It is the band's only live album that was recorded with the classic line-up of lead vocalist Roger Daltrey, guitarist Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon.

Consequently, they booked the show at Leeds University, along with one at Hull City Hall the following day, specifically to record a live album.

[5] The band were rehearsing and touring regularly, and Townshend had settled on using the Gibson SG Special as his main stage instrument; its lightweight and thin body allowed him to play faster than other guitars.

[7][a] The group were concerned that Tommy had been promoted as "high art" by manager Kit Lambert and thought their stage show stood in equal importance to that album's rock-opera format.

[14] The full show opened with Entwistle's "Heaven And Hell" and included most of Tommy, but these were left off the album in place of earlier hits and more obscure material.

"Summertime Blues" was rearranged to include power chords, a key change, and Entwistle singing the authority figure lines (e.g.: "Like to help you son, but you're too young to vote") in a deep-bass voice.

These include a brief extract of "See Me, Feel Me" and the ending of "Sparks" from Tommy, and part of "Naked Eye" that was recorded for the follow-up album Lifehouse (which was ultimately abandoned in favour of Who's Next).

The original cover opened out, gatefold-style, and had a pocket on either side of the interior, with the record in a paper sleeve on one side and 12 facsimiles of various memorabilia on the other, including a photo of the band from the My Generation photoshoot in March 1965,[21] handwritten lyrics to the "Listening to You" chorus from Tommy, the typewritten lyrics to "My Generation", with hand written notes, a receipt for smoke bombs, a rejection letter from EMI,[22] and the early black "Maximum R&B" poster showing Pete Townshend wind-milling his Rickenbacker.

Part of the bass track from the Hull show was missing from the master tape, which was replaced with the performance from the Leeds gig where necessary.

[1] Jonathan Eisen of Circus magazine felt that it flowed better than Tommy and that not since that album had there been one "quite so incredibly heavy, so inspired with the kind of kinetic energy that The Who have managed to harness here.

[30] In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Bruce Eder felt that the album was seen as a model of excellence for live rock and roll during the 1970s; that it was The Who's best up to that point, and that there was "certainly no better record of how this band was a volcano of violence on-stage, teetering on the edge of chaos but never blowing apart.

"[28] In a review of its 1995 CD reissue, Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly asserted that it showed why The Who were important: "Few bands ever moved a mountain of sound around with this much dexterity and power.

"[3] Who biographer Dave Marsh has praised the album as "so molten with energy at times it resembles the heavy metal of Deep Purple and the atomic blues of Led Zeppelin ..... absolutely non-stop hard rock".