The 25 greatest gigs of all time

On the eve of the Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary concerts, we pick the performances that made musical history. Which was yours? Let us know in the comments below

A good concert is a good night out. A great concert is a memory that stays with you for ever, shapes you, changes you. As the Rolling Stones get ready to mark their 50th anniversary with two nights at the O2 in London, it’s time to reflect on the things that make a concert special. And it isn’t an easy question to answer.

You can try quantifying it. Clear sound, a band playing at the peak of its powers and a singer finding that perfect balance of charismatic star power and audience connection all help make you feel a concert was time and money well spent. But that’s not actually enough. There’s some kind of magic, some combination of personal circumstance, musical and social significance and electricity-charged atmosphere that turns a concert into a transcendent event. The most compelling aspect of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, D.A. Pennebaker’s masterful film of David Bowie’s 1973 concert at Hammersmith Odeon, isn’t the footage of Bowie himself — brilliant though it is — but of a teenage fan in the audience, lost in her own drama as she acts out a dance to Moonage Daydream, eyes closed in far-out communion. You cannot help but feel that her life was changed that night.

It’s the element of magic that helps explain why the Glastonbury festival features so heavily on our list of the greatest gigs. Do bands really play better at a place where they have no soundcheck and the most they can expect by way of backstage comfort is a Nescafé in a polystyrene cup? Probably not, but Glastonbury has some kind of mythic power that can turn a set into a moment. And even terrible gigs can be magical. According to those who attended the 1990 Stone Roses concert at Spike Island, the wind blew the sound everywhere, you could hardly see the band, food was provided by a single burger van and a bottleneck entrance turned this former toxic-waste dump on the Mersey Estuary into a terrifying crush. That hasn’t stopped Spike Island, soon to be immortalised in a film of the same name, from becoming the formative pop event in Nineties Britain. It even inspired Noel Gallagher to form Oasis.

Many of the gigs on this list mark seismic shifts in rock and pop history. Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged appearance redefined the concept of honesty in music television: the channel had never before hosted something so raw. The Sex Pistols’ 1976 gig at London’s tiny 100 Club redefined the concept of dishonesty in reminiscence: a stadium’s worth of people swear they were there. But the best gigs are always going to be the ones you really were at. My own favourite is, perhaps inevitably, my first, which was at a pongy basement in Hammersmith called the Clarendon, long bulldozed. It was to see the Stingrays, a chaotic garage band who, on the strength of their meagre recording output, were probably quite awful. But I was 14, I had sneaked in past the bouncer, and there was a wild energy and subterranean glamour to the night that a childhood in the outer suburbs of southwest London had not prepared me for. It began a love affair with live music that continues to this day.

For someone out there, the Stones at the O2 will be the greatest concert of their lives. For the rest of us, here are some nights that made the world, ever so slightly, shift on its axis. Will Hodgkinson

The gigs

1 The Who
Leeds University, 1970
The refectory of Leeds University is not the obvious venue for a legendary gig, but this was the moment The Who, at the peak of their powers after making Tommy, gave birth to the rock concert as eardrum-bursting sonic assault. “That was the great period of The Who,” says Pete Townshend. “We’ve been chasing it ever since.”
Key moment After blasting through early Who classics such as I Can’t Explain and Substitute, Keith Moon taps the rims of his drums and calls for quiet, because it’s time for “a bleedin’ rock opera”. That’s Tommy.
Best song A 16-minute My Generation turns the ultimate anthem of youth rebellion into a Messianic quest for meaning as it samples Tommy’s See Me, Feel Me and Listening to You.

2 Queen
Live Aid, Wembley Stadium, 1985
The biggest names in the world all gave it their best shot, but Queen succeeded above all others in condensing their act into one 20-minute burst of supernatural showmanship. Beginning with Bohemian Rhapsody they ramped up the hysteria with a perfectly targeted set that chimed brilliantly with the unprecedented scale and euphoric mood of the occasion.
Key moment The audience joining in on the double-handclaps of Radio GaGa — as if everybody in the stadium was experiencing a communal reflex action.
Best song We Will Rock You segueing into We Are the Champions, a moment when band and crowd surfed the gigantic, global wave of solidarity that defined the event.

3 James Brown
The Apollo, New York, 1962
After his label refused to finance it, Brown recorded soul’s definitive live album at his own expense, slaying the Harlem crowd with 40 minutes of raw R&B majesty. So good that radio DJs would play it in its entirety.
Key moment Fats Gonder’s hyperbolic, boxing-style intro: “Mr Dynamite, the amazing Mr Please Please himself, the star of the show . . .”
Best song An agonisingly wonderful, ten-minute rendition of Lost Someone, brimming with yearning and primal screams from the Godfather.

4 David Bowie
Rainbow Theatre, London, 1972
It’s less famous than the final gig of the Ziggy Stardust tour a year later (when Bowie shocked fans by “quitting”), but the 3,000-seat Rainbow extravaganza was more revolutionary: for the first and only time on the tour, ladders and catwalks were included around the stage, video was projected onto giant screens and dancers showed off avant-garde routines. Rock-as-multimedia theatre was invented, arty glam-rock peaked (Roxy Music supported) and Bowie debuted his iconic Ziggy outfit.
Crowd reaction Among the audience were Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Elton John and Alice Cooper; an overcome Lou Reed had to be carried out by Andy Warhol, sobbing.
Best song The opening Lady Stardust: Marc Bolan’s glittered face filled the video-screen backdrop as dancers wearing Bowie masks sashayed through dry ice.

5 Kate Bush
Hammersmith Odeon, 1979
As the curtain closed on the last night of her six-week Tour of Life, no one knew that the bare-footed 20-year-old Kate Bush was also frantically waving goodbye to live touring. It had been a critical hit; a bewitching blend of mime, dance and theatre mixed with pioneering film projection on to a giant egg screen and her ethereal vocals channelled through a then cutting-edge headset mike rigged to her face using a bent coat hanger.
Key moment Bush becoming, among 17 costume changes, a dying WWI pilot, an erotic gunslinger or a magician’s apprentice ... take your pick.
Best song The mist-filled Wuthering Heights encore.

6 Bob Marley
Lyceum, London, 1975
Before Marley, white Britain viewed Jamaican reggae as novelty pop, best left to teenyboppers and skinhead gangs. Marley’s mix of socially conscious lyrics and the Wailers’ irresistible rhythms was a revelation to rock audiences bored with brittle glam rock and prog-rock pomposity. The two July shows at the Lyceum were delirious celebrations that swiftly slipped into legend, with every hepcat in the capital soon claiming to have been there.
Key moment “Everything’s going to be all right . . .” the audience takes over singing No Woman, No Cry from the band.
Best song Marley and Peter Tosh’s anthem for the oppressed Get up, Stand Up got a definitive reading.

7 Nirvana
Sony Music Studios, New York, 1993
Having agreed to perform on MTV Unplugged, Kurt Cobain ignored demands for a setlist full of hits and star guests, choosing odd cover versions and inviting members of the Arizona punk band the Meat Puppets to join him for three of their songs. With acoustic backing, Cobain’s voice took on a fragile magic; after his death six months later, the funereal setting, with candles and lilies, took on an extra poignancy.
Key moment After an audience member requested their song Rape Me, Cobain grinned: “I don’t think MTV will let us play that.”
Best song The finale, Where did You Sleep Last Night: a traditional folk song turned into a howl of Generation-X anguish.

8 Blur
Glastonbury, 2009
With guitarist Graham Coxon back in the fold after seven years, one of the most successful reformations since Luther’s climaxed with one of Glastonbury’s greatest headlining sets. All four band members wept, as did many of the 100,000 watching.
Key moment The communal “Yessss!” that greeted Girls and Boys.
Best song An entrancing Tender, whose “Oh my baby” refrain was sung by the crowd, unaccompanied, for several minutes, forcing the band to begin Country House over the top of it. “I think something changed for ever during Tender,” said the bassist Alex James.

9 The Rolling Stones
Hyde Park, London, 1969
A free open-air show to introduce new guitarist Mick Taylor swiftly became a memorial to founder member Brian Jones after his death two days earlier on July 3. Not by any stretch the Stones’ greatest musical performance, nonetheless, with the Beatles imploding, this iconic show cemented the band’s place as leaders of the 1960s counter-culture in front of an audience of nearly half a million.
Key moment “Peace, peace! He is not dead, he doth not sleep/ He hath awakened from the dream of life . . .” Mick, clad in white dress, quotes Shelley to honour the fallen Brian. Some 3,500 white butterflies were then released, though many, stored too long in cardboard boxes, swiftly crash-landed.
Best songs Midnight Rambler and Love in Vain showed what the band’s greatest line-up would achieve when properly tuned up.

10 Radiohead
Glastonbury, 1997
A month after the release of OK Computer, five polite chaps from Oxfordshire lodged a fairly persuasive 90-minute argument for being, at that moment in time, the greatest rock band in the world.
Key moment Half an hour in Thom Yorke asks, “Can you turn on the lights so we can see the people?” 40,000 people suddenly appear: Thom chuckles; they roar.
Best song No Surprises: Jonny Greenwood plays the xylophone as fireworks explode over Worthy Farm.

11 Led Zeppelin
Albert Hall, 1970
Zeppelin built their formidable reputation by constant grassroots touring. The Albert Hall booking - – “at the time the largest, most prestigious gig in London”, as Jimmy Page called it - was like the triumphant official declaration that they’d arrived. Perhaps aware of cameras capturing them for posterity, the band pulled out the stops, their stage charisma, technical flair and improvised encores combining to peak effect.
Key moment English guitar god incarnate, despite wearing a harlequin tank-top, Jimmy Page sat down and seduced the audience with White Summer, an exotic piece of instrumental virtuosity — proving his band were about much more than heavy riffing.
Best song Whole Lotta Love, powered by John Bonham’s titanic drumming, saw the front of the whipped-up crowd banging their fists on the stage.

12 Nina Simone
Westbury Music Fair, New York, 1968
As news of Martin Luther King’s assassination broke, riots and fires erupted across America. Three days later, Nina Simone sat at her piano in the 3,000-seater Westbury Music Fair in Long Island, and said, in a tremulous voice: “The king is dead. The king of love is dead.” Simone and her band delivered an emotional and cathartic concert, immortalised in the album ’Nuff Said!
Key moment Simone’s almost incantatory sadness, repeating the lines: “Do you realise how many we’ve lost? We can’t afford any more losses.”
Best song The first performance of Why?, written by bassist Gene Taylor in response to King’s death.

13 Jimi Hendrix
Finsbury Park Astoria, 1967
Hendrix was supposed to be on his best behaviour as the opening act on the opening night of a ludicrously mismatched package tour which found him sharing the bill with Cat Stevens, Engelbert Humperdinck and the Walker Brothers. Instead, he rampaged through Foxy Lady and his first two hits Hey Joe and Purple Haze at full volume.
Key moment As his brief set reached its climax, Hendrix doused his guitar in lighter fluid and set it ablaze. Pandemonium ensued as security staff ran on with a fire extinguisher.
Best song Wild Thing, an anodyne Troggs hit retooled as a hymn to pyromania.

14 The Sex Pistols
100 Club, London, 1976
Headlining a two-day “punk festival” organised by Malcolm McLaren, the Pistols ushered in their anti-everything rock’n’roll revolution with a set including snarling versions of No Fun, Pretty Vacant and I Wanna Be Me. Everyone in the crowd went away and started their own band — or said they did — and punk was born.
Key moment Sid Vicious — who was not yet a member of the Sex Pistols — was arrested for throwing a glass which blinded a girl in the audience in one eye.
Best song They began and ended their set with Anarchy in the UK, the rallying call for a new generation of the young and disaffected.

15 Elvis Presley
The Milton Berle Show, Los Angeles, 1956
Not strictly a “gig”, but a milestone in rock’n’roll performance nonetheless. Appearing on the variety TV show for the second time, the man who would be King tore up the performance rulebook with a libidinous rendition of Hound Dog that was deemed “unfit for family viewing” by rival TV host Ed Sullivan. Sullivan booked Presley on his own show three months later.
Key moment When he slowed the tempo and unleashed a sequence of pelvic thrusts and knee trembles that split a nation between ecstasy and outrage.
Best song There was only one, but it was all he needed.

16 Lady Gaga
Glastonbury, 2009
Not your typical Glastonbury fodder, but Gaga’s arthouse freakery was actually right at home at a festival that once had a monopoly on weirdos in bonkers outfits.
Key moment Shooting fireworks from the nipples of her pointy bra while screaming, “I fancy you, Glastonbury — do you fancy me?” Definitely, was the gist of the response.
Best song Poker Face, reinvented as a honky-tonk blues number and performed standing on one leg on a piano stool in a dress of see-through plastic bubbles.

17 Amy Winehouse
Dingle, Co Kerry, 2006
Just two months after releasing her superstar-making Back to Black album, Winehouse played the tiny church of a remote town in southwestern Ireland. Accompanied only by a guitarist and a bassist, her searing 20-minute set was witnessed by a deeply fortunate crowd of 85.
Key moment The cocked-head delight with which she took her first applause.
Best song An exquisite, fluid rendition of Tears Dry on Their Own.

18 Bob Dylan
Manchester Free Trade Hall, 1966
The world’s most famous bootleg recording features Dylan going electric, which was seen as a shocking betrayal of his folk singer/protest song roots. The crowd, it seems, hated the concert. The irony is that Dylan never sounded so good, before or since.
Key moment “Judas!” cries a heckler, followed by cheers and jeers from the crowd. Dylan is shaken; all he can respond with is the nonsensical: “I don’t believe you ... you’re a liar.”
Best song Like a Rolling Stone, played after the Judas moment. Dylan tells his backing band the Hawks — later the Band — to “play f***ing loud”.

19 Public Enemy
Hammersmith Odeon, 1987
A massive police presence couldn’t prevent muggings and mayhem at Hammersmith Tube as US rap was exported to the UK. With their sub-machinegun props, military dancers and endless posturing, Public Enemy were confrontational, but also incendiary.
Key moment Reacting to reports that the BNP were planning on stopping the concert, Chuck D incites the crowd to chant, “F*** the racists!”
Best song Rebel with a Pause: when they played it, according to one fan, “the place turned into a zoo”.

20 Johnny Cash
Folsom Prison, California, 1968
Having been visited in rehearsal by Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California, the Man in Black sealed his musical comeback with a concert that became an electrifying album.
Key moment The inmates were briefed beforehand not to react to Cash walking on, but to wait for him to say, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”, before erupting into applause. They duly obliged to create a moment of rock history.
Best song Folsom Prison Blues — Cash’s signature song was given a more upbeat tempo in the institution that inspired it.

21 Love with Arthur Lee
Royal Festival Hall, London, 2003
Fresh out of jail (for threatening his neighbour with a gun), LA’s most unlikely peace and love guru teamed up with the young band Baby Lemonade and a chamber orchestra to play his 1967 acid rock masterpiece Forever Changes. Looking cool in a fedora and headband, Lee rose to the challenge, his quivering falsetto bringing out the elegance and beauty of one of rock’s greatest albums.
Key moment A clearly nervous Lee played the delicate intro to Alone Again Or. The crowd erupts. He looks like he doesn’t know what hit him.
Best song The Red Telephone, with its line: “Sitting on the hillside, watching all the people die. I’ll feel much better on the other side.” Lee died three years later.

22 Orbital
Glastonbury, 1994
In the year that John Major introduced legislation banning raves, the Hartnoll brothers showed that electronic music could blow minds on a traditional stage.
Key moment The roar that erupted when Paul and Phil’s light-goggles first pierced the Somerset mist.
Best song An ecstatic Chime, greeted with a forest of hands and a symphony of whistles.

23 Patti Smith
CBGB, New York, 1975
Large crowds packed the tiny, damp club during Smith’s two-month residency alongside Television. It was here that Smith prepared for her landmark album Horses and kick-started the New York punk-rock revolution.
Key moment NME journalist Charles Shaar Murray was there on June 7: “Smith can generate more intensity with a single movement of one hand than most rock performers can produce in an entire set.”
Best song Her finale: Horses, a splicing of the soul hit Land of a Thousand Dances with a rock poem about a kid being beaten up in a locker room.

24 Prince
The 02, London, 2007
Over 21 nights, on a stage in the shape of his proprietary “symbol”, the Purple One played 504 songs to audiences of half a million. Often obtuse, this time Prince chose to give the two-hour jazz odysseys a miss and treat London to a slicker-than-oil downpour of his finest tunes.
Key moment Somewhere between Little Red Corvette, Raspberry Beret and Kiss, Prince would invariably suddenly break off with: “You can’t handle me! I’ve got too many hits!”
Best song Kiss. Year zero for the modern R&B pop crossover.

25 Portishead
Roseland Ballroom, New York, 1997
The usually austere Bristolian trip-hop trio were joined by the New York Philharmonic: the result was so sublime that the band took ten years off to recover.
Key moment After a searing Glory Box, singer Beth Gibbons, ever the perfectionist, apologises: “Sorry it was a bit dodgy in places — my fault!”
Best song The thrillingly dark Over, with scratching, strings and fuzz guitar.