Pink Floyd‘s catalog of live recordings underscores the idea that 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon and 1979’s The Wall are their signature releases. After all, there are multiple albums commemorating multiple tours focusing on those two projects.
Our list of Pink Floyd Live Albums Ranked Worst to Best also makes the case for the often-overlooked material released before the band’s platinum-selling heyday.
David Gilmour began to explore this era much more deeply once he reconnected with former Pink Floyd co-founder Richard Wright, digging back to his initial albums with the group. Original drummer Nick Mason created his own new band to perform some of Pink Floyd’s earliest songs.
READ MORE: The Worst Song From Every Pink Floyd Album
Tours also inevitably feature the latest songs from an act’s latest album, and these live recordings are no different – whether that means including material from the Gilmour-led Pink Floyd reboot or individual solo efforts from Gilmour and Roger Waters. With a backlog of earworm classics, however, these new offerings typically struggle to gain traction. That impacted more than a few rankings.
Here’s how 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 just over a year, and they still hadn’t found a musical path forward. Ummagumma summed up the confusion. The first disc was recorded as Pink Floyd performed sometimes desultory 1969 versions of recent songs like “Astronomy Domine” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” (The concerts also included embryonic takes on soon-to-be-released songs like “Cymbaline” and “Green is the Colour,” though they weren’t included on Ummagumma.) Yet it’s all still better than the second disc, which contains largely pointless solo studio compositions by each member of the group.
No. 12. ‘Live at Knebworth 1990’ (2021)
Pink Floyd
Completists might be tempted by the dramatic return of vocalist Clare Torry for “The Great Gig in the Sky,” but they’ll also notice there isn’t much more to this. Originally part of The Later Years box set focusing on Pink Floyd’s post-Roger Waters era, Live at Knebworth 1990 was subsequently issued as a painfully short, cash-grabby stand-alone product. There are only seven total tracks, and two of them – “Comfortably Numb” and “Run Like Hell” – were on the previously released compilation Knebworth: The Album.
No. 11. ‘The Wall: Live in Berlin’ (1990)
Roger Waters
The promotional angle for this U.K. Top 30 hit – “an all-star cast joins Roger Waters to recreate his signature Pink Floyd opus!” – is also why The Wall: Live in Berlin can be so inconsistent. The historic spectacle of this concert, held near the infamous Brandenburg Gate just eight months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has inevitably faded over time, too. In keeping, the best moments are those where Waters returns to the spotlight. You’ll just have to sort through 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 proper live release somehow didn’t arrive until Roger Waters was long gone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his former bandmates had trouble rising to the visceral anger of Waters’ late-period material, in particular on tracks where he used to share vocals. They tended to sound far more comfortable with the new songs. Still, Delicate Sound of Thunder offered a welcome return to the flowing group sounds that predated novelistic albums like The Wall and The Final Cut. Replacement Guy Pratt also had a knack for adding the kind of funk and sophistication on bass (check out “Another Brick in the Wall [Part 2]“) that Waters can’t really approximate. It opened the door to far 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 bad Roger Waters: The Wall arrived some 35 years after the band’s original tour – and without Gilmour, Wright or Mason. All apologies to the small platoon of guitarists who tried (including G.E. Smith, Snowy White and David Kilminster), but Gilmour’s soaring presence isn’t often convincingly replicated. Worse, really, is the inevitable deterioration of Waters as a vocalist. (He was in his late 60s when this solo tour crisscrossed the globe.) The argument back then was that this was the closest anyone was going to get to a proper live version of The Wall. When that was no longer the case, however, Roger Waters: The Wall began to feel largely irrelevant.
No. 8. ‘Live at Pompeii’ (2017)
David Gilmour
There’s no questioning the concept: Live at Pompeii returns Gilmour to the site of director Adrian Maben’s memorable 1972 Pink Floyd concert documentary. The setting adds instant gravitas to renditions of older favorites like “Time / Breathe” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” (The expanded deluxe box set also included songs recorded with an orchestra directed by Zbigniew Preisner, after his sensitive collaborations with Gilmour on Live at Gdansk – found later in our rankings.) All of this iconic material ends up mixed and matched with live updates from Gilmour’s then-current Rattle That Lock, however, and the new songs tend to quickly pale in comparison. 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 powerful, well-received album when Us + Them arrived. Is This the Life We Really Want? served as a reclamation of the sound and feel of Pink Floyd albums like Animals and The Wall. Importantly, his latest album also found Waters taking a more frankly emotional tack. That created a new balance when his brand of proselytizing threatened to become brittle over the course of a long double live album. Powerful new connections were made too, as when Waters moved from the raging “Picture That” directly into the quiet ruminations of “Wish You Were Here.”
No. 6. ‘Pulse’ (1995)
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd’s only chart-topping live album featured the return in full of Richard Wright, who’d made only occasional contributions to 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason after being fired by Waters in The Wall era. This opened the band’s in-concert setlist a little wider, as they added “Astronomy Domine” from their 1967 debut. The second-disc performance of Dark Side of the Moon also served to highlight Wright’s often overlooked contributions as an instrumentalist (“Us and Them”), composer (“The Great Gig in the Sky”) and vocalist (“Time”). At that point, this was the only complete reading of Pink Floyd’s signature 1973 album.
No. 5. ‘In the Flesh: Live’ (2000)
Roger Waters
The best Roger Waters live album touches on every element of his career to date. In the Flesh: Live pairs by-now-expected material from Pink Floyd’s heyday with well-chosen songs from 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets, 1983’s The Final Cut and his solo records, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking and Amused to Death. There’s even a quietly involving bonus cut, “Each Small Candle,” that hints at the more 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 concert souvenir. Their loss. This is essential listening.
No. 4. ‘Live at the Roundhouse’ (2020)
Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets
Nick Mason named this side project after Pink Floyd’s second album, signaling his intention to resurface gems from the group’s typically ignored pre-Dark Side of the Moon era. Ace latter-day collaborator Guy Pratt and Spandau Ballet alum Gary Kemp fronted the group as Mason built a setlist dominated by songs from his late original bandmates Syd Barrett and Richard Wright. The results could have been defined by lazy nostalgia, but instead Saucerful of Secrets breathed new life into material that had been too long ignored.
No. 3. ‘Live in Gdansk’ (2008)
David Gilmour
Wright once again provides a permission structure for Gilmour to dig past setlist warhorses “Wish You Were Here” and “Comfortably Numb.” Oh, those songs appear on Live in Gdansk, as does the entire string-laden song cycle from Gilmour’s emotive On an Island. But Gilmour and Wright also undertake a bold exploration of “Echoes” from 1971’s Meddle and even trace back to “Fat Old Sun,” a rarity from 1970’s Atom Heart Mother. Live in Gdansk ended up making a sad bit of history, too. This is Gilmour’s last collaboration with Wright, who died one week before its release.
No. 2. ‘Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81’ (2000)
Pink Floyd
Waters’ solo renditions of The Wall typically held their own intrigues, but all were forgotten after an historic excavation by producer James Guthrie. Pink Floyd originally staged just 31 concerts in support of this sprawling project. Guthrie focused on performances from August 1980 and June 1981 in London, including Waters’ last concert appearance with Pink Floyd before 2005’s Live 8 reunion. Is There Anybody Out There? unfolds with a new sharpness and muscular force, while expanding our understanding of the narrative: Two new songs appear, including “What Shall We Do Now?” – a last-minute cut from the original 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 released as a stand-alone LP after originally appearing on two earlier box set reissues. But that’s where the similarities end. The Dark Side of the Moon Live at Wembley 1974 finds Pink Floyd at the peak of their powers and performing their best-known album in its entirety. The material was originally recorded in November 1974 by BBC Radio 1 at what’s now Wembley Stadium. Here’s how great those shows were: They also provided material for 2011’s Wish You Were Here Immersion box (including an early version of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”) and 2016’s The Early Years (one of the final classic-era renditions of “Echoes”).
Rock’s Most Dysfunctional Bands
Oh sure, it’s all fun and games at first. Then underlying issues start bubbling up.
Gallery Credit: Ed Rivadavia
When Alice Cooper Got Stoned With Pink Floyd
