McCartney and Wings and then with Ringo Starr and his All-Star Band – so that can and sometimes does factor into the polling.
Which one came out on top? Here’s our ranking of every Beatles live album:
Beatles Live Albums Ranked
Beatles live albums didn’t really used to be a thing – then they started arriving in bunches. Let’s count them down.
Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
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