as a sex icon, while helping further expand his artistic control during his tenure at Motown. This commercial success also led to a much publicized tour for Gaye to promote Let's Get It On and expand on his repertoire as a live performer. Successful concert performances of the album's material helped Gaye gain an increasing popularity and fan base in the pop market, while earning him a reputation as one of the top live performers of the time. His performance at the Oakland Coliseum during the 1973-1974 tour was released on the 1974 LP Live!, which would serve as Gaye's only release during his sabbatical period in the mid-1970s. Critical reception Let's Get It On received positive reviews from music critics. Billboard called it "fine in terms of vocal attack and material [...] touches on the excellent in terms of instrumental support", while citing the title track and "Distant Lover" as the album's best recordings. Jon Landau of Rolling Stone found Gaye's performance on-par with that of What's Going On and wrote that "he continues to transmit that same degree of intensity, sending out near cosmic overtones while eloquently phrasing the sometimes simplistic lyrics". Although he viewed that it "lacks that album's series of highpoints", Landau commented that "it ebbs and flows, occasionally threatening to spend itself on an insufficiency of ideas, but always retrieved, just in time, by Gaye's performance. From first note to last, he keeps pushing and shoving, and if he sometimes takes one step back for every two ahead, he gets there just the same — and with style and spirit to spare". In Creem magazine, Robert Christgau called the record "post-Al Green What's Going On, which means it's about fucking rather than the human condition, thank the wholly holey". Since its initial reception, Let's Get It On has been viewed by writers as a milestone in soul music. In The Best Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time, Jimmy Guterman writes that the album was "a bit more conventional musically (soul crossing into mild funk) and much more focused lyrically than its predecessor, What's Going On". Chicago Tribune writer Greg Kot commended Gaye for using "the multi-tracked vocals perfected on What's Going On, this time to convey his most intimate desires", commenting that "while the album is replete with erotic imagery, both implied and explicit, it is also as much preoccupied with distance and unfulfilled