Pink Floyd’s catalog of stay recordings underscores the concept 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon and 1979’s The Wall are their signature releases. After all, there are a number of albums commemorating a number of excursions specializing in these two initiatives.

Our checklist of Pink Floyd Live Albums Ranked Worst to Best additionally makes the case for the often-overlooked materials launched earlier than the band’s platinum-selling heyday.

David Gilmour started to discover this period rather more deeply as soon as he reconnected with former Pink Floyd co-founder Richard Wright, digging again to his preliminary albums with the group. Original drummer Nick Mason created his personal new band to carry out a few of Pink Floyd’s earliest songs.

READ MORE: The Worst Song From Every Pink Floyd Album

Tours additionally inevitably characteristic the newest songs from an act’s newest album, and these stay recordings aren’t any completely different – whether or not meaning together with materials from the Gilmour-led Pink Floyd reboot or particular person solo efforts from Gilmour and Roger Waters. With a backlog of earworm classics, nonetheless, these new choices usually battle to achieve traction. That impacted various rankings.

Here’s the way it all shook out in our countdown of Pink Floyd Live Albums Ranked Worst to Best.

No. 13. ‘Ummagumma’ (1969)
Pink Floyd

David Gilmour had been touring with Pink Floyd for simply over a 12 months, and so they nonetheless hadn’t discovered a musical path ahead. Ummagumma summed up the confusion. The first disc was recorded as Pink Floyd carried out typically desultory 1969 variations of latest songs like “Astronomy Domine” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” (The live shows additionally included embryonic takes on soon-to-be-released songs like “Cymbaline” and “Green is the Colour,” although they weren’t included on Ummagumma.) Yet it is all nonetheless higher than the second disc, which incorporates largely pointless solo studio compositions by every member of the group.

No. 12. ‘Live at Knebworth 1990’ (2021)
Pink Floyd

Completists may be tempted by the dramatic return of vocalist Clare Torry for “The Great Gig in the Sky,” however they’re going to additionally discover there is not rather more to this. Originally a part of The Later Years field set specializing in Pink Floyd’s post-Roger Waters period, Live at Knebworth 1990 was subsequently issued as a painfully brief, cash-grabby stand-alone product. There are solely seven whole tracks, and two of them – “Comfortably Numb” and “Run Like Hell” – had been on the beforehand launched compilation Knebworth: The Album.

No. 11. ‘The Wall: Live in Berlin’ (1990)
Roger Waters

The promotional angle for this U.Ok. Top 30 hit – “an all-star cast joins Roger Waters to recreate his signature Pink Floyd opus!” – can also be why The Wall: Live in Berlin could be so inconsistent. The historic spectacle of this live performance, held close to the notorious Brandenburg Gate simply eight months after the autumn of the Berlin Wall, has inevitably pale over time, too. In conserving, one of the best moments are these the place Waters returns to the highlight. You’ll simply have to type via not-always-convincing updates from the likes of Cyndi Lauper (“Another Brick in the Wall [Part 2]”), Bryan Adams (“Young Lust”) and Paul Carrack (“Hey You”).

No. 10. ‘Delicate Sound of Thunder’ (1988)
Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd’s first correct stay launch by some means did not arrive till Roger Waters was lengthy gone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his former bandmates had bother rising to the visceral anger of Waters’ late-period materials, specifically on tracks the place he used to share vocals. They tended to sound much more comfy with the brand new songs. Still, Delicate Sound of Thunder provided a welcome return to the flowing group sounds that predated novelistic albums like The Wall and The Final Cut. Replacement Guy Pratt additionally had a knack for including the type of funk and class on bass (try “Another Brick in the Wall [Part 2]”) that Waters cannot actually approximate. It opened the door to much more intriguing future collaborations.

No. 9. ‘Roger Waters: The Wall’ (2015)
Roger Waters

Finally, a full-length single-voice rendition of this towering diamond-certified rock opera. Too unhealthy Roger Waters: The Wall arrived some 35 years after the band’s authentic tour – and with out Gilmour, Wright or Mason. All apologies to the small platoon of guitarists who tried (together with G.E. Smith, Snowy White and David Kilminster), however Gilmour’s hovering presence is not usually convincingly replicated. Worse, actually, is the inevitable deterioration of Waters as a vocalist. (He was in his late 60s when this solo tour crisscrossed the globe.) The argument again then was that this was the closest anybody was going to get to a correct stay model of The Wall. When that was now not the case, nonetheless, Roger Waters: The Wall started to really feel largely irrelevant.

No. 8. ‘Live at Pompeii’ (2017)
David Gilmour

There’s no questioning the idea: Live at Pompeii returns Gilmour to the positioning of director Adrian Maben’s memorable 1972 Pink Floyd live performance documentary. The setting provides immediate gravitas to renditions of older favorites like “Time / Breathe” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” (The expanded deluxe field set additionally included songs recorded with an orchestra directed by Zbigniew Preisner, after his delicate collaborations with Gilmour on Live at Gdansk – discovered later in our rankings.) All of this iconic materials finally ends up combined and matched with stay updates from Gilmour’s then-current Rattle That Lock, nonetheless, and the brand new songs have a tendency to shortly pale compared. Even the newer Pink Floyd stuff sounds overmatched.

No. 7. ‘Roger Waters: Us + Them’ (2020)
Roger Waters

Unlike Gilmour’s Live at Pompeii, Roger Waters was touring behind a robust, well-received album when Us + Them arrived. Is This the Life We Really Want? served as a reclamation of the sound and really feel of Pink Floyd albums like Animals and The Wall. Importantly, his newest album additionally discovered Waters taking a extra frankly emotional tack. That created a brand new steadiness when his model of proselytizing threatened to turn into brittle over the course of a protracted double stay album. Powerful new connections had been made too, as when Waters moved from the raging “Picture That” instantly into the quiet ruminations of “Wish You Were Here.”

No. 6. ‘Pulse’ (1995)
Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd’s solely chart-topping stay album featured the return in stuffed with Richard Wright, who’d made solely occasional contributions to 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason after being fired by Waters in The Wall period. This opened the band’s in-concert setlist just a little wider, as they added “Astronomy Domine” from their 1967 debut. The second-disc efficiency of Dark Side of the Moon additionally served to spotlight Wright’s usually ignored contributions as an instrumentalist (“Us and Them”), composer (“The Great Gig in the Sky”) and vocalist (“Time”). At that time, this was the one full studying of Pink Floyd’s signature 1973 album.

No. 5. ‘In the Flesh: Live’ (2000)
Roger Waters

The greatest Roger Waters stay album touches on each aspect of his profession to date. In the Flesh: Live pairs by-now-expected materials from Pink Floyd’s heyday with well-chosen songs from 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets, 1983’s The Final Cut and his solo data, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking and Amused to Death. There’s even a quietly involving bonus reduce, “Each Small Candle,” that hints on the extra emotional turns taken on Waters’ belated solo comeback album, 2017’s Is This the Life We Really Want? Fans stayed away in droves, making In the Flesh: Live his worst-selling live performance memento. Their loss. This is important listening.

No. 4. ‘Live on the Roundhouse’ (2020)
Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets

Nick Mason named this facet venture after Pink Floyd’s second album, signaling his intention to resurface gems from the group’s usually ignored pre-Dark Side of the Moon period. Ace latter-day collaborator Guy Pratt and Spandau Ballet alum Gary Kemp fronted the group as Mason constructed a setlist dominated by songs from his late authentic bandmates Syd Barrett and Richard Wright. The outcomes may have been outlined by lazy nostalgia, however as an alternative Saucerful of Secrets breathed new life into materials that had been too lengthy ignored.

No. 3. ‘Live in Gdansk’ (2008)
David Gilmour

Wright as soon as once more offers a permission construction for Gilmour to dig previous setlist warhorses “Wish You Were Here” and “Comfortably Numb.” Oh, these songs seem on Live in Gdansk, as does the whole string-laden tune cycle from Gilmour’s emotive On an Island. But Gilmour and Wright additionally undertake a daring exploration of “Echoes” from 1971’s Meddle and even hint again to “Fat Old Sun,” a rarity from 1970’s Atom Heart Mother. Live in Gdansk ended up making a tragic little bit of historical past, too. This is Gilmour’s final collaboration with Wright, who died one week earlier than its launch.

No. 2. ‘Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81’ (2000)
Pink Floyd

Waters’ solo renditions of The Wall usually held their very own intrigues, however all had been forgotten after an historic excavation by producer James Guthrie. Pink Floyd initially staged simply 31 live shows in assist of this sprawling venture. Guthrie targeted on performances from August 1980 and June 1981 in London, together with Waters’ final live performance look with Pink Floyd earlier than 2005’s Live 8 reunion. Is There Anybody Out There? unfolds with a brand new sharpness and muscular pressure, whereas increasing our understanding of the narrative: Two new songs seem, together with “What Shall We Do Now?” – a last-minute reduce from the unique album.

No. 1. ‘The Dark Side of the Moon Live at Wembley 1974’ (2023)
Pink Floyd

This has an origin story not dissimilar to Live at Knebworth 1990, having been launched as a stand-alone LP after initially showing on two earlier field set reissues. But that is the place the similarities finish. The Dark Side of the Moon Live at Wembley 1974 finds Pink Floyd on the peak of their powers and performing their best-known album in its entirety. The materials was initially recorded in November 1974 by BBC Radio 1 at what’s now Wembley Stadium. Here’s how nice these exhibits had been: They additionally supplied materials for 2011’s Wish You Were Here Immersion field (together with an early model of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”) and 2016’s The Early Years (one of many remaining classic-era renditions of “Echoes”).

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