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From: theseeker23
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  • This track is Power.

  • nice video. Is that all I'm supposed to say?

  • Comment removed

  • Led zeppelin dont have shit on this

  • I want this played at my funeral ;)

  • Sounds like 'Foxy Lady'?

  • @visog Or purple haze. All awesome. :P

  • great bass solo

  • sheesh. ya almost wanna grab em and tell em to calm down, turn it down. nah

  • explosively awesome. I'm sorry. I couldnt even stay quiet if I was in that audience. I would be screaming my brain out.

  • Later versions are much more refined.

  • @Dunkleosteus9 It's strange, but I like that it's unrefined.

  • Sheer sonic ecstasy. Majestic and God-like...

    Not sure there's anything in rock comparing to "Sparks" for pure power. An unbelievable vehicle for Keith to work his magic.

  • Sitting in The Woods, seven of us...16 years old...1975...listening to this while drinking Tuborg Golds or whatever warm beer our older brothers had stashed in the

    bushes. Fuckin Crankin it!!!!! Losin it!!!!!!! Long Live The Real Who!!!! See you in the meadow.........

  • Oops! I meant to say that the Leeds "set" is on the Live @ Kilborn DVD. It was filmed at the London Colosseum. It was within a month or so of Leeds and Hull. My bad.

  • Didja know 'bout the 40th Anniversary Super-Deluxe Collectors' Edition (complete "Leeds" & "Hull" performances)? Outfuckingstanding! And the Leeds performance is with the Live @ Kilborn DVD. I thought I'd died and went to heaven!

  • @zeines Actually it's more like 2:57 to 3:23 but you are right! For 38 years now I go into a kind of out of body experience whenever I hear that part. You know your shit zeines!!! Didja know 'bout the 40th Anniversary Super-Deluxe Collectors' Edition (complete "Leeds" & "Hull" performances)? Outfuckingstanding! And the Leeds performance is with the Live @ Kilborn DVD. I thought I'd died and went to heaven!

  • Wow ...Wow...I love This 

  • guitar smashing music

  • first 4 8-trax i bought back in the day...of course all oooooooooooooooooooo!

  • pyscho Pete!

  • pyscho Pete!

  • Back in the late 90s I played bass in a totally impromptu version of this song with a couple of friends at a bar in St. Louis with about two hundred witnesses. No rehearsals. Not even a thought as to what we would be doing. It just happened. Even though we had no knowledge that we would be playing this song, we pulled it off. The guy who played guitar that night was actually a saxophone player. This is proof positive to me that miracles happen. You just had to be there.

  • 0:06

    First time I ever heard this lick I thought for sure it was a Hendrix song

  • This is by far my most favorite track of Sparks. Sometimes I put it on a continuous loop. I know, I'm a freak.

  • @kurtb8474 If you're a freak I'm right there with you, mate. As a huge Who fan I have always loved this tune.. I am always amazed that 4 ppl or really 3 here can make this sound...--f##cking unbelievable.!! This is the first live version I heard and loved it of course. It is a bit tighter and more controlled than say Woodstock or even Tanglewood, which are both awesome. I like the W.S. version alot, though because it is so devastatingly raw and agressive w/lots o feedback -another minblower

  • @1984ledzep

    Funny - I'm the opposite. I saw The Kids Are Alright first and it has the Woodstock version, so I've always preferred it to Live at Leeds, which is still awesome.

  • @kurtb8474 Yes you are. A Who Freak....just like the rest of us!!!!

  • wow, this is simply amazing

  • SPARKS is the best rock song ever written

  • Pete Townshend is one of the most underrated guitarists of all time. Anyone that thinks he's "just a rhythm player" needs to go listen to Young Man Blues (from any of their performances, but the best one is Live At Leeds). I think the reason most people don't like him as much as Hendrix, May, Clapton, Satriani, Van Halen, etc. are because he doesn't often write songs that show off his skill very often. Sure, he's not as technically gifted as, say, Zappa, but he's still awesome.

  • BASS, DRUMS and GUITAR at their best!

  • WOW...WOW...they don't do it like that anymore..The bass is out of this world!!!!!!!!

  • 80$ headphoned well spent! The bass is brilliant on this!

  • @thankyoupourlavideo what ones you get? lol. i want em...

  • lol. They're a gaming headset. They're called Teartle Beaches and my model is an X1 Earforce. It was the "cheapest good" one because it's wired, but that way I can play Xbox and Pc games as well as other things, rather than just Xbox.

    But Entwistle sounds so pure on these. The sound quality is really good.

  • Insanely good-- too much!!!!!!

  • Fucking ridiculous this is...in a good way of course

  • Sheer sonic majesty. Untouchable by any other. Better recording here but not quite as openly savage as the Tanglewood video footage.

    All hail Moon...

  • nice wish i was at this gig.

  • There's nothing I can say about this song that would do it justice. It's just too great.

    Just one of many great live performances courtesy of The Who

  • "reality is a crutch for those that can't handle drugs"

  • It's just so multi- layered and intricate sounding. I mean, you can focus on guitar, bass or drums and they all sound amazing. Some people say Pete was not a great lead player but I disagree.

  • Fuckin A bro

  • @madmethod21 that's because they're wrong, pete never wanted to be jimi the way clapton did....he had his own thing, volume: check....aggression: check.....and the guy really knew how to write a great melody...tattoo and a quick one are great examples of that

  • @calebzia jimi wanted to be clapton you mean fact check bitch

  • i've listened to a lot of The Who's 70's live stuff lately, and i think they even one-upped Led Zeppelin, they must have been thinking about them...

    i know Pete aped some of Jimi's style, at times, and i'm thinking he did the same with Page and Jones. and why not? Zeppelin began because of The Who...

    heh heh

  • listen to the bass at 0:59-1:17. simply amazing

  • That was John!

  • @thewhofan99

    Bass solo, sweet as a nut :)

  • maybe this track more than anything else was a showcase for Keith Moons drumming...absolutely amazing and somehow so vintage Who as well

  • Comment removed

  • What would roger do doing this for so much time with no singing,Did he just dance around with a tambourine or something, i know its not relevant, just curiosity..

  • welcome to the glorious days of the 60s my friend

  • thats exactly what he did

  • i saw these legends in 06 hyde park and 07 knowsley. best band ever!!

  • you know the first part of this song you could sing FOXY LADY to it and it kinda fits...haha

  • Amazing!!!!!!!

  • I absolutely love the guitar on this...... i've never got bored with it ! ......And I've known this music for 35 year's...... But..... just concentrate on the unbelieveable Drumming...... Keith Moon Was the Best....

  • .I am so glad to have grown up in the 70's.The Who was/is still one of my top 5 all time favorite Rock-n-Roll groups.I have always considered them a grandfather of Punk Rock. Take "My Generation",for starters.

  • That is good stuff, makes me want a electric guitar!!

  • This masterpiece still sounds great in 2009 c'os its pure rock n' roll with dynamics rarely found these days. Aspiring guitarists, listen to how Pete Townsend uses his guitar's volume control to produce crystalline clean tones from his amazing Gibson SG, and comes roaring back in with the volume knob pushing all those power chords through vintage Marshall and Hiwatt amps / cabinets. You can tell he's wanting more Gain but in those days they hadn't yet perfected that feature. Stil, its LOUD!!

  • what are their ages?

  • this song is great, amazing isntrumental. it starts really loud, then they turn the volume down for a few moments, then they get back into loudness again. it's breathtaking

  • best band ever, best band's album, best album's song, best song's performance... WOW...

  • I promise you'll be the first to know if I ever gain access to the secret vaults of whoever's got the Leeds video reels these days. I didn't quite realise I was teasing anyone. But fortunately there's ~3000 commenters who either don't have the songs I uploaded or just want to link to them and are perfectly fine with my, well, "videos" to keep my guilty conscience in check.

  • @theseeker23 if you get the footage you would be a wealthy man

  • @1starnutz Hey doucehbag, if you bother to look around youtube you'll see that quite a few people post songs just like this, as well as 'regular' videos. Sorry to disappoint.

  • Sounds like Purple Haze.

  • seems like you're seeing some purple haze, dude...

  • I meant the beginning and I meant Foxy Lady.

  • oh yes, with that i agree

  • ooo 2:58 amazing power chord

  • Yeah, I bet that levitated a few audience members! If anyone asks "what is an "E" chord?" play them 2:58...

  • why do they call it Tommy?

  • They named it after me...or so I thought when it came out. ;-)

  • amazing drums and bass. listen from 0:57 for like 20 seconds. amazing!!

  • to thewhofan99 apparently John and Keith listened to the tapes of the Leeds gig not long afterwards and were both shocked. He said they hadn't realised they were so good! LOL! Hell yeah they were!

  • Great stuff. I remember first listening to this and telling the metal heads in school you wanna hear some real hard rock listen to Live At Leeds. Some were impressed. Greatest band ever.

  • clasic clasic rock'n roll !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • 2:59 - 3:24 Fucking AWESOME!

  • Agree with you completely.

  • That bass solo rocks so much...Christ I love hearing and playing this song!!!

  • Hey Marv, where your head is situated right now is affecting your hearing, pull it out and "technically" your hearing will be restored. By the way, you obviously never attended a Who concert, sleep was not an option.....if you could'nt hear it you were either passed out or dead!

  • I've never been to a Who concert, or any concert, but I must say 'Amen!' to that.

  • "Tommy is rock's first formal masterpiece.

    LIVE AT LEEDS is the definitive hard-rock holocaust. It is the best live rock album ever made"

  • I suffer from an ability to discern between the mediocre and the brilliant. 'Bwahhh bwahhh' power chords are musically dumb, because anybody can come up with that. The rest of the song is not dumb, it is quite creative and imaginative, and only the musically intelligent could have come up with it. So there.

  • They are not dumb, but rather essential to the structure of the piece, it's Townshend signaling a shift in direction to which Moon responds and out out of those two 'dumb' chords comes the immensely powerful grace of this passage. They anchor it. Listen to the beginning of John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' where an entire universe is extrapolated from the 4 simple bass notes that start off the album. Same thing. These chords have no intrinsic value, it's what's done with them that counts.

  • Yes sir.

  • 2:59 to 3:24 is where Pete does about 20 windmills so if you were watching as well as listening you could easily see where this was a good to great part.

    Sight as well as sound,

    what a concept.

    Then again if I sat on my arse in front of a computer all day in my mom's basement I would probably just go ahead and criticize rock legends, too.

  • Is this Pete Doherty you're talking about?

  • Well, there's easy and brilliant, but then there's easy and dumb, too. I just don't see why that poster picked out the dumbest part of the cut as being the best part. If you removed that part from the piece, the piece would not suffer at all.

  • "dumbest part"?????? WTF is wrong with you?

  • are you kidding me? so every song with power chords is "dumb" Do you even play guitar and have you ever wrote a song? You sound really stupid right now.

  • No, not all power chords are dumb - but you go ahead and listen to the whole song, and then tell me if you think 2:59 - 3:24 is the most brilliant part of the whole piece, creatively and technically speaking.

  • well its not the greatest part of the song? but does every part have to be amazing? Baba Oriley is built on power chords, is that song dumb to? It sounds fine, theres no reason to call it dumb.

  • Go jack off to Jaco Pastorius some more. Wanker.

  • OK, every part of what Townshend does is brilliant. You are right!

  • You're isolating :30 seconds out of a part of Tommy?

  • Someone isolated that 30 seconds and called it 'totally awesome' or something like that, and in response I isolated it and said it's the least awesome 30 seconds of the whole piece. Then everyone on YouTube came after me with barrels blazing.

  • dgallster, That same dude could probably find a bad paintbrush stroke on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

  • one of the best live moment EVER

  • BEST SONG I HAVE HEARD IN A LONG TIME!

  • i'd like to see you try and play better pal.

  • I said '...the rest is brilliant.' OK?

  • I like that part. its not that bad

  • I disagree, Townshend (and The Who) was at his best in 1969/1970, watch Wight Festival or Tanglewood, or listen to Fillmore East and Hull show, you will change your mind.

  • Perhaps you would like to demonstrate!

  • I would if you were here. I'd plug in and smash a couple power chords over and over.

  • Your missing the point,i play guitar and i could play this in my sleep,it's the idea that is genius,the simplest riffs are often genius otherwise we would all be doing it.Smoke on the water,I'm free,My generation,whole lotta love all easy peasy riffs to play but thinking of them a different kettle of fish mate.

  • SMITHWAYNE100, Methinks this marvy1118 is under-loved and needs-- wants-- some attention. I'm wondering if he might be a descendant of critics of the time who bemoaned the "simplicity" of the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony? ("Da-da-da- duuuuum. Gimme a break, Ludwig!") The ULTIMATE power chords! Like you wrote,"... it's the idea that is genius... easy enough to play but thinking of them [is] a different kettle of fish". Indeed. Cheers.

  • WICKED.

  • Los geniales de The Who son mi grupo favorito junto con Deep Purple, Ten Years After, Black Sabbath, Cream, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fleetwood Mac (Peter Green) The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, The Kinks, Iron Butterfly, The Animals, Steppenwolf, UFO y Canned Heat

  • 2:59-3:24 Awesome, just plain AWESOME!

  • A classic

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