Rock 'n' Roll Animal

The original release held five songs, four of them first recorded by the Velvet Underground. Reed's band was Pentti Glan on drums, Prakash John on bass, Ray Colcord on keyboards and Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter on guitars. Rolling Stone's Paul Nelson, who was at the Academy of Music that night, wrote that the new band began to play spectacular, even majestic, rock and roll. Robert Christgau called it a live album with a reason for living. Paul Morley, writing in NME in 1979, thought it and its sequel wrecked the beauty of Reed's greatest songs.

The album reached 26 in Britain and 45 in the United States, where it stayed on the Billboard 200 for 28 weeks and earned Reed his first gold certification in 1978. More of the same concert came out in 1975 as Lou Reed Live.