Joe Cocker - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 10-19-1969

As I mentioned in a previous post, in my opinion, the peak years in Joe Cocker's long career was from about 1968 to 1971. There's only two really good live recordings from this time period that are widely available. One is his 1969 Woodstock appearance. That's great, but it's a relatively short concert, since there were lots of other big acts on the bill. The other is the official "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" album documenting his 1970 tour. But that was with a new band and many new songs compared to what he'd done in 1968 and 1969. I wanted a good live album from him with the band he got famous with, the Grease Band.

Luckily, I've been able to find one excellent sounding bootleg from that time. On top of that, there are a few live songs from that time that have come out here and there on official archival releases. So I've used the bootleg (from the Fillmore West) as the basis of this album, then I've added in the other songs at the end. All together, this makes for an hour and 48 minutes of music, which is enough for what would have been a full concert back in those days, even though this one does come from multiple sources. (Note that I didn't use any of the exact performances from the Woodstock show, since that's a fine show all by itself.)

The main Fillmore West bootleg sounds great, as good as an official live album back then... but not all of it. I've included all the worthy songs here. A couple more sound so much worse that I'm not including them at all, not even as bonus tracks. In case you're curious, those are: "Do I Still Figure in Your Life," "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window." (I was able to find a version of "Do I Still Figure in Your Life" from a different concert.)

"I Don't Need No Doctor" and "Hitchcock Railway" were also recorded at the Fillmore West, and in the same month. But I don't know the exact date, and he played several nights of shows there, so I don't know if those are from the exact same concert or not. "Do I Still Figure in Your Life" and "Dear Landlord" are from an archival release with poor documentation, so I only know they come from concerts in 1969. 

Finally, how could I post a Joe Cocker concert from 1969 without including "With a Little Help from My Friends?" But the different sources I used didn't have that, strangely enough. To include a fitting version of that, I had to go back a little further in time, to a concert played in France in December 1968 and broadcast on French TV at the time. You can find video of it on YouTube. It's interesting, because it must have been recorded before he hit it big, since it shows him playing in a small club of only a hundred people or so.

There's only one sonic snag that bugs me with this concert, and that's that for many of the songs, the audience applause gets cut off quickly and/or isn't very loud. That's probably a consequence of these being soundboard recordings designed to capture the band on stage and not the audience. Happily though, it seems most or all of Cocker's banter between songs was captured, though I sometimes had to raise the volume of those a lot, resulting in some static for those bits.

Personally, I like this concert recording better than the famous "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" one. That album features a cast of thousands, almost literally. It was a huge band, with dozens of members, resulting in a full sound. Plus, many of the songs had other people guesting on lead vocals. This is just Cocker and a relatively small band, and I just like hearing him better this way.

01 talk (Joe Cocker)
02 Let It Be (Joe Cocker)
03 talk (Joe Cocker)
04 The Letter (Joe Cocker)
05 talk (Joe Cocker)
06 Something (Joe Cocker)
07 talk (Joe Cocker)
08 Feelin' Alright (Joe Cocker)
09 Something to Say (Joe Cocker)
10 talk (Joe Cocker)
11 Something's Coming On (Joe Cocker)
12 talk (Joe Cocker)
13 Bye Bye Blackbird (Joe Cocker)
14 talk (Joe Cocker)
15 Let's Go Get Stoned - Slow Down - Let's Go Get Stoned (Joe Cocker)
16 I Shall Be Released (Joe Cocker)
17 I Don't Need No Doctor (Joe Cocker)
18 talk (Joe Cocker)
19 Hitchcock Railway (Joe Cocker)
20 talk (Joe Cocker)
21 Do I Still Figure in Your Life (Joe Cocker)
22 talk (Joe Cocker)
23 Dear Landlord (Joe Cocker)
24 With a Little Help from My Friends (Joe Cocker) 

https://www.imagenetz.de/dCYtj

The cover art photo comes from a 1969 concert, but I don't know which one.