That’s a weird question. I have a tendency to ask questions to fill in gaps in my knowledge. Is that strange?
Huh. My CD of “Thick As A Brick” has two tracks, one for each side of the LP.
Not technology-defined (Classical stations were perfectly capable of playing long pieces as soon as the LP was invented). Commerically-defined. Radio is in the business of selling ads and content is secondary (and only important as a way to build an audience for the ads). The longer the songs, the fewer ads. The fewer ads, the less income.
During the late 60s - early 70s, the underground/college radio format allowed for playing of longer cuts. They had fewer ads, or were listener supported (like PBS). So you could play a ten-minute cut without income being an issue. However, on mainstream radio, longer songs were rare (people talk about “Hey Jude” and “McArthur Park,” but those were the exception). It even reached the point where stations would speed up songs by 10% in order to get more ads.
Thus, long cuts would not get airplay. In addition, they had gone out of style as being self-indulgent.
Which runs close to 16 minutes. (At least on the 14-track CD version mentioned above, which is what I have.) And Magic Bus is almost 8 minutes. So, 23-24 minutes from two tracks…nice amount of listening, even if it doesn’t fill out a track list very well. The other tracks are more normal lengths (2-5 minutes), but, as mentioned above, the whole deal does add up to a little more than a half hour, which was a pretty good length for vinyl.
Let me also add that, when Live at Leeds first came out, I bought it and did not feel shortchanged (BTW, the extras that came in the album sleeve were great; plenty of people I knew had that “The Who – Maximum R&B” poster on their walls.
Albums may have been shorter, but their packaging was much better than CDs. Live at Leeds was one of the best – it included contracts, posters, letters from record execs, lyric sheets (replicas of what the band used) and much more, all full size. They’ve included them in the CD booklet, but it’s not the same. There was also the warning on the label: “Crackling noises OK; do not correct.”
<raises hand>
But I have to admit that, Who lover though I am, I never thought the original version of the album was the classic everyone else hailed it as. For one thing, the fact that all but one of the songs on side one were covers seemed wrong to me. For another, they really seemed to be going out of their way to show only one side of a notably multi-faceted band: the balls-out, piledriving hard rock side. I think they were overly concerned about making this release the anti-Tommy. (Even when snippets of Tommy itself do crop up during the long jam, the feeling is stark and primal, 180 degrees removed from the quasi-orchestral atmospheres of the original.)
When the first expanded CD version came out around 1990 (this being the single-CD edition, the first pressing of which came in a 12" package with full-size replicas of all the original LP inserts), I thought, now this is what the album should have been all along. This is the Who!!!
I think it worked nicely in the original, but the expanded version is definitely better.
But TB had two tracks. Tubular Bells II had lots of them, though the structure was the same, and the horrible Tubular Bells 2003 remake had lots too. To a certain extent it just mattered where you put the CD track split marks.
Not to mention Toad. And Spoonful.
But I do agree that the problem with Live at Leeds involved LP technology. I got the original LP version right when it came out, and I agree it was pretty skimpy. The CD version with the entire concert is a lot more satisfying, though just a bit self-indulgent.
Not always. Get Your Ya Yas Out had plenty of short tracks. Some live albums were just live singles, but others allowed a musically inclined band to play for as long as they wanted. It spread to studio tracks to from the sublime (Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands) to the ridiculous (In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida).
Quality, not quantity. The album is incredible. (Though it is a crime that “Heaven and Hell” and “I Can’t Explain” got left off the original LP.)
One (or two) thumbs down on Live At Leeds. It’s one of the few Who albums I have that I didn’t bother syncing onto my Ipod.
It always sounded murky and ultimately boring to me. Then again, I’m not a big fan of live albums in general.
Eh…only ten freakin’ songs, though still a pretty generous playing time, since two of the cuts were fairly lengthy. Now Donovan’s live album! That thing was nearly an hour long. Obviously you can cut the grooves a lot thinner on a Donovan LP than on a Who LP.
Total agreement, Jack. Poorly miked, murky recording, badly mastered, and the boys didn’t sound like they were playing at their best. I like some live albums, especially the ones by Cream (Love the tension of a band where each member seemed to think he was the best, and was!) and I’ve seen and heard live Who stuff where they were all great, but Live at Leeds sounded like an off night. And like you said, it was boring. And short, like more grooves would’ve cost more. As I recall, there are big gaps at the end of each side so it even LOOKS like you are being gypped, and those gaps would indicate they weren’t going for maximum fidelity.
Finally, the early Who was not a boogie band and songs like “My Generation” and “Substitute” are supposed to explode at you, burn intensely for two minutes, and be done.
Not to brag or anything, but I listened to LAL driving up the PCH from Hearst Castle to Monterey today. What great road music it is! John thundering away on the ocean side, Pete ramming home power chords landward, and Roger ‘n’ Keith smack down the middle of the twisty-turny road ahead. Yeeee-haw!
Your question isn’t “strange”, but I found it a little confrontationally phrased, especially from a Who fan.
Upon reflection, I think your question points out that even ‘alternative’ bands today usually try to grab audiences’ attention with more media-friendly song lengths (a reasonable reaction to the more and more varied genres and other forms of entertainment out there). This is in contrast with the sometimes way-too-long pretentions committed by even good bands in the early 1970s*. We also must remember the greater drug use that made it all more bearable.
FWIW, I always loved TWLAL. I haven’t been into that genre for a while now, but I remember repeated times where I heard a song from it unexpectedly, and was always amazed at how well it’s held up. The recording quality is a little spotty, but IMO the spontaneity more than makes up for it.
- Although I liked it, I think Yes’ ‘Tales from Topographic Oceans’ may have been the high water mark of that trend: a double album, consisting of four side-long tracks.
The original LP also listed it as “part one” and “part two.” Hard not to think of it as just one though, because it pretty much is. I mean, it’s all the same song. It’s also the only song/album I still listen to at least once a week without fail. One time I paid a dollar to play the whole thing on an Internet jukebox at a bar. Pissed off a lot of people that night. 
Awesome stuff. I’ve always thought it the auditory equivalent of an epic novel. And, uh, what were we talking about? Oh, The Who? Really? Oops. My bad!