Rock n Roll Animal is a live album by American musician Lou Reed, released in February 1974 by RCA Records. In its original form, it features five songs, four of which are songs by the Velvet Underground. The musicians were Pentti Glan (drums) and Prakash John (bass), Ray Colcord (keyboards), and Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter on guitars. (The two guitarists would later form the basis of the second Alice Cooper band, beginning on Welcome to My Nightmare, which also features Glan and John.)

The album was recorded live on December 21, 1973 (1973-12-21), at Howard Stein's Academy of Music in New York City. A sleeper hit, it peaked at No. 26 in the UK and No. 45 on the Billboard 200 album chart during a 28-week stay before earning Reed's first RIAA gold certification in 1978.

Paul Nelson of Rolling Stone magazine was in attendance that night. Writing about Rock n Roll Animal and its sequel, Lou Reed Live, which were both recorded at the same show, he recalled: "As it happens, I had seen Reed and a mediocre pickup band at Lincoln Center some months earlier in his first New York non-Velvets appearance and he was tragic in every sense of the word. So, at the Academy, I didn't expect much and when his new band came out and began to play spectacular, even majestic, rock & roll, management's strategy for the evening became clear: Elevate the erratic and unstable punkiness of the centerpiece into punchy, swaggering grandeur by using the best arrangements, sound and musicians that money could buy; the trimmings, particularly guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, were awesome enough so that if Reed were merely competent, the concert would be a success."

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