Most influential tours of all time

Lots of great bands throughout the first run of tours. I enjoyed the first tour the most, caught several shows. Seeing the Rollins Band and Butthole Surfers in the daylight, outside, was a trip. Especially the Surfers. Seeing the band live for years before this tour, it was really odd to see them in that enviroment. Still, really fun!
Ice T and also with Body Count were tight. Fishbone, always killer live, were a treat. Jane's Addiction raged. I loved the first few albums. After that, don't care. lol.

Side-stage on those early tours, at least on the east-coast, had some great acts. Favorite being, old school hiphop crew, The Goats.

 

Pink Floyd stopped touring in 1981.

 

Pink Floyd stopped touring with Roger Waters in 1981. The ticket for the show I saw in '94 said "Pink Floyd" on it and I deliberately didn't take any hallucinogens before the show so I certainly wasn't hallucinating the gig!

Now, as to the topic at hand...
The CSNY reunion tour in 1974 would get my vote as most influential. It showed that rock bands could do an entire tour mainly consisting of big stadium shows; it also showed that a rock band could play acoustic music in a big venue. Both McCartney and Led Zeppelin witnessed the CSNY Wembley Arena show, and whaddya know, next time Zep and Wings went on tour both bands prominently featured acoustic sets in the performance, presumably because CSNY showed it could be done, the technology now existed that it could be done without sounding like total crap. It may have been typical Stephen Stills cocaine bluster when he said "Nobody has done anything except to equal what we did in 1974", but he wasn't really wrong, either.

 

I don't disagree about the scale of CSNY 74 being significant, but I would point out that Led Zeppelin had been doing acoustic sets as a routine part of their show since 1970, while their '75 US tour actually didn't include an acoustic set.

 

True, but in the early 70's Zeppelin's acoustic sets were mostly low key affairs- at the Earls Court '75 shows and the 1977 tour they made a big deal about the return of the acoustic sets, which was funny for the '77 tour considering the acoustic set took up about twenty minutes or so of a three plus hour gig Zeppelin's acoustic sets were never on the same scale of CSNY's. If memory serves the first half of CSNY's 1969 and 1970 shows were acoustic and the acoustic sets in '74 easily took up a third of the three plus hour gigs if not more some nights. Hell, as far as that goes I'd be brazen to say that it was bands like CSNY and the other California bands Robert Plant loved (with a smattering of the British folk guitarists Jimmy Page liked to steal from tossed in for good measure) that inspired Zeppelin to play acoustic sets in the first place.

 

Yes did "in the round" ten years before that.

 

The only issue I was querying here was whether LZ's eventual decision to reintroduce an acoustic set in 1975 - the exact same four songs as on their 72 tour - was directly influenced by them seeing CSNY in 1974. Personally I'm not convinced, but without further evidence there's not much else to say really.

 

I would say the Who's 1969 tours(s) featuring Tommy was groundbreaking / influential in terms of showcasing a concept album & onstage storytelling.

 

Guns N' Roses - Get in The Ring/Use Your Illusions Tour (1991-1993)

-just under 200 dates worldwide
-huge, expansive stage set up
-also did co-headling for summer of '92 with Metallica

-tour also serves as "what not to do" as a paid performer (Axl)

 

Genesis - 1981 Abacab tour, for the first use of Varilites, which the band was a major investor.
Grateful Dead - Europe 1972 tour

And not a tour, but King Crimson at the Stones Hyde Park concert, 1969 before the release of their first album. Listen to the large crowd erupt at the end of Court Of The Crimson King.

 

the beatles tours made everyone realise that there was no way (at the time) to produce music that large crowds could hear. the cogs started turning and p.a. systems started to get bigger, amps got more powerful and essentially the whole idea of arena spectaculars was born
dylan going electric

 

And I believe it was the first tour where the artist collected the money from the door and paid the promoter.

 

The Beatles winter tour 1963.
Beatlemania spread and took off....

And as others stated..Dylan solo in 65 UK tour, then tour with The Band (Hawks)...then 66 tour.
Elvis southern city tours 1954 thru 1955.

 

Considering that they retired from live touring for 18 months immediately following the tour and neither they nor anybody else used the Wall of Sound technology again, why would you consider it "game-changing"?

 

Wasn't there a Ramones/Johnny Thunders tour of the UK that influenced a lot of the British punks?

The US 90s ska revival was launched in part by a pair of Special Beat tours and the Skatalites/Toasters "Skavoovee" tour in 1993.

 

I'd say the few shows where Hendrix opened for the Monkees was influential. It's still a nice WTF to this day.

And the Who 1969 Tommy tour was a big one. They played a bunch of non-traditional venues, opening them up to other rock acts. Plus, there was the marathon shows the Who were playing, and the sound, and the ... oh... most everything else about this tour.

 

Game-changing in terms of "how-not-to-do" maybe?

 

"Wings Over America" 1976. Never heard live sound that clear before in a big arena. Especially Paul's piano. I think that tour established a new standard.

 

The return of the acoustic set in '77 was mainly to enable Plant to have a sit down as he was still in pain from his leg knackered in the car accident. Without that I doubt they'd have reintroduced it. CSNY was more of an influence on the third album's sound than any live playing imo.

 

That Fleetwood Mac tour when Dinky Dawson moved the mixing desk out in front of the stage.

 

I would probably hesitate to throw it up there as the MOST influential tour of all time, but I firmly believe that Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation and Pump tours spanning from 1988 to 1990, were vastly influential on the course of rock music in general, and are still under-rated to this day. You had Guns & Roses in the mix, as the supposed new "heirs apparent" to the throne, opening shows on some of the dates and studying their heroes up close. You had Nirvana and Pearl Jam, plus all of grunge and alternative music, waiting in the wings, about to happen bigly in the future (Kurt loved Aerosmith, then briefly hated them, then suddenly loved them again during this exact time frame); and most of all, you had an iconic American '70s hard rock band, that everybody had discounted and thought was washed up/finished/dead, so many people had written them off.... but then they suddenly came roaring back, musically at the top of their game. Just sit down sometime, and listen to some of those shows from those tours -- they are excellent, and they're like a blueprint for the big venue live sound of Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam yet to come in the '90s; it's also the exact blueprint for live Guns & Roses as a perennial stadium level act, and ALSO the sound of '80s hair metal rapidly dying for lack of oxygen (because the return of Aerosmith sucked it all up), and you can hear '70s arena/stadium classic rock suddenly reborn and becoming extremely cool again, right before your very ears.

Even Neil Young suddenly got his mojo back in 1989-90, which let's face it, probably had something to do with Neil running away from Aerosmith and the whole Geffen label situation, sending him reeling back to Reprise, and God bless Neil for doing it, the right move for him! And lo and behold, in 1989 Mick and Keith suddenly bury the hatchet after YEARS of idle bickering and feuding, and the Stones miraculously come back triumphant again, with a mega-tour and slick new album, so what's up with the timing on that? There were a lot of other "ripple" effects on music and other bands and genres, that were somewhat attributable to the Aerosmith live comeback, if you dig around for them -- especially after the success of the "Walk This Way" remake, which can't be overstated. The fact of the matter is, loads of stuff immediately started happening to the music scene in that period, the minute when Aerosmith got their act together and came roaring back, kicking butt as a live band. It's like a great many people all woke up from a deep slumber, all at the same time.

 

The Who - Tommy - 1969/1970. Opened up so many new venues for rock acts, including major opera houses.

 

Hopefully y

Hopefully your reference is seeing him live and not the album due to about 50 percent or more was overdubbed for official release.

 

I may be wrong but Led Zep were the first major band I recall playing 3 or 4 hour sets on a normal basis.

Again, it may not be the record but Prince's 21 Nights stint at London's 02 around 2007 was a long stint at a single big arena.

The Stax revue tours of the UK and Europe by the likes of Otis Redding and Booker T and the MGs in the mid 60s were notable, not only for the music. Many of the artists had never been outside the US before and were surprised that they played to mixed race audiences (mostly white) and didn't encounter racial discrimination in trying to eat in restaurants etc. A whole new revelation. (No political comment intended...).

 

Now, someone with more interest in the band may be able to provide more detail, however wasn't Pearl Jam the first band to officially record and release each show from any given tour - can't remember which tour - was never really a fan.

I know lots do it now and Dylan and The Dead have both done it retrospectively.