Critical Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Robert Christgau | (B–) |
| Rolling Stone | favorable 1971 |
| Rolling Stone | 2002 |
At Fillmore East was well received by music critics upon its release. George Kimball of Rolling Stone gave it a rave review and stated, "The Allman Brothers had many fine moments at the Fillmores, and this live double album (recorded March 12th and 13th of this year) must surely epitomize all of them." Kimball cited the band as "the best damn rock and roll band this country has produced in the past five years" and said of comparisons to the Grateful Dead at the time, "The range of their material and the more tenuous fact that they also use two drummers have led to what I suppose are inevitable comparisons to the Dead in its better days." In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau gave At Fillmore East a B– rating, indicating "a competent or mildly interesting record that will usually feature at least three worthwhile cuts." Christgau wrote that the songs "sure do boogie", although he ultimately found it musically aimless, stating "even if Duane Allman plus Dickey Betts does equal Jerry Garcia, the Dead know roads are for getting somewhere. That is, Garcia (not to bring in John Coltrane) always takes you someplace unexpected on a long solo. I guess the appeal here is the inevitability of it all."
In a retrospective review, Allmusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album five out of five stars and stated, " remains the pinnacle of the Allmans and Southern rock at its most elastic, bluesy, and jazzy". Mark Kemp of Rolling Stone commented that "these shows — recorded in New York on March 12th and 13th, 1971 — remain the finest live rock performance ever committed to vinyl", and the album "captures America's best blues-rock band at its peak".
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