Live'r Than You'll Ever Be

AMG Review of Live'r Than You'll Ever Be

Richie Unterberger
All Music Guide

One of the famous early ock bootlegs, this late-1969 show, taken from the same American tour that yielded the official live album Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!, had very good sound for an unauthorized ock recording of the era, though it still wasn't totally up to official standards. It hit the streets before Ya-Ya's itself, and some hardcore Stones fans, such as Greil Marcus, view it as a better and more authentic document of the band on-stage. From the average listener's viewpoint, it's not as satisfactory as Ya-Ya's, which definitely does have better sound. The performances on Live'r Than You'll Ever Be do have a more spontaneous edge, and the set includes a couple of songs, "I'm Free" (in a much different hard rock version than the one they recorded in 1965) and "Gimme Shelter," that didn't make it onto Ya-Ya's. Originally released on LP on the Lurch label, the recording's been making the bootleg rounds in various forms ever since 1970, with some CD editions adding extra tracks.