‘Lady Grinning Soul’ – David Bowie

David Bowie was never afraid to try anything when it came to live performance. If it found its way onto an album, it didn’t take that long for him to turn it into a theatrical piece when it came time for him to work his magic live. Although Ziggy Stardust managed to have his entire tale told on the live stage, there are some pieces from his Americanised cousin that never got the recognition that they deserved.

While Aladdin Sane is enough to eclipse Bowie’s former album in many respects, ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ was a song much too studio-tampered to work live. There were certainly pieces that could have worked like the acoustic guitar, but considering how great a role the orchestra plays in bringing the mood of the track together, Bowie was never going to be able to make it work unless he channelled his inner Sinatra and was able to get an entire crowd of musicians behind him to fill out those massive string lines.

Still, ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ feels hidden in the perfect way at the end of Aladdin Sane, almost like the dramatic closer to Bowie’s time in America. His glam rock reign was still in full swing, but this is the one song where it sounded like he needed to ditch the rock and roll clubs for a grandiose ballroom to pull it off properly.

‘Tearjerker’ – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Everything great about Red Hot Chili Peppers was always based on whatever happened in the moment. Some of their best songs have come out of jams, and it’s not hard to look at some of the band’s most celebrated tracks and see Anthony Kiedis’s lyrics look like a damn word salad. There were moments where he could get introspective, but right when he opened himself up on ‘Under the Bridge,’ he closed himself off again when it came to talking about one of the greatest artists of his generation.

While no one from the band wanted to relive the One Hot Minute era, ‘Tearjerker’ is one of their finest songs, written in tribute to Kurt Cobain. Compared to a tune like ‘Knock Me Down’ that pays tribute to Hillel Slovak, this is one of Kiedis’s most honest lyrics, talking about how much he loved Cobain’s music and how much it must have hurt him to deal with his own ailments as well as get propped up like he was the voice of a generation all the time.

Even though a good chunk of One Hot Minute got thrown out the window the minute that John Frusciante returned to the band, there’s a good chance even the guitarist would love to perform this kind of track. After all, the Peppers were the ones who brought Nirvana out on one of their first major tours, so bringing this out on Cobain’s birthday one of these days would be a nice way for them to bring everything full circle.

‘I Don’t Want To Know’ – Fleetwood Mac

For the longest time, seeing Fleetwood Mac live had people buying concert tickets for everything but the music. Everyone 100% knew about the band’s inner turmoil, and it’s hard to look at the band’s fights onstage and not make it look a little bit voyeuristic at times. But for an album as revered as Rumours is to this day, there is still one elephant in the room that hardly anyone wants to talk about.

Although the B-side ‘Silver Springs’ has met the stage numerous times, the reason why it wasn’t included was because of ‘I Don’t Want To Know,’ which the band elected to include because it was a shorter song. Whereas Stevie Nicks was anywhere from annoyed to hostile about the fact that her song didn’t get played, this is a welcome substitution, complete with her and Lindsey Buckingham singing the harmonies the Everly Brothers would have been proud to hear.

Then again, if you look at every piece of Rumours, this would always be the last song that any of the band wanted to perform live. I mean, it’s still a good song, but if all it does is remind you of the hellscape of recording, why would anyone want the chance to pick at that old wound whenever they go out on tour?

‘When The Tigers Broke Free’ – Pink Floyd

Every piece of The Wall was meant to be a massive production. Even if Roger Waters ruled Pink Floyd with an iron hand to get what he wanted, it’s not like he didn’t deliver when it came to the lavish stage designs that the band worked on when first bringing their rock opera to life. But for all of the great moments that they have had recreating the entire story over the years, there’s a major piece of exposition that keeps falling by the wayside.

While it was included in the film version of the album, ‘When the Tigers Broke Free’ is more essential than what appeared on the record. Fans have always known about Pink’s relationship with his mother, but this gives everyone more context about his father, with Waters even thinking enough of the tune to include it on separate versions of The Final Cut one album later. If you look at what they were working with live, there’s a good chance this would drag everything down.

Even if it were put in the right spot in the story, though, making this kind of ballad would always be a tough fit, coming off like a neverending slog of exposition before finally getting to the nitty-gritty where Pink starts sealing himself off. The whole album is about him slowly building up the walls around him until there’s nothing left, but while it’s easy to see the wall being put up on the live stage, this would have slowed it down to a glacial pace had they tried to shoehorn in any war footage to commemorate his father.

‘All The Wrong Reasons’ – Tom Petty

There was nothing really off the table whenever Tom Petty performed. He had a wealth of classics to choose from both in and out of the Heartbreakers, but there was no telling whether they would throw audiences a curveball by playing a deep cut or stretching out one of their covers to keep the energy flowing throughout the gig. When an audience starts catching on to songs sounding the same, though, it wouldn’t be that hard for them to call the heartland rocker out on it.

While ‘All The Wrong Reasons’ deserves to be among the greatest songs Petty ever wrote, it’s clear that it has an older brother in his solo career. For anyone who only knows Petty for ‘American Girl,’ this is practically the sequel to ‘Free Fallin,’ having almost the exact same chords and Petty having a wordless chorus that sounds like the melody from his first hit played in reverse.

Then again, the story and the melody are a lot more fleshed-out than the first version, with this one adding in a slice-of-life story about kids running away from their problems and getting into all sorts of trouble when they realise what the world has to offer. ‘Free Fallin’ might be the dream scenario for someone looking to live out their teenage years again, but ‘All The Wrong Reasons’ might be the more mature look at that topic.

‘Mama Said’ – Metallica

There’s a good chance that most hardened Metallica fans get scared when any song from the Load series comes up in the band’s setlist. While some interesting moments came out of their flirtations with hard rock and alternative music, a lot of people felt betrayed the minute that they saw their favourite band in eyeliner and the kind of haircuts that made them look like a glammed-out version of U2. Even if the music was considered sell-out garbage, James Hetfield still had a lot to unpack regarding his personal demons.

‘The God That Failed’ briefly touched on Hetfield’s estranged relationship with his mother, but this is the kind of country tune ripped straight out of Waylon Jennings’s playbook, complete with a fair bit of twang. As fate would have it, the kind of people who bang their heads don’t always wear cowboy hats in their spare time, and while Hetfield still loved the tune, many of his performances would be reserved for times when Metallica wasn’t working together.

Though Hetfield does have a history of playing pieces of the song, they are either limited to solo acoustic performances or involve bringing in non-Metallica members to perform with him, like when he performed the track on the Country Music Television show Crossroads and performed it a handful of times with people like Jerry Cantrell. Since the entire band managed to do a decent cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Tuesday’s Gone,’ though, maybe they could benefit from taking a stab at this classic.

‘My Man’ – Eagles

Some songs are never meant to be played more than once. As much as people like the idea of playing music to the people, some tunes hit a raw note every time they are played to the point where it’s impossible for someone to get through it without cracking up. So when Eagles decided to leave a song like ‘My Man’ out of the set, just remember that it was done out of respect for the fallen heroes that came before.

Bernie Leadon had already spent years working with Gram Parsons, and after the country-rock icon entered the great saloon in the sky, Leadon still had some baggage he had to unpack. And even if the song wasn’t meant to be played live, this is Leadon’s best composition for the group, telling the story of his journey with Parsons and how he will still be heard worldwide as long as that hickory wind keeps blowing.

But even for a band that likes to take their fans on a journey, something this personal may have been a little too close for comfort. There are pieces of it that would have worked live, but anyone looking to knock back a few drinks while listening to ‘Tequila Sunrise’ doesn’t need to get put to sleep or have their heart ripped out the minute that Leadon started singing.

‘You Know You’re Right’ – Nirvana

Ever since 1994, fans have always debated what Nirvana would have done had Kurt Cobain been able to conquer his demons. His problems may have meant the band taking a few months off from touring and recording, but everyone would have rather had Cobain stick around than to see him burn out far too quickly. And judging by the final song that the band were working on at the time of his death, the next phase of the group was bound to be even heavier than what had come before.

Although the band had roadtested pieces of ‘You Know You’re Right’ under the working title ‘On a Mountain,’ their final song was the first time Cobain sang the track in full with lyrics. Despite some sections that sound hard to listen to given Cobain’s state of mind at the time, this was one of the purest songs he could have ever written, singing about how he’s never found it easier to feel pain.

We would have probably had to wait a bit longer to hear any new music, but listening to this, coupled with Cobain’s Unplugged performance, confirmed that he was on the verge of something big. Nirvana was going to shape the future regardless, but it’s a shame that it was a future that Cobain didn’t see himself in.

‘Mother Love’ – Queen

Queen didn’t need to make any new music after 1990 if they didn’t want to. It was clear that Freddie Mercury was going to lose his battle with AIDs, and things were looking more dire every single time he made a public appearance. Even for a man facing his final hours, though, Mercury hadn’t turned his back on a fight and was not about to start when making his last album.

While most of Made in Heaven was never meant to be played live, ‘Mother Love’ is still one of the band’s masterpieces for how patched together it is. Since most of the album was stitched together through bits the band had hanging around, this was the final vocal that Mercury recorded in his life, and despite having pneumonia, he still managed to sound two times better than most of his competition when tearing through the high notes in the middle of the song.

For any band member, playing this song live would have been sacrilege, especially at the moment on the record, when everyone’s collective heart breaks when Brian May starts singing the sections that Mercury didn’t have time to record before the end. Regardless of whether or not ‘Mother Love’ will ever make it to the live stage, though, it still stands as a testament to the man who faced every musical challenge head-on and managed to look death in the face on that studio floor.

‘A Day in the Life’ – The Beatles

By the time The Beatles got off the road in 1966, playing a song live wasn’t even an issue for them. They had grown past the idea of playing concerts for their fans, and their turn as a studio-only group is still one of the most impressive runs any artist has ever gone on throughout their lifetime. And if ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was already impossible to reproduce, ‘A Day in the Life’ was them playing the studio like an instrument.

Whereas most of Sgt Pepper is attributed to Paul McCartney, ‘A Day in the Life’ is the purest collaboration he ever had with John Lennon. While both tunes they were working on were in completely different keys, their decision to smush them together made for one of the greatest crescendos in the group’s history, complete with an orchestra playing absolute chaos twice before building to that last chord during the grand finale.

Even if the Fab Four knew they would never see this song meet the stage, it didn’t seem to matter much. It was clear that they were turning into more technicians than musicians half the time, and even if they couldn’t play everything the same way twice, all they needed was the one official take to get people to stare on in amazement.