Steppenwolf - Konserthuset, Gothenburg, Sweden, 9-20-1972

For a long time now, I've been wanting to post something by the band Steppenwolf, but I never came across anything I considered worthy, mostly due to sound quality issues. But I recently stumbled across a bootleg concert recording that not only sounds good, it sounds fantastic. In fact, it sounded so good, I quickly went to the end of the first song to check if there was audience applause (there was), since it sounded as clear and clean as a studio recording.

The reason this sounds so good is that it was broadcast on a Swedish radio station at the time, and someone made a great copy of that. This really should be an official live album. It's rather short, but it has my four favorite songs they did: "Born to Be Wild," "The Pusher," "Magic Carpet Ride," and "Monster."

Actually, "Born to Be Wild" isn't from the Swedish radio broadcast. I went looking for a version of that song in 1972, since it's probably their best known song, and I find it hard to understand why it wasn't in the main concert. (Perhaps the broadcast was edited down from a longer concert, I don't know). Luckily, I found a version of the song performed for the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show. Not only was that also recorded in 1972, it was recorded only six days later. Unfortunately, it faded out. I wanted a proper ending, so I found another version, from the "Midnight Special" TV show, and patched about a minute of that on to the end. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title. I also edited the applause of a couple of the previous songs because the cheering got cut off too soon.

At the time of this concert, the band was in the process of breaking up. They had a farewell concert in the U.S. in February 1972. But they were persuaded to make one more tour of the U.S. and Europe later in the year. Lead singer John Kay wanted to depart for a solo career. So for this tour, half of each concert was John Kay solo, and half was Steppenwolf. We only have the Steppenwolf portion of this one. The band reunited yet again in 1974, only to disband again in 1976. There were still later reunions after that. But I'd consider 1972 the end of their most creative era. 

This album is 41 minutes long, 36 minutes if you don't include the last song from a different source.

01 Ride with Me (Steppenwolf)
02 talk (Steppenwolf)
03 Foggy Mental Breakdown (Steppenwolf)
04 talk (Steppenwolf)
05 Tighten Up Your Wig (Steppenwolf)
06 talk (Steppenwolf)
07 Monster (Steppenwolf)
08 Magic Carpet Ride (Steppenwolf)
09 The Pusher (Steppenwolf)
10 Born to Be Wild [Edit] (Steppenwolf) 

https://bestfile.io/en/KzzhyUS1GoVrJbb/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from the "Old Grey Whistle Test" video of that last song. I used Krea AI to improve the detail. Lead singer John Kay is the one holding a microphone and wearing sunglasses.