20 concert films everyone should watch at least once

Even as elder statesmen, the Beastie Boys found ways to puncture the pomposity of rock and pop conventions with this 2006 concert film, assembled from handheld cam footage shot by fans at Madison Square Garden. "Awesome" may lack polish, but the immediacy of this immersive experience more than makes up for it. 

A who’s who lineup of rock and blues superstars headed by Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Robert Cray toasts Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday, in 1986, by joining him onstage for a hometown concert in St. Louis. Berry proves he deserves the tribute, outshining his guest stars on every single classic song—though Etta James’s performance on “Rock ’n’ Roll Music” rivals Berry’s original.  

Metallica’s VHS tribute to the late bass wizard Cliff Burton combines no-budget interview clips and lo-fi footage shot by fans during the band’s early years. The best bits, besides the bludgeoning thrash workouts in Oakland, Denmark, and Germany, include Burton expounding on the band’s integrity (“We do what we wanna do—if they consider that selling out, then whatever”) and holding forth on the quality of the pot he’s smoking. 

Chappelle’s last production before walking away from the entertainment business in 2005 was one of his best—a joyous tour of the Brooklyn neighborhood where Chappelle grew up, capped off by a street concert featuring the biggest stars of ’00s progressive hip-hop and neo-soul—Kanye West, the Roots, Erykah Badu, Common, Mos Def, John Legend, a reunited Fugees, and more. 

This 2004 documentary has lost some of its impact—it was intended as a benediction on the occasion of Jay-Z’s retirement, which lasted less than two years. And the behind-the-scenes look at "The Black Album" comes off as standard promotional fare. But the Madison Square Garden concert at the center of the film, featuring Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige, Foxy Brown, Diddy, Missy Elliott, Usher, and, of course, Beyoncé, is easily worth anyone’s attention. 

Albert and David Maysles’ immersive 1970 Rolling Stones tour doc focuses on the disastrous 1969 free concert at the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco. There is incendiary performance footage of the Stones, but the proceedings are haunted by the violence that erupts near the end of the concert; the scene in which Mick Jagger watches a rough cut of the Maysles’ footage, showing Meredith Hunter being stabbed to death by one of the Hell’s Angels hired for security, is one of the hardest to watch in all of cinema.

A breathtaking combination of travelogue, concert film, and political documentary, this 2007 art-house gem pairs the hypnotic chamber-rock of Sigur Rós against majestic Icelandic landscapes, with interviews, outdoor concert footage, an intimate coffee-shop performance, and political commentary interspersed. "Heima" is an utterly mesmerizing portrait of first-world affluence.  

Long before the rock festivals celebrated in Monterey Pop and Woodstock, jazz and R&B artists were playing in front of large outdoor crowds at events like the Newport Jazz Festival. Photographer Bert Stern filmed the 1958 fest—the movie was released two years later—and captured a magical sequence of performances, presented with no voice-over narration or dialogue, from legends like Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Ray Charles, Mahalia Jackson, Chuck Berry, Anita O’Day, and Gerry Mulligan. 

The Band bows out with a masterful Thanksgiving Day 1976 performance at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, aided by guest spots from Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, and more, plus some soundstage sessions with the Staple Singers—all captured by a young Martin Scorcese in the classiest rock doc ever produced. 

Recorded just six months after the monumental "Live at Leeds," this stripped-down film of the Who’s headlining performance at the Isle of Wight Festival—released on DVD in 1996—captures the band at the peak of their considerable powers. In addition to staples from "Leeds"—“Summertime Blues,” “Substitute,” “Magic Bus”—the quartet plays the bulk of the classic rock opera "Tommy" and previews songs from the aborted "Lifehouse" sessions.

A snapshot of Nirvana at the very moment they were becoming the biggest—and best—rock band in the world. Recorded in their hometown of Seattle just after the release of "Nevermind" in 1991, the band is in ferocious form—Kurt Cobain seems free of the burdens that stardom would hang around his neck, and totally committed to a setlist that amounts to a greatest-hits selection: “Drain You,” “Polly,” “Breed,” “About a Girl,” and, yes, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” A moving and exuberant portrait of the band before its tragic moment.

D.A. Pennebaker’s film of the first great rock festival is an important companion to the better-known Woodstock. The expanded version, released in 2002, captures rock music expanding from a scene into an international movement, with seminal performances by Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Big Brother, and the Holding Company. 

Leave it to the late, enigmatic Minneapolis genius to keep one of his greatest accomplishments out of the reach of fans. This 1987 concert film, recorded in the Netherlands and Prince’s Paisley Park Studio and released to promote the classic double album of the same name, has been out of print in the United States since 1991. 

Elvis Presley’s career was, unthinkably, bottoming out when he appeared on this hour-long NBC TV special, decked out in a black leather jumpsuit to revisit some of his biggest hits and introduce some hard-rocking new numbers (and two new ballads). Alternating between in-the-round acoustic performances with Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana, from his original band, and orchestral arrangements, Elvis reclaimed the energy and sexiness that had eluded him for more than a decade.

Preposterous, overblown, and an utterly convincing demonstration of Zep’s hard-rock mastery in the early 1970s. "The Song Remains the Same" splices footage of the band’s bombastic 1973 Madison Square Garden concerts with inane fantasy sequences and unflattering behind-the-scenes vignettes; there’s every reason not to like it, and yet the performances retain an undeniable power and appeal. 

The ever-evolving stage set and David Byrne’s expanding suit are the visual hooks for Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads concert film, from 1984. But it’s the performances that make "Stop Making Sense" the best rock movie ever made—from Byrne’s solo “Psycho Killer” to definitive renditions of “Once in a Lifetime,” “Take Me to the River,” and “Life During Wartime” (all filled out with contributions from funk all-stars Bernie Worrell and Alex Weir), Demme captures a great band at their very best.   

If "Woodstock" and "Gimme Shelter" represent the end of the ’60s, this 1964 extravaganza could be considered a document from the very start of the era. Recorded in Santa Monica in front of 3,000 screaming teenagers, the "T.A.M.I. Show" (the acronym stands for either “Teenage Awards Music International” or “Teen Age Music International”) presented stellar performances by the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, Lesley Gore, the Rolling Stones, and, most indelibly, a young James Brown, backed by his early band the Famous Flames. 

The band on stage in this 1990 tour documentary—filmed at four stops on R.E.M.’s "Green" tour in 1989—isn’t necessarily one you’d pick for major multiplatinum superstardom just a couple of years later. The Athens college-rock legends are still pretty weird here, shot in grainy black and white, with industrial film footage spliced in with the concert sequences. But Stipe and company are firing on all cylinders, giving energetic performances of early classics “Stand,” “The One I Love,”  and “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”

When Stax Records filled up the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1972 for an all-day concert featuring the label’s biggest stars—Isaac Hayes, Albert King, the Staple Singers, the Bar-Kays, Rufus Thomas—it was known as the black Woodstock. Footage from the legendary concert is paired with poignant man-on-the-street interviews with residents of the Watts neighborhood, a nervous stand-up routine by a young Richard Pryor, and even appearances by concert emcee the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

The alpha and omega of rock concert movies, a documentary so shrouded in legend that it’s hard to see with clear eyes. Woodstock lives up to the hype—director Michael Wadleigh and his crew capture the complicated mood of the time, as the world shifts from the summer of love toward Watergate and the indulgence of the ’70s. And other festival docs might have greater individual performances, but "Woodstock" is jammed with essential sets—Richie Havens, Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Who, Joe Cocker, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix—from start to finish.