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Five decades after David Bowie\u2019s seminal tour, we reflect on the concerts that have left a mark.
Billie Holiday
Caf\xe9 Society, New York City, early 1939
The 23-year-old Billie Holiday was mostly unknown outside the jazz loop when she began her 1939 residency at this liberal New York club. Her understated, delicately implacable debut of Strange Fruit, a terrifying depiction of lynchings in the south, made a unique new vocal sound famous worldwide.
The birth of bebop
Minton\u2019s Playhouse, New York City, 1941
Rising young originals such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and the guitarist Charlie Christian lived off commercial swing gigs in 1941, but they forged the revolutionary modern jazz style called bebop in tumultuous after-hours Harlem jam sessions, where Thelonious Monk and the drums innovator Kenny Clarke were in the house band.
Buddy Holly and the Crickets
UK tour, March 1958
Britain had never seen a rock band before March 1958. Then, for 25 consecutive nights, came the first true rock band \u2013 guitar, bass and drums, a revolution in horn-rimmed specs. A schoolboy Keith Richards caught a London show, but many more future stars would see Buddy Holly on TV during his visit, when he appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium.


Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Muddy Waters
Whalley Range, Manchester, 7 May 1964
It was the brilliant idea of the Granada TV producer Johnnie Hamp to film a selection of blues greats in south Manchester\u2019s derelict Wilbraham Road railway station, mocked up to looked like the deep south, with \u201cwanted\u201d posters, washtubs and even goats and chickens. About 200 people arrived by rail to see the Gospel and Blues Train: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Cousin Joe, Otis Spann and the duo Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee giving intense performances on the platform. Waters was mobbed by blues-mad youngsters. Tharpe arrived in a pony and trap and seized the opportunity presented by a Mancunian downpour to strap on an electric guitar and launch spontaneously into Didn\u2019t It Rain? Countless musicians, including Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, subsequently told Hamp they were influenced by the show, which broadcast to millions and was instrumental in taking the blues explosion to the mainstream.

Bob Dylan
Newport folk festival, Rhode Island, 25 July 1965
It was a Sunburst Fender Stratocaster that stole the show at Newport in 1965. Dylan\u2019s decision to play an electric guitar on a largely acoustic bill stunned the crowd, with many booing and jeering. Audiences for his world tour were similarly polarised, one disgruntled heckler in Manchester yelling: \u201cJudas!\u201d at the former folk hero. Essentially, it was the birth of folk rock \u2013 the real-time expansion of a genre.

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
Franklin & Marshall College, Pennsylvania, 1966
A show in a college gym was the breakthrough that made arena rock possible. The PA system supplied by the Clair brothers so impressed Valli that he took them on tour as his personal sound engineers. Other artists noticed the quality and soon they were in demand. Their sound systems spurred rock\u2019s spread to the big halls.

The Velvet Underground
The Dom, New York City, 7 April 1966
A former Polish wedding hall hosted the birth of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Andy Warhol showed films and worked the lights, his \u201csuperstars\u201d danced and the Velvet Underground played at a volume witnesses tended to describe in terms of violence: rock music as envelopment and sensory assault.

The Beatles
Candlestick Park, San Francisco, 29 August 1966
The Beatles\u2019 final real gig wasn\u2019t a great show. The stadium was half-empty, the band at the end of their tether, struggling to recreate the sound of their latest recordings. But it represented a shift in rock music: no more Beatles gigs meant more time in the studio \u2013 and albums that would change everything, again.

The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream
Alexandra Palace, London, 29 April 1967
British counterculture\u2019s coming-out ball. Every one of the country\u2019s psychedelic luminaries played \u2013 Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Tomorrow and the Pretty Things among them. Performance art was provided by Yoko Ono, while the sense that the audience was as much part of the spectacle as the artists presaged 80s rave culture.

Big Brother and the Holding Company
Janis Joplin as part of Big Brother and the Holding Company
Janis Joplin at Monterey as part of Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Monterey pop festival, California, 17 June 1967
Arriving at Monterey with a lesser-known San Francisco psychedelic bluesy rock band, 24-year-old Janis Joplin gleefully demolished every stereotype of the \u201cdemure\u201d female singer. The hard-living, hard-rocking Texan\u2019s raucous, gut-wrenching performance attracted international attention and has been described as one of the greatest ever.

Terry Riley
Philadelphia College of Art, 17 November 1967
Not the birth of minimalism, but certainly its breakthrough. Riley\u2019s eight-hour set of tape manipulation and organ pulses, played to an audience seated on hammocks and cushions, generated an early recording of his classic Poppy Nogood and set the pace for electronic experimentalism in chill-out environments decades ahead.

James Brown
\u2018Are we together or we ain\u2019t?\u2019 James Brown calms stage invaders on 5 April 1968.
Boston Garden, 5 April 1968
The night after the assassination of Martin Luther King, violent protests spread across many US cities. In Boston, Brown\u2019s show was almost cancelled for fear it might become a hotspot for public outcry. Instead, the show was repurposed: broadcast live on TV and radio in an effort to ease the grief and tension. Fans climbed on stage as he sang I Can\u2019t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me); police officers rallied. Brown paused the song. \u201cI\u2019ll be fine,\u201d he told the officers, then turned to the stage invaders: \u201cYou\u2019re not being fair to yourselves and me, or your race. Now, I asked the police to step back, because I think I can get some respect from my own people \u2026 Are we together or we ain\u2019t?\u201d The crowd cheered. The fans climbed down. Brown turned to the drummer: \u201cHit that thing, man.\u201d

Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples
Harlem cultural festival, New York City, 13 July 1969
Effectively buried until the 2021 documentary Summer of Soul resurrected its memory, the 1969 Harlem cultural festival was possibly the greatest selection of black talent ever assembled, from Sly Stone and Stevie Wonder to Nina Simone. If you had to pick a highlight, Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples\u2019 charged performance of Take My Hand, Precious Lord might be it.

Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock
Woodstock festival, New York, 18 August 1969
Often cited as the gig that defined the 60s, the countercultural festival attracted half a million people to upstate New York. Hendrix\u2019s deconstruction of The Star-Spangled Banner was interpreted as a protest at the Vietnam war, while \u201cthree days of peace and love\u201d showed that people power could change history.

The Who
The University of Leeds, 14 February 1970
A Leeds Civic Trust blue plaque outside the university\u2019s refectory now honours the site of the incendiary live performance of the post-Tommy, Keith Moon-era Who captured on Live at Leeds, often cited as the greatest live rock album.

Elton John
The Troubadour, Los Angeles, 25 August 1970
Not quite overnight success, but close: Elton John walked on to the stage of a celebrity-packed Troubadour a largely unknown British singer-songwriter, and walked off it a star. Aside from the music, a backstage decision to wear an outrageous outfit and a burst of energetic showmanship midway through the gig helped: two lessons he has never forgotten.

BB King
Cook County jail, 10 September 1970
Two years after Johnny Cash\u2019s turn at Folsom prison, the blues legend King performed in Chicago to an audience of 2,000 prisoners, mostly young and black. A subsequent live album highlighted the dire conditions at the jail, helping bring about prison reform, which became a lifelong cause for King.

Aretha Franklin at Fillmore West
5-7 March 1971
Franklin\u2019s appearance at Fillmore West wasn\u2019t a star-making performance \u2013 she was already very much a star \u2013 but it featured the Queen of Soul at the peak of her powers, actively seeking to build a bridge to a post-hippy audience, covering Stephen Stills, Bread and the Beatles. Judging by the crowd\u2019s reaction, it worked.

David Bowie
Hammersmith Odeon, London, 3 July 1973
The moment when David Bowie appears to announce his retirement during this show is astonishing: the crowd\u2019s screams become a vast howl of disappointment, peppered with yells of \u201cNo!\u201d Did he mean it?

Bob Marley & the Wailers
The Lyceum, London, 17-18 July 1975
Probably the most dynamic and exhilarating reggae concerts ever. Perhaps more importantly, the presentation was familiar enough to the rock establishment to allow them to feel comfortable with roots reggae.

The Last Waltz
Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, 25 November 1976
This Thanksgiving Day show was billed as the Band\u2019s \u201cfarewell concert appearance\u201d.

Sex Pistols
River Thames, 7 June 1977

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