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Violence et politique

Violence and Non-Violence at Rock Concerts: 1970s French Society Confronted With Its Contradictions

Joann Élart
Traduction de Angela Krieger
Cet article est une traduction de :
Violence et non-violence dans les concerts rock ou la société française des années 1970 face à ses contradictions [fr]

Résumé

“The hopefulness of ‘Love Power’ has gone out the window,” Michel Lancelot wrote in 1971, adding that “just about everywhere, the revolt is armed” (Campus, 1971). The author was describing the state of violence on American campuses, comparing it with the fate of public figures who championed non-violence. In France, this dichotomy spread from the usual arena of public demonstrations and found its way into pop music festivals held in the South as well as a few concerts in Paris, like the Palais des Sports, where violence erupted among rioters and ticket dodgers on January 31, 1971. On that occasion, France was in the midst of discovering pop music, and its soothing effect was said to have dissuaded the young audience from joining in the fray. The contradiction was not lost on the journalists of the time, who repeatedly noticed the apathetic, intellectual audiences who attended concerts by bands like Soft Machine. A completely different atmosphere reigned at Johnny Hallyday’s shows, which attracted a fringe group of aggressive, rebellious roughnecks and led to the implementation of considerable security measures to protect the idol. The vocabulary of violence and non-violence was systematically employed in newspaper columns to describe the wild energy emanating from performers and audience members during live performances. It was used to analyze the musical components of pop music and pub rock. Their harmonies, rhythms, intensity, loud volume, and lyrics left listeners with an impression of musical violence. The vocabulary of violence also became the norm for slogans created by advertising agencies in order to sell increasingly larger and louder amplifiers.

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Texte intégral

  • 1 Michel Lancelot, Campus (Paris: Albin Michel, 1971). The third part, entitled “L’homme condamné”, c (...)
  • 2 Ibid., 9.
  • 3 Ibid., “Le nouveau destin des hippies”, 23-35.
  • 4 Ibid., “Les Weathermen ont pris la relève”, 37-52.
  • 5 Ibid., 28.
  • 6 Ibid., 79. This issue was analyzed by comparing texts by Freud, Jung, Marcuse, Evola, and Mendel (I (...)
  • 7 Ibid., “Campus spécial Lanza del Vasto”, 91-108.
  • 8 Ibid., “Campus spécial Don Helder Camara”, 109-24.
  • 9 Ibid., “Campus spécial Martin Luther King”, 125-43.
  • 10 Ibid., “Campus spécial Mohandas Gandhi”, 145-63.

1In May 1971, a collection of transcripts from the Michel Lancelot’s notorious Europe 1 radio show Campus was published by Albin Michel in France.1 The first two parts, entitled “Les enfants face aux robots,” examine what the author deemed “the major choice facing a young man today … : violence or non-violence”2 Exploring everything from “the hippies’ new destiny” based on fantastical escapism à la Timothy Leary to the radicalization of young people confronted with police and military repression on American campuses3 and the terrorist acts of the Weathermen,4 Lancelot conceded that “the hopefulness of ‘Love Power’ has gone out the window” and that “just about everywhere, the revolt is armed.”5 The hope of non-violence, scarred by “civil unrest and its violent acts,”6 was fueled by Lanza del Vasto’s community experiments,7 Archbishop Dom Helder Camara’s denunciation of mistreatment in Brazil,8 and the trajectories of Martin Luther King9 and Mohandas Gandhi.10 Violence and non-violence became social issues, as conveyed in the movies of the time. A Clockwork Orange, for example, was released in Paris on April 21, 1972, and prohibited to those under the age of 18. Both topics also found their way into the constantly evolving realm of rock concerts, which was in the midst of a revolution.

2In July 1966, two years before the events of May 1968 in France and three years before Woodstock, Robert Baudelet undoubtedly sensed a change in the air when he published a special issue of Jazz Hot magazine entitled Rock & Folk. He confirmed this impression in the first editorial:

  • 11 Special issue Jazz Hot, Rock & Folk 220 bis (juillet 1966): 9.

At last, things are shifting! At last, “bubble gum” music—the music of the resigned, light music—no longer rules over the musical world unchallenged! It may well maintain its audience from older generations and retrograde nostalgics, but this dwindling audience has already shrunk considerably. / Music with a groove has taken over the world. This invasion of rhythm in the daily lives of millions of individuals would have been impossible without another revolution, the revolution of the mind; daddy’s conformity is in serious trouble. The success of the caustic, incendiary lyrics in some of today’s songs proves it.11

3The “music with a groove” and the “incendiary” lyrics were from the years of student revolution that took place in France between May 1968 and the passing of the Loi Debré in 1973. Doing away with the “light music” of the past, pop music itself was exerting a shift in mentality and opening up new realms of expression for audiences in search of new sensations. It was also the kind of music that the journalists examined in this paper described as “violent,” “powerful,” “urgent,” “insolent,” “mean,” “cruel,” “chaotic,” “devastating,” and “destructive”—an aggressive sort of music that led to either reactions of unrestrained violence or decidedly pacifist attitudes.

  • 12 Thomas Bacquet, “Le Rock en Haute-Normandie entre 1968 et 1977 à travers les annonces du Paris-Norm (...)
  • 13 This annex was listed as a dossier on the web portal Dezède: Thomas Bacquet and Joann Élart, eds., (...)

4This paper is primarily based on unique research conducted by Thomas Bacquet, specifically the voluminous annexes found in his master’s thesis,12 in which he inventoried advertisements and reviews of the main rock concerts held in the Upper Normandy region of France and published in the columns of the Paris-Normandie newspaper.13 Doing away with prejudices and expectations, it is also interesting to note that these references taken from a provincial newspaper are as valuable as those published in specialized magazines like Rock & Folk in that they provide concrete, material information describing a given band and its performance, material difficulties, sound issues, the ambience in the venue, the audience’s reactions, how young people were viewed, and aesthetic judgements related to the music of the time. In other words, the preoccupations that appear in this newspaper are unique and immensely different from the articles published in Rock & Folk. The richly illustrated monthly Rock & Folk was intended for passionate rock fans and committed to providing a regular overview of the latest news about national and international music; telegrams; readers’ letters; interviews; records of the month; articles and features about bands, musicians, producers, trends, and fashions; short ads; lists of clubs in Paris and the provinces; and advertisments for concerts. Rock & Folk did not actually devote much attention to concert reviews, field reporting, and audiences—especially not those in the provinces, except for major gatherings like the festivals held in the South of France. Using specialized press (Rock & Folk and Actuel) and regional press (Paris-Normandie), I shall discuss the potential connections between first pop music and violence and then pop music and non-violence before closing with an examination of the characteristics of “aggressive music” and “powerful music” in the early 1970s.

Fig. 1: Actuel 6 (mars 1971)

Fig. 1: Actuel 6 (mars 1971)

Drawing by Jo.

Pop Music and Violence: The Case of the Concert at the Palais des Sports on January 31, 1971

  • 14 See Christophe Pirenne, Le rock progressif anglais (1967-1977) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005), in p (...)
  • 15 Actuel 6 (mars 1971).
  • 16 See Paul Alessandrini, “Fête sauvage à Pavalas”, Rock & Folk 56 (septembre 1971): 11-12. Alessandri (...)

5The progressionist—more than progressive14—music that was commonly referred to as pop music in France was a vast field of experimentation and revolution, both musical and political, that perfectly mirrored the preoccupations of high school and university students during the turbulent years between 1968 and 1973. In March 1971, the magazine Actuel published a drawing by Jo. to illustrate its article “Free, Pop et politique” (Fig. 1). It depicts a Gibson SG hooked up to an amplifier, which is in fact a detonator that seems to advocate an “explosive” revolution through Agit-Pop music.15 For the Front de Libération des Jeunes (FLJ), “revolution was life”16 (Fig. 2): “We are an incredible force, ready to explode and blossom in a new world of freedom, justice, and love that we want to build with all those who fight” (Fig. 3). The symbol of this primarily Parisian youth in revolt, “shaken up” by pop music, was a guitar with a neck shaped like an arm and hand holding a flower and a gun (Figs. 2 and 3), a graphic oxymoron suggesting carefree and combattive young people heading off to war with “a flower in their guns”!

Fig. 2: Poster, “Live and conquer together” for a “wild international festival” organized by the FLJ in Montpellier, August 3-5, 1971

Fig. 2: Poster, “Live and conquer together” for a “wild international festival” organized by the FLJ in Montpellier, August 3-5, 1971

© Personal archives of Jean-Claude Vimont

Fig. 3: FLJ flyer, [1971]

Fig. 3: FLJ flyer, [1971]

© Personal archives of Jean-Claude Vimont

Fig. 4: FLJ flyer for a General Assembly in Jussieu, May 15, 1971

Fig. 4: FLJ flyer for a General Assembly in Jussieu, May 15, 1971

© Personal archives of Jean-Claude Vimont

  • 17 See Philippe Kœchlin, “Pop et violence ou les grosses ficelles”, special issue “Été pop,” Rock & Fo (...)
  • 18 Actuel 6 (mars 1971).

6But this vaguely politicized project17 undertaken by young people following the events of May 1968 was inseparable from the musical revolution, with pop music mobilizing the forces that were being directed at the revolution. In an attempt at self-justification, the FLJ presented itself as a generation that was “only just emerging,” while the “civilization” of the “bourgeois … was continually croaking” (Figs. 3 and 4). Actuel, which was sensitive to youthful expression in what was still a heavily supervised media environment, perfectly conveyed this musical warning in the following statement: “When the rhythm of the music changes, the walls of the city tremble.”18 (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5: Actuel 6 (mars 1971)

Fig. 5: Actuel 6 (mars 1971)

7In an article entitled “Free, pop et politique”, Actuel continued in the same vein, acknowledging the importance of rock concerts as a place for exchanging and debating ideas:

In France, pop equals helmets, batons, cops, iron rods, riot, repression, free concerts. … Since May 1969, the youth movement has been heavily punished, activists thrown in jail, political actions broken up or kept secret out of necessity. Outside of the factories or work, young people only have one place of their own where they can meet up: the pop concert. It provides a vast forum for underlying ideas, suppressed ideologies, and shared questions. This is a good reason to ban them, to limit the number of participants, to try to contain the phenomenon within the confines of a small group. / And yet, through music and related gatherings, an ideological exchange occurs, a culture takes shape, “demonstrations” are articulated, and concerts are the only potential places for this at the moment.

Fig. 6: “Revolution at the Palais”

Fig. 6: “Revolution at the Palais”

Rock & Folk 50 (mars 1971): 73.

  • 19 Actuel 6 (mars 1971).
  • 20 “Due to recent incidents, the Théâtre du 8e (Lyon) is canceling all pop concerts (Pink Floyd, Led Z (...)
  • 21 Rock & Folk 50 (mars 1971): 74-75.

8All of the observations explored in the March 1971 issue allude to the “violent celebrations at the Palais des Sports”19 that occurred on January 31 (Fig. 6) and which resulted in the cancelation of many pop concerts planned across France.20 And yet, when Gong, Kevin Ayers Whole World, Soft Machine, Yes, and Iron Butterfly came for a New Year’s concert held by the École de Travaux Public ten years after the three international rock festivals, it seemed to give the illusion that Paris was once again part of the international music scene. Events would decide otherwise, however, as a disillusioned Philippe Paringaux recalled in Rock & Folk21:

Cops everywhere, helmeted, armed to the teeth, and terribly threatening. Millions of cops. And endless provocations, insults, and threats to the poor young people trying to get in to hear the music, their music. The young people, practically children, are calm and do not respond to the insults. All the while, the cops, mad with rage, beat them with their batons and pummel them. There you have it, that’s how it should have happened for things to be simple and for the logic to be respected. Strangely, it was the exact opposite. Nothing that evening happened as it usually does, and neither did it afterward. … Everything happened the other way around. There were only twenty or so measly cops in cloaks in front of the doors, and the sudden, violent shockwave sent them flying apart. Young people—very young—pounced on them with iron rods, crushed them with such astonishing aggression, and smashed the doors to get in. Flabbergasted and bloodied, the policemen quickly called for backup.

9Then activists took to the stage to assert that “young people should be liberated and ticket prices made accessible for all, that pop music should belong to everyone and to do so should grow wild and sponaneous if needed.” “Pop music belongs to young people, all young people, and not to capitalism and a few privileged people.” The doors were closed, the young people were surrounded, some teargas was fired in the room, and the crowd demanded music. To try and appease the situation, Didier Malherbe from Gong and Lol Coxhill from Kevin Ayers Whole World improvised a duet on their saxophones, and disaster was averted; the organizers did the same by declaring free entry for all. Paringaux described the young rioters, trying to explain their motives as follows:

Some young people holding iron rods and broken bottles surrounded the English musicians, who were uncomfortable. It’s hard to know what they wanted exactly. Others continued exploring, visiting every corner of the vast building, breaking something here and there or [beating up] a little guy who resisted them too strongly. … Near the stage, a few individuals were systematically smashing the seats with crowbars. They would stop, dance, applaud, and then stubbornly begin again. … Then it was a party against a backdrop of uneasiness and fear … when the Palais des Sports’s food supply was abruptly dumped on everyone’s heads for a whole hour. It began with the bread, armfuls of baguettes flying through the air, and then there were thousands of ice cream bars—so many that you could choose the flavor—, pâté, sausage, cognac, and billions of candies and chewing gum, and even champagne. … [T]he crowd … had become complicit. Beer and fruit juice galore.

10Paringaux continued his account by describing a veritable communion between the young people who did not know each other a few minutes earlier, all “through the miracle of… consumption”! As all this was happening, the rioters completed their work: one went at it on a piano backstage, “death to bourgeois music”; another patiently broke thousands of cups, one after the other, occasionally shouting, “death to consumer society.” A rumor started going around that one or two policemen had died. At midnight, before Soft Machine was set to go on, the electricity was cut in order to put an end to the chaos: “Sean Murphy, the Soft Machine’s manager, … angrily shouted into the mic. ‘Fuck your bloody police!’” And then the attempt to occupy the Palais des Sports was aborted, and the doors were opened; the “riot police … started attacking with such wild audacity … . Many were fifteen, sixteen years old.” Then “they fled, smashing a few windows. Inside the Palais, a few individuals calmly tried to start a fire.”

  • 22 Rock & Folk 50 (mars 1971): 27.
  • 23 Philippe Aubert, “L’agit-pop”, Actuel 13 (août 1971): 14. On the banning of festivals in France, se (...)

11In the same issue, the wild night sparked outrage in readers’ letters22 like the following: “We’re all ashamed to be French. On the one hand, there’s the blatant provocation, the excessive politicization, vandalism, stupidity. / On the other hand, there’s the silent provocation, easily wielded grenades and batons wielded even more easily, the blind savagery, stupidity. Human stupidity… we always come back to that. … [W]e were there, all of us, at the Palais des Sports, hungry for music, the kind that makes your guts move to the same rhythm. We’re still hungry, still… because of us silly French people. Disgusted.” And there was this letter: “Your little left-wing darlings have once again destroyed the Palais des Sports. Pop music is left-wing, declared Alessandrini and his clique.” In another letter, a reader suggested, “Get a little high, get stoned, shoot up, get laid, and stop ruining things with your political venue. You’ve seen what this combination leads to and has led to at the Palais des Sports. OK, we had our fun, but now it’s time for music: the end.” In his article, “L’Agit-Pop,” Philippe Aubert said that “this connection [between leftism and music] is also made by the government, which explains the banning of festivals (all gatherings involving young people are dangerous) as well as the incidents last May that opposed law enforcement and young people waiting in line to see Amougies at the Cinéma Celtic.”23

  • 24 Rock & Folk 54 (juillet 1971): 26.
  • 25 Ibid., 25.
  • 26 Ibid., 26.

12This extremely tense environment led Bruno Coquatrix’s assistant Jean-Michel Boris, to give up organizing pop concerts at the the Olympia beginning in 1971, notably the Musicoramas festival in conjunction with Lucien Morisse’s radio show on Europe 1. A reader of Rock & Folk and Melody Maker,24 he “no longer wanted to worry about fights potentially turning into disasters,”25 even though he liked the music. In an interview with Philippe Kœchlin, he admitted, “I’m a bit disappointed in audiences. For me, calling the police, now I don’t enjoy it at all, but I’m obliged to do so by a certain number of people who consider us the exploiters when we’re the ones being exploited by the bands. … There are ticket dodgers; I’ve always seen it … But then to politicize the problem and become violent, there I no longer agree.” Recalling a recent incident at the Santana concert at the Olympia, which got out of hand, he admitted that he preferred to stop rather than “ending up like the Palais des Sports.” Kœchlin reminded him that “there had been damage and destruction at other times, like during Johnny Hallyday’s early days,” to which Boris replied, “That was different. … There were roughnecks … , but they paid for their tickets; they wanted to be as close to the artist as possible, but they didn’t politicize the thing.” He finally conceded, “Thirty-eight years, well, I leave each Musicorama a little bit more exhausted mentally and physically. Listen, I admit it, I’m scared, but I don’t want to die at forty. Every time now, I feel like I’m this close to a disaster. It’s impossible. If young people were self-disciplined, if they could get organized themselves, it would be wonderful… but right now, there’s tension, it’s unbearable, my ticker’s hurting, really hurting... I’ll admit to you that, rather selfishly, that’s probably what’s pushing me to give up the most right now. I admit that I don’t have the courage.” 26Those three hundred ticket dodgers “hog the front rows, and … take them away from those who paid. So those who paid defend themselves. … And then it’s a brawl.”

Pop Music and Non-Violence

  • 27 Actuel 6 (mars 1971).

13And yet, as Actuel conceded, “the pop musician is far from being an exemplary activist. The thought of getting up early and handing out flyers does not fill him with enthusiasm.” 27In his article, Aubert made the following disenchanted observation:

One of the obstacles to combining musical revolt and political revolt … is apathy, tranquility, dreaming, and escape through pop music. As the saying goes, “When they listen to that, they forget to throw stones.” This is partly true. For many adults, pop festivals are reassuring. Young people are calm together there, outside of the old world, and they therefore do not pose a threat to this world. While it is true that they listen to a certain number of bands, it is false when these groups are politicized. Of course, spending an hour with the Bee Gees never led someone to start a strike. It’s even quite the contrary. A certain type of pop music is about as much like bubble gum as it is like pomade. The music is syrupy and the listener sleepy. Alas, the number of bands that can be classified as part of this soporific trend is considerable. The Beatles themselves are no strangers to it. But after listening to Country Joe, Richie Havens, the Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, and many others, the audience is forced to feel different: it likes music that breaks away from the usual criteria and enters “the margins.”

  • 28 Both groups headlined the evening at the Roundhouse in London on October 15, 1966. The music, at le (...)
  • 29 Bruno Le Trividic, “Nemo dans la jungle”, Paris-Normandie, 21 février 1974. Pirenne cites Melody Ma (...)
  • 30 See: Bacquet; Bacquet and Élart.
  • 31 “Julie Driscoll sur la côte normande”, Paris-Normandie, 5 août 1968. Concert, August 2, 1968, casin (...)

14In his view, two groups invited listeners to enter these pop margins: Pink Floyd and Soft Machine.28 But going there did not necessarily mean acting violently or behaving like a delinquent. Unlike the hysteria produced by the frenzied rhythms of rock and roll, was this apparent softening of morals the effect that this “new” progressionist or progressive music had on young minds? Shouldn’t we simply distinguish between the various types audiences at rock concerts of the time, between the aging generation of the 1960s and the crowds of students between 1968-1973—in other words, between “rockers and cerebrals,” to borrow Bruno Le Trividic’s expression? 29Wouldn’t it be appropriate to stop focusing the history of rock on the French capital and large gatherings and instead follow the back roads, which would allow us to put an end to generalizations and clichés. In the Lower Seine region during that time, it is precisely interesting to note that violence was not always where one expected to find it.30 During a concert given by Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger in Saint-Valery-en-Caux in 1968, the organizers were expecting heated reactions, since thousands of hippies had gathered at the casino and were beginning to grow impatient after the stars of the show did not go on at the scheduled time.31

  • 32 Ibid.

The manager of the casino started to worry, seeing his casino filled with a crowd of young people, long-haired boys in flowered shirts, and short-haired girls wearing pants. It was a very picturesque and typical group, almost hippies. … The silence was broken by impatient whistling. … The worst was expected, and nothing happened. When the singer and musicians announced that it was over, everyone left peacefully, with not even an encore and no demonstrations.32

  • 33 François Vicaire, “L’Open-Circus : un spectacle trépidant pour un public qui ne l’est pas”, Paris-N (...)
  • 34 “Les Martin-Circus aux Oubliettes : une ‘tiède’ démonstration de pop-music”, Paris-Normandie, 19 ja (...)
  • 35 “Déception à Elbeuf : le ‘Deep Purple’ n’est pas venu”, Paris-Normandie, 3 novembre 1970. Concert, (...)
  • 36 Bruno Le Trividic, “‘Deep Purple’ absent : ‘Zoo’ a consolé le public”, Paris-Normandie, 4 novembre (...)
  • 37 Roger Balavoine, “Les Soft Machine : une stupéfiante révélation,” Paris-Normandie, 7 mars 1970. Con (...)
  • 38 “‘Triangle’ au Cirque : une ambiance survoltée,” Paris-Normandie, 15 mai 1972. Concert, May 12, 197 (...)

15Intrigued by this new kind of youth movement, François Vicaire, a journalist at Paris-Normandie, deemed it “a bit too well behaved.”33 Aubert from Actuel even called them apathetic, tranquil, and dreamy. A few weeks earlier, Aubert observed that, even if the ambience at Martin Circus’s concert in Rouen was relaxed (an ambience that was “directly proportional to the volume of the instruments”), strangely “the audience did not react as much as one might have hoped” and “most of the time” was in a position of “attentive listening” and “that’s all.” He concluded, “Is pop becoming the kind of thing that ‘settles you down?’”34 Far from the turmoil surrounding the FLJ in the capital or the festivals in the South of France and the accompanying demands, spectacular actions, and revolutionary opinions, the audiences of the pop generation generally consumed music passively and non-violently without even being aware of it. The commentators were even more surprised by this type of apathy since the music was full of energy, strength, volume, and even a certain violence that could easily lead to a riot. The French audience’s generalized sluggishness sometimes demotivated bands, causing them to cancel whole series of concerts. Such was the case of Deep Purple, who, “tired … of the French public’s indifference,” 35decided to end their 1970 French tour after playing at the Olympia in Paris (Fig. 8). The last-minute replacement by the French group Zoo caused “a small stir,” but the audience, which was “good-natured … chose music over a riot.” 36 While some bands were disappointed, others adapted, notably Soft Machine in 1970 because “the audience, which filled the Centre culturel Maxime-Gorki to overflowing, seemed awed by this music … ; it did not get seriously ‘heated,’ but Soft Machine did not seem to want that outcome.”37 Between these states of violence and non-violence, there were nonetheless a few intermediary attitudes embodied by an “active” audience responding positively to the energy conveyed by the band onstage. Such was the case of Triangle at a 1972 concert in Rouen, where they received “an especially enthusiastic welcome” over the course of an “evening [that] unfolded in a welcoming atmosphere, which was overexcited to the point where some spectators were frantically screaming at the top of their lungs, although we had no idea why.” This ambience, which was relatively normal for the trends of the time, unsettled a few journalists’ certainties… most likely journalists from the previous generation, if the following conclusion from one article is to be believed: “Perhaps they forgot that they had come to listen to music?” 38 

Fig. 8 : “Deep Purple in France”

Fig. 8 : “Deep Purple in France”

Rock & Folk 46 (novembre 1970): 32. Advertisement for Deep Purple’s French tour, which was cut short at the Olympia in Paris.

  • 39 “Le Neubourg : Eddy Mitchell et Jacqueline Alan ont assuré le succès de la soirée de la philatélie, (...)
  • 40 Pierre Joly, “Vingt rappels... Non, vingt blessés : le récital havrais de Johnny Hallyday,” Paris-N (...)

16During the same period and against all expectations, concerts given by Eddy Mitchell and Johnny Hallyday offered a striking contrast. On one side, young women climbed onstage to improvise a “wild dance,” 39and “young girls screamed”; on the other side, “guys wearing leather jackets stamped with the symbol of their motorcycle manufacturer” danced “for themselves, angrily head-butting each other.”40 Femininity and masculinity confronted each other and mingled in a community based on appearances, ranging from “mini miniskirts” to “maxi-coats”—one in which looks could be deceiving, from “short hair” to “astonishing hairdos.” Between the screaming and crying, Hallyday tried to find a way to touch his fans’ hearts and a voice all his own—a “voice [that] was suggestive, urgent, insistent”—before things fell apart.

  • 41 Ibid.

How could one resist? Soon the exceedingly angry fans stormed the stage. It was the inevitable brawl that we had already seen coming. The microphone stands became fearsome clubs in the hands of the besieged. Near me, a boy who had lost his mind destroyed four lightbulbs on a dangling light garland by head-butting it. Electric cables were slashed with knives. Spotlight stands flew as a spotlight was reduced to dust, making noise like a grenade. Suddenly everything became foggy, worsening until I discovered a little boy of seven or eight lost in the fray. At the edge of the “stage/ring,” with his head resting on his folded arms, he looked at me with a strange intensity: “It was beautiful, Monsieur, it was beautiful.” There was no doubt in his mind; for a half hour, the horseman from his picture books had taken him on his back… But what was this kid in a yellow sweater doing here this evening? … Johnny’s appearance in Le Havre was marked by twenty wounded.41

  • 42 Bernadette Poulain, “Johnny Hallyday au Parc-Expo”, Paris-Normandie, 1er avril 1975. Concert, March (...)
  • 43 Poulain, “Johnny Hallyday dit une messe de solitude pour cinq mille personnes”, Paris-Normandie, 15 (...)
  • 44 “Johnny Hallyday le 28 mars au Parc Expo”, Paris-Normandie, 15 mars 1975. Concert, March 28, 1975.
  • 45 “Johnny Hallyday ce soir au Parc-Expo”, Paris-Normandie, 14 décembre 1976. Concert, December 14, 19 (...)
  • 46 Poulain, “Johnny Hallyday au Parc-Expo”.

17At Hallyday’s 1975-1976 concerts in Rouen, considerable security measures were implemented to contain the crowd of five thousand people crowded under the big top. From the police escort of eighty officers and the pack of dogs to the members of the Karaté Club,42 the loudspeakers erected, and even the “barriers like those for an official demonstration,”43 nothing was neglected when it came to protecting the idol, who was already considered “an explosive social phenomenon.”44 The press recognized this: “Regardless of whether he is a star, regardless of whether he is an idol, Johnny Hallyday is a ‘case’”45 on the French rock scene, which had abandoned the yé-yé movement in 1968; he was a special case. The journalist Bernadette Poulain compared his performance, albeit depoliticized, to the scale and logistics of President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s last meeting in Rouen.46 As for the singer himself, she perceived him as an icon embodying “aggressivity,” “disobedience,” “refusal,” and “revolt” for a “horde of young people” in the 1970s, writing the following:

  • 47 Poulain, “Johnny Hallyday au Parc-Expo” (author’s emphasis).

He has not changed. A spokesperson for a whole generation looking for escape, he has reigned over his subjects for fifteen years. And nothing challenges his power. His fans from the 1960s have gotten older. They have exchanged their leatherette jackets for fur-collared leather bombers or classic overcoats. But they have not forgotten him. Furthermore, they have brought with them a horde of young people who see no hint of aggressivity or disobedience in the Claude François type. Johnny himself embodies refusal, revolt. His roots and his desire to combat life continually resurface in his songs. He is alone, he is desperate, and he needs to be loved. Johnny the tough guy, the violent guy, is also Johnny the weak guy and the solitary guy. He sings it. He screams it. He finds five thousand people communing with him. They are there to see him. Or, rather, they are there to say they “saw him.” No one has the right to miss a Hallyday show. After all, haven’t they been saying that it’s one of the last shows by a king who is extremely fed up with paying so many taxes that he prefers to be in exile?47

  • 48 Poulain, “Johnny Hallyday dit une messe” (author’s emphasis).

18In the same place a year later, “in his white suit, Johnny stormed onstage with violence and hatred in the look on his face.”48 “Glistening with sweat, Johnny had the audience scream ‘Les coups’ dozens of times. And yet, in the midst of this call for violence, Johnny maintained that sensuality, which characterized his persona.” The violence characterizing Hallyday’s persona, with which both his long-time fans and the new generation identified, was very different from the violence at the Palais des Sports in 1971 and the festivals in the South. It expressed the frustrations of a social class that was the complete opposite of the young Parisians motivated by idealism and intellectual pursuits.

“Violent Music”

  • 49 Paul Alessandrini, [Untitled], Actuel 6 (mars 1971).
  • 50 See Bacquet and Élart.
  • 51 Serge Bolloch, “Malgré des conditions matérielles difficiles, succès pour le concert de Nemo”, Pari (...)
  • 52 “M. Annegarn n’a pas voulu jouer”, Paris-Normandie, 29 janvier 1977. Concert, January 26, 1977, mun (...)
  • 53 “Les Martin-Circus aux Oubliettes : une ‘tiède’ démonstration de pop-music”, Paris-Normandie, 19 ja (...)
  • 54 Pirenne, Une histoire musicale du rock, 161. Pirenne refers to Pink Floyd, criticized by a BBC pres (...)
  • 55 Pirenne, Une histoire musicale du rock, 161.
  • 56 Pirenne, Le rock progressif anglais, 303.
  • 57 “Tous les soirs, spectacle permanent à partir de 19 heures, au Parc-Expo : ‘Open Circus’”, Paris-No (...)
  • 58 P. D., “Au Cirque de Rouen : la bonne surprise de ‘Soft Machine’”, Paris-Normandie, 9 mai 1972. Con (...)

19In pop music, Paul Alessandrini saw an opposition between “notions of technique, virtuosity, … [and] those of intensity, strength, violence, and provocative, revelatory, and hypnotic power” that “demanded the emotional and physical participation of the spectator, a constant appeal to the collective unconscious,” since “pop music is also a way to shout one’s joy and rage.”49 From concert to concert, the press in Rouen50 also observed these notions of intensity, power, and sonic violence produced by the expansion of amplification, the search for high sound levels, the use of noisy and dirty effects (combining distorsion, feedback, and reverb), and the production of deliberately wild-sounding music in places that were not conceived or adapted for this type of show in terms of logistics, acoustics, and security. The band Nemo played the chamber of commerce in Elbeuf in such conditions in 1975, in a “beautiful” room that was “not built for concerts,” especially “not made for hosting a rock band.”51 Would it be conceivable today to host such a band in a venue without a stage or, even worse, no power supply? Indeed, “tables quickly had to be found.” A few minutes before the doors opened, “the soundmen for ‘Nemo’ were still looking for electrical outlets,” which was “rather troublesome … for the sound and amps”! These precarious conditions and poor organization created problems when it came to balancing the sound, which was unbearable for the audience’s ears: “The sound was obviously mediocre, and in some places the acoustics were such that you could barely hear [the singer].” Dick Annegarn refused to play the municipal hall in Le Grand-Quevilly in 1977 because “the electric power that was available that night due to construction work did not allow for the supply of power for both the sound and the lightboard,”52 which he had certified by an officer of the court. After a Martin Circus concert in 1970, a journalist mused that “when it comes to pop, three criteria need to be considered: the music, the ambience, and the sound system.”53 Music was indeed a subjective topic, if the productions for Martin Circus and Magma are compared, but it was striving for a new type of musical expression with rock, one open to all forms of experimentation involving what was already well-established as psychedelia. Ambience was the result of the interaction between the musicians’ stage performance and the audience’s physical reaction, lending a concert a communal and festive aspect. As for the sound system, it had become synonymous with the expression of this new type of music, which had to be loud, powerful, and understood as part of a phenomenon of “increasing decibels.”54 For Christophe Pirenne, who has listed the general characteristics of psychedelia, “this now basic condition in the rock world was a novelty at the time.”55 He says that playing at a “deafening volume” was an “element that attracted listeners’ attention at concerts by Soft Machine and King Crimson.”56 This “sound” was all the more striking for the thinking of the time because audience members were less familiar with it, especially in provincial areas. According to Vicaire, “there was nitroglycerin in the mics, a half a ton of amplifiers, and an electric-shock sound system”57 during the Open Circus in 1970. In his view, Soft Machine “would have much to gain by getting rid of a few amps”58 and lowering this “wall of decibels.” He continued:

  • 59 Ibid.

To hell with the sax cranked up to ten. You don’t need a megaphone to confide something. … The same remark also goes for the electric piano. Its excessively powerful sound ruined Michael Rattledge’s free-style improvisations, ultimately leading to a slightly irritating overload.59

  • 60 Roger Balavoine, “Demis Roussos, vedette du gala Joe Dassin”, Paris-Normandie, 17 mars 1973. Concer (...)
  • 61 S. L., “Public réduit au casino de Dieppe : un bon Nino Ferrer dans un mauvais spectacle”, Paris-No (...)
  • 62 “Après Saint-Valéry-en-Caux, Jacques Dutronc au gala des Étoiles à Lillebonne”, Paris-Normandie, 27 (...)

20In 1973, the journalist Roger Balavoine, then head of the cultural and theatrical section of Paris-Normandie, was upset that the “sound” was a bit overbearing60 during the concert given by Demis Roussos, ex-member of Aphrodite’s Child. A powerful sound system also came into play in the singing tours given by some of the top names in mainstream French music, like Nino Ferrer’s 1968 concert in Dieppe, where “fortunately, we knew the melodies and the words … because the ‘sound’ partly covered them up,”61 or Jacques Dutronc’s show that year in Saint-Valery-en-Caux, where the lyrics “are solid but the noisy ‘sound’ unfortunately swallowed them up partly, and they sometimes did not carry beyond the first hearing.”62

21I would like to end this section by analyzing the terminology used in a corpus of press cuttings covering 219 important concerts in the Lower Seine region between 1968 and 1977.63 While adjectives such as “violent” ou “violence” are rarely employed (only occurring a total of twenty times), both terms are systematically used to describe this new type of music in the 1970s and not to refer to physical violence or to depict destruction at concert venues, as we might expect. The band Transition, founded by Christian Vander to play the first part of Deep Purple’s 1970 tour (Fig. 8), ended up opening for the band Zoo in Elbeuf : “This orchestra of five musicians began with a piece that was at one rock and roll and free jazz, a little in the style of ‘Soft Machine.’ … Sent out by a playful soprano saxophone, a guitarist sounding curiously like a sax, and a ‘free-style’ pianist fueled by the sharp, muscular playing of the drummer, this violent music caught our interest and promised more than it delivered.64” In the same account, Le Trividic described Zoo’s music as having “great precision and remarkable power for a French orchestra.” Thus, violence was often synonymous with (sonic) power and (stage) presence. Le Trividic used the same lexical register to describe the playing of Zoo’s pianist, whose “explosive playing” took listeners’ breaths away with his “violent chords” when he launched “into a howling organ solo that ended with the instrument unexpectedly and lethally falling down.” In November 1970, Zoo had already pressed two LPs65—not including their collaborations with Nicoletta66 and Léo Ferré.67 The first album blended sophisticated extended instrumentals with a progressive influence (the uninhibited “If You Lose Your Woman”) and some jazz elements (“Rhythm And Boss” and “Samedi soir à Carnouet”) or blues sounds (“Bluezoo,” “Memphis Train,” and “You Sure Drive A Hard Bargain”), all with an emphasis on free-rock improvisation against a repetitive, Soft Machine-style rhythm (“Ramses” and “Mamouth”). The band’s energy, which was unanimously praised in journalists’ comments, came from improvisation, which was amplified on their second album thanks to an oversaturated guitar sound, stereophonic work, and modulating harmonies. This album was also more accessible, with the singing serving as the primary player on pieces reduced to a more approachable length (less than four minutes) and even an attempt at a blues ballad (“I Shall Be Free”).

  • 68 Bruno Le Trividic, “Little Bob et ses amis sont de fameux rockers”, Paris-Normandie, 22 octobre 197 (...)
  • 69 Paris-Normandie, 9 novembre 1974. Concert, November 22, 1974, Sainte-Croix-des-Pelletiers, Rouen, h (...)
  • 70 Little Bob Story, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood (Arcane, 1975); Little Bob Story, Let Me In (Arcane (...)
  • 71 Little Bob Story, Little Bob Story (Chiswick Records, 1976).
  • 72 Little Bob Story, High Time (Arcane, 1976).
  • 73 Alessandrini, “Fête sauvage à Pavalas”, 11.
  • 74 “Demain soir, salle Sainte-Croix-des-Pelletiers : ‘Plat du Jour’ et ‘Les Gosses de Métal lourd’”, P (...)
  • 75 Bruno Le Trividic, “Il y a dans la région des soirées qui bougent”, Paris-Normandie, 19 novembre 19 (...)
  • 76 “Mardi à la Fac de Lettres : le retour de ‘Plat du jour’”, Paris-Normandie, 21 avril 1975. Concert, (...)
  • 77 “Ce soir, à la Fac de lettres : le groupe ‘Plat du jour’”, Paris-Normandie, 22 avril 1975. April 22 (...)
  • 78 “Demain soir, à Sotteville : six formations pour un spectacle musical exceptionnel”, Paris-Normandi (...)
  • 79 Ibid.
  • 80 “Plat du jour – Plat du jour”, https://www.discogs.com/fr/Plat-Du-Jour-Plat-Du-Jour/release/2819740(...)
  • 81 “Plat Du Jour - Plat Du Jour 1977 (FULL ALBUM) [Progressive Rock],” YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018, (...)

22Identical observations and impressions are found in the work of journalists covering the 1974 pub rock of Little Bob Story, who “thrilled … with rock that was violent but intelligently constructed”68 and played violent music, unique in France,” a month later.69 The band’s first recordings in 1975 (two SPs70) and 1976 (one EP71 and one LP72) perfectly sum up the way the rock-and-roll spirit ricocheted off refined, effective tracks, the form and sound of which recall MC5’s first album, driven by “wild and violent music.”73 During the same period, the band Plat du Jour was performing as the opening act of Heavy Metal Kids in Rouen. This was “different music, violent but ‘secretive,’ wild, a little disturbing, which would be a good idea to follow.”74 Le Trividic evoked a kind of “rock [that] unfolded slowly and was thrilling, violent, mysterious, and lively, music that at last came from somewhere else, that moved but was also troubling with its images of flames and soot.”75 To announce their new performance at the Université de Rouen’s literature department in 1975, the daily recalled a band “that sang rather violent music in French”76 and which “would make their music that was similar to rock heard because of its violence.”77 Gleaning inspiration from rock and community-based ideals, Plat du Jour “proposed violent, generous, and unique music with incisive lyrics recalling the volcanic ambience of the band ‘Ange.’”78 While Paris-Normandie announced their first recording in summer 1975,79 their first LP was not released on Speedball until 1977 (Fig. 9).80 The reader can be the judge of their music’s violent nature—or at least the violence that Paris-Normandie’s chroniclers and the public perceived at the time—upon listening to the album.81

Fig. 9: Album cover for Plat du jour by the band Plat du Jour (Speedball, 1977)

Fig. 9: Album cover for Plat du jour by the band Plat du Jour (Speedball, 1977)
  • 82 Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes, Le Rat débile et l’homme des champs (Philips, 1974), YouTube, accessed J (...)
  • 83 “Samedi, au théâtre Montdory, à Barentin : Catherine Ribeiro et ‘Alpes’”, Paris-Normandie, 28 novem (...)
  • 84 “The lyrics in this song only concern the author.” Philippe Thieyre refers to the “unusual” warning (...)
  • 85 Alessandrini, “Fête sauvage à Pavalas”, 12.
  • 86 Bruno Le Trividic, “Nemo dans la jungle”, Paris-Normandie, 21 février 1974. Concert, April 20, 1974 (...)
  • 87 Serge Bolloch, “Un festival : Higelin, Nemo, Albert”, Paris-Normandie, 26 février 1975. Pop music f (...)
  • 88 “NEMO - Kick A Tin Can”, YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFdvrjZaCBc(...)
  • 89 “Nemo - Grandeur et misère du Perou”, YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch (...)
  • 90 Nemo, Nemo (Agave, 1973), https://www.discogs.com/fr/Nemo-Nemo/master/807435.
  • 91 “Nemo (70’s) – Doin’Nuthin’ (1974) – Baron Samedi & The Waving Theme”, YouTube, accessed July 4, 20 (...)
  • 92 Ibid.
  • 93 “Nemo – Suzy Chong Song – French Rock 1974”, YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.co (...)
  • 94 Nemo, Doin’ Nuthin’ (Agave, 1974), https://www.discogs.com/fr/Nemo-Doin-Nuthin/release/2464999.

23“We won’t change the world with democratic voices, there will be violence, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate violence because it terrifies me, we should fight with our red blood, red like blood,” wrote and sang Catherine Ribeiro with Alpes in her “Poème non épique (suite) – Concerto alpin en six mouvements” in 1974.82 And yet that same year the invective voice of someone who disdained violence was still deemed by critics to be “tender and violent.”83 Conscious that they were creating music that defied established codes and disgusted by society without necessarily calling for revolt,84 pop artists conveyed a certain kind of aggressivity that listeners could perceive as violent because of the way they uncompromisingly approached and practiced their art. As an informed observer, Alessandrini noted that pop music bore the need for transcendence as well as disruption and that it was a “poetic explosion” and the “aesthetic reflection of revolt.”85 Looking at all of these examples and accounts, which are often motivated by the same descriptive obsession, we could wonder if violence had not become a characteristic used primarily to define the music of this period. Could some credit be given to the idea that this kind of music produced a state of violence that the artists themselves had not assumed? Nonetheless, the feeling of “onstage violence” was palpable at Nemo’s 1974 concert in Rouen. Their rock, which was “chaotic, slippery, and out of control … was, of course, disturbing, and the power of their percussion was troubling at times, in a beautiful way that also made you laugh with intense happiness. This is music that is soaring and mean at the same time, funny with an iconoclastic humor.”86 The journalist mentions “the band’s precision and strength” and, not neglecting to use the natural metaphor, compares the “devastating [singing], with its destructive mobility,” to a “storm” that caused the audience to get up from their seats and made them move; he describes the guitarist’s playing “with mean cruelty (his short sounds were hard, choppy, with a sharp violence that made you—perhaps a bit wildly?—want to climb the columns.” The vocabulary employed feeds the message that leads to the definitive conclusion that this music unleashes passion. In 1975, surprised by Nemo’s “slightly strange and unusual” music, which “led one far out with its quick rhythms that often broke apart in order to head back into dreams,” the audience “called for violence.”87 And yet, when you listen to “Kick A Tin Can”88 or the instrumental “Grandeur et misère du Pérou”89 from their first album in 197390 or “Baron samedi,”91 “The Waving Theme,”92 and “Suzy Chong Song”93 from their second album in 1974,94 the blend of groove funk and progressive structures (asymmetric meter, harmonic explorations, and so on) or electronic atmospheres do not exactly evoke violence, and the scarce lyrics—often in English—do not have the aggressive or dramatic aspect of Ribeiro’s lyrics.

24The violence that critics observed appears then to stem more from the display of feelings expressed roughly, with enthusiasm and energy, onstage before an audience interacting with the artists. A new state of rage and exuberance, albeit contained, now seemed to regulate the way rock concerts were organized. In order for concerts to be successful, there had to be an element of violence. Thus, one had to “see and hear” the singer of Heavy Metal Kids “who moved nicely and who knew how to get fans of violent music jumping.”95 These fans formed the first contingent of a new kind of audience for what was vaguely known as pub rock and what was emerging as hard rock. It was not unusual to see Little Bob from Le Havre and his band Story opening for the English band, with their music that got “those who like destructive, spontaneous rock high.”96 However, it is possible to doubt if this is “violent music” when listening to extracts from Heavy Metal Kids’ first album, released in 197497 and which alternates between mid-tempo boogie rock (“Hangin’ On,” “Ain’ It Hard,” and “We Gotta Go”) and glam ballads (“It’s The Same”), with the occasional and almost caricatural reggae track (“Run Around Eyes”). But the end of “We Gotta Go” offers an adequate hint of the out-of-control ambience that probably reigned at the band’s concerts. Beginning in July 1975, their shows might have included tracks from the uncompromising second album they were preparing,98 which was heavier and more saturated, with pub-rock tunes like “You Got Me Rollin’” and the instrumental “The Turk”; the glitter rock of “Blue Eyed Boy” and “Crisis”; the boogie rock of “Hard At the Top,” “Old Time Boogie,” “On The Street,” and “The Cops Are Coming”; as well as the inevitable ballads that were typical of the emerging hard rock sound, with “The Big Fire” and “Situations Outta Control.” Naturally, the French audience’s poor comprehension of the English language probably drained the band’s lyrics of their meaning and therefore their violence. A song like “The Cops Are Coming,” which talks about juvenile delinquence in England, is practically an argument for urban violence.99 The first couplet describes a knife fight in the street (“Me and the boys we got into a fight / A guy pulled a knife with a grin on his face / He said : ‘Watch out, boys ! / ‘The cops are coming’”); the second couplet mentions a junkie robbing a pharmacy (“I was waiting at a chemist with a brick in my hand / I needed some pills to make me feel grand”); and later on in the song, there is a fight involving a chain that ends… in décapitation (“I took a chain and felt it wrap around his chin / And his head fell off”)!

25Two other examples illustrate the generalized use of the term “violent” to describe the new music of the 1970s, which did not yet distinguish between progressive rock, hard rock, and punk rock. In Le Havre in 1976, the Scorpions, who had just released their fourth album,100 “convey[ed] unusual musical violence,” with “three guitars, one drum kit, and a singer gifted with a powerfully clear and booming voice, [which] lent the five of them an insolent rhythm in their compositions, satisfying the young audience beyond their expectations, not only with their music but also with their undeniably powerful stage presence.”101 The performance was enough to make the audience forget that the headliner UFO had dropped out of performing. As for the Rouen band Dogs, in 1977 they were “a real rock’n’roll band, a disturbing one whose moving and beautiful, but violent, music followed in the footseps of the rock magic ‘invented’ by Presley in 1954 and other fans and taken up by the Beach Boys and the Stones in the 1960s.”102 Created in 1973 and led by Dominique Laboubée, the band did not release its first LP Différent on Philips until 1979, confirming the Paris-Normandie chronicler’s observations about the revitalizing and reinvigorating sources of rock-and-roll inspiration.

Breaking the Sound Barrier

  • 103 Guy Kopelowicz, “Doors et Jefferson Airplane”, Rock & Folk 21 (octobre 68): 23.
  • 104 Pirenne, Une histoire musicale du rock, 166.
  • 105 The rare advertisements for hi-fi equipment (ultimately little represented given the dense column d (...)

26“Gigantic speakers crowd the stage,” noted Guy Kopelowicz during Jefferson Airplane’s performance in a bill shared with The Doors at the Roundhouse in London in September 1968.103 He heard music “amplified by hundreds of watts from a sound system” and praised the “quality of the sonic mass.” This “increase in decibels” was in many ways the victory that sound engineers had been looking for and had found using technology to make the band heard above the screaming and noise of the audience. Although the issue had been resolved by 1970, five years after the Beatles’ concert at Shea Stadium, the phenomenon of the “sound barrier” was still new and had reached its peak with the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound.104 This phenomenon was extremely visible in the advertisements published in specialized magazines, to the point where it dominated the advertising space in publications like Rock & Folk. Setting aside the rare advertisements for record labels announcing new releases and the scant listings for tours and concerts,105 advertising content (Fig. 10) was heavily focused on selling musical instruments and sound equipment (85-90 % between 1967 and 1972). The hype responded to and fed a booming market already governed by veiled competition. Amplification systems alone represented 21-44 % of these advertisements, which were not lacking in creativity.

Fig. 10: Breakdown of the advertisements printed in Rock & Folk between 1967 and 1972 (%)

  • 106 Beginning in May 1972.

Instruments

Amplifiers,

Sound Systems

Light Show

Hi-Fi, HP,

Tape Recorders

Music Reading,

Scores106

Clothing,

Travel

1967

65

34

1

1968

78

21

1

1969

55

37

3

1

4

1970

47

44

0.5

5

0.5

3

1971

47

39

5

5

3

1

1972

49

37

4.5

7,5

2

Nominal

27The first element highlighted by advertisers was the size of the speakers and therefore their power, basing the equation between the two on a simple visual observation: the bigger, the more powerful. In this respect, it is rather characteristic to find the first allusion to this shift in scale of sound in the first issue of Rock & Folk, the Jazz Hot special issue published in October 1966. However, this initial occurrence did not involve an advertisment, but a press drawing by Siné, which was also the first drawing figuring in this special issue just before one by Cabu two pages later (Fig. 11). It depicts four long-haired musicians—the Beatles?—in front of a wall of gigantic speakers by Thorens, which was better known for its high-end hi-fi equipment. “It’s still not loud enough!..” the guitarist on the right tells his friend on all fours, adjusting the dials in vain!

Fig. 11: Siné, “It’s still not loud enough!..”

Fig. 11: Siné, “It’s still not loud enough!..”

Rock & Folk, special issue Jazz Hot (octobre 1966): 15.

  • 107 Rock & Folk 4 (février 1967): 56 [see Annex I “J. Collyns, des amplis sur orbite” /1]. Please note (...)
  • 108 Rock & Folk 5 (mars 1967): 56 [I/2].
  • 109 Rock & Folk 7 (mai 1967): 14 [I/3].
  • 110 Rock & Folk 8 (juin 1967): 52 [I/4].
  • 111 Rock & Folk 27 (avril 1969): back cover [I/5].
  • 112 Rock & Folk 28 (mai 1969): back cover [I/6].
  • 113 Rock & Folk 31 (août 1969): back cover [I/7].
  • 114 Rock & Folk 32 (septembre 1969): back cover; Rock & Folk 33 (octobre 1969): back cover [I/8].
  • 115 Rock & Folk 40 (mai 1970): inside back cover [I/9].
  • 116 Rock & Folk 41 (juin 1970): inside front cover [I/10].
  • 117 Rock & Folk 49 (février 1971): back cover [I/11].
  • 118 Rock & Folk 50 (mai 1971): 28 [I/12].

28The first amplifier brands quickly filled advertising space. One of them was J. Collyns, “the prince charming technician and music lover” who had just created the B 100 amplifier in 1966, “the first in a prestigious series of professional equipment.”107 The half stack, shot at a three-quarter angle, cuts a fine figure between two badly drawn rag dolls… Sold at the Lutherie moderne on the Rue de Douai in Paris, it was again at the forefront a month later, when the same image of the B 100 was reflected in each lens of a pair of glasses with a slogan promising a powerful sound, since there was “no need for glasses… to hear Collyns”!108 In fact, “the Collyns sound109 came in all sizes, from two-three units and then half-full stacks with the B 200 in the background behind a guitarist, making it possible to measure the system’s height which appears to be over six feet tall.110 In 1969, Collyns used the back covers of magazines for color advertisements. One included the drawing of a woman’s face eyeing the equipment and the slogan “You love J. Collyns111—which would turn into “You’ll love Faylon,112 referring to a Belgian manufacturer, when the company later diversified its offering by producing stage lighting equipment to create strobe effects and turn sound into light. The same year, a beautiful “Ampli J. Collyns113 insert with psychedelic font on a blue background did away with the equipment and showed only a guitarist, or, rather, his instrument, the neck of which seemed to emerge from the paper, thus implying the power through the gigantic size of the instrument, which was distorted by an effect of perspective. Two advertisments in the J. Collyns galaxy—“still orbitting114—would follow, in which the PA 15 column with adjustable compressor and the B 200 full stack became lunar satellites propeled by the strength of technology. In 1970, the brand set aside the rocket in order to “break the sound barrier.115 Here, the B 200 is depicted in a realistic drawing with an American jet plane! Still up in the sky a month later, the “rainbow over sound116 bridged the the lighting equipment and the B 200. Once back on earth, Collyns rather simply announced the release of its Crazy Tone amplifier, which was “super-powerful, super-sounding, super-classy.117 A month after that, in dripping lettering inspired by Crumb, Collyns “had met the challenge of releasing the most professional sound system yet at a fantastic price118: the Crazy Sound 800 was shown at a three-quarter angle with effects created by overhead and low-angle shots, lending the apparatus a monumental aspect inspired by the advertisements for Marshall.

  • 119 Rock & Folk 28 (mai 1969): 66 [see Annex II “Rien au-dessus de Marshall” /13].
  • 120 Rock & Folk: 37 (février 1970): inside front cover [II/14]. Variations on this pink-backdropped adv (...)
  • 121 Rock & Folk 56 (septembre 1971): 14 [II/16].
  • 122 Rock & Folk 64 (mai 1972): 22 [II/17].

29The first advertisement for Marshall appeared in May 1969 and played on the effect created by an overhead shot centered directly above a full stack that promised, in English, “the sound of success.119 The name was enough for this well-known brand, so there were no graphic embellishments other than noting the names of a few artists who used it, like Johnny Hallyday, Jimi Hendrix, and the Bee-Gees. The recipe had changed very little a year later, except for the slogan “Nothing tops it,” which was a play on both the size of the engine and the power of its “killer” sound.120 The brand reached its apex, so to speak, in September 1971, with a magnificent advertisement of a full stack on an apartment block shot directly from above against a red background, justifying once again its slogan “Nothing tops it.” Customers crowded at the feet of the buildings comment on the monumental amp in a series of speech bubbles. “Hey! What’s that?” asks the first. “It’s a Marshall,” answers the second. “Nothing really tops it,” observes the third. “The same as Hendrix’s,” says the fourth. Two other people looking at the amp from a rooftop conclude, “They’re killer.”121 The strength of the new artist’s model, with an “ultra-powerful ‘funky’ sound,”122 provided an opportunity to rethink the branding of the product. Here, the half stack is simply shown at a three-quarter angle, but at the center of a white explosion against a red backdrop. It’s the supersonic bang of the sound barrier being broken…

  • 123 Rock & Folk 71 (décembre 1972): 106 [see Annex III “D’autres amplis explosifs et percutants” /18].
  • 124 Rock & Folk 4 (février 1967): 11 [III/19].
  • 125 Rock & Folk 68 (septembre 1972): 87 [III/20].
  • 126 Rock & Folk 68 (septembre 1972): 88 [III/21].
  • 127 Rock & Folk 31 (août 1969): 62 [III/22].
  • 128 Rock & Folk 32 (septembre 1969): 54 [III/23].
  • 129 Rock & Folk 37 (février 1970): 10 [III/24].
  • 130 Rock & Folk 38 (mars 1970): 66 [III/25].
  • 131 Rock & Folk 63 (avril 1972): 24 [III/26].
  • 132 Rock & Folk 39 (avril 1970): 30 [III/27].
  • 133 Rock & Folk 40 (mai 1970): inside front cover [III/28].
  • 134 Rock & Folk 41 (juin 1970): 70 [III/29].
  • 135 Rock & Folk 57 (octobre 1971): 16 [III/30].
  • 136 Rock & Folk 65 (juin 1972): 15 [III/31].
  • 137 Rock & Folk 59 (décembre 1971): 12 [III/32].
  • 138 Rock & Folk 59 (décembre 1971): 26 [III/33].
  • 139 Rock & Folk 59 (décembre 1971): 82 [III/34]; Rock & Folk 70 (novembre 1972): 106 [35].
  • 140 Rock & Folk 61 (février 1972): 24 [III/36].
  • 141 Rock & Folk 68 (septembre 1972): 20 [III/37].
  • 142 Rock & Folk 68 (septembre 1972): 22 [III/38].
  • 143 Rock & Folk 71 (décembre 1972): 13 [III/39].

30To sell its full stack in 1972, Hiwatt borrowed the idea of a sonic explosion but in the shape of projected sound.123 Whether conveyed through slogans or graphics, advertisers stressed that the main quality of a good amp was its power. Other brands, however, departed from the explosive effect to create a wavelike representation. In 1967, the French brand Selmer had already depicted its amps within a spiral unfolding towards the reader.124 In a more realistic vein, the French amp manufacturer Stal125 offered up a stylized sonic diffraction, as did Sound amps, using the simple yet effective slogan “The sound is called Sound.”126 Inspired by Marshall, the American brand Standel proposed “a giant amp” that promised “killer power!”127 in 1967, using an image of its full stack shot at a three-quarter angle that gave an imposing impression through a reverse perspective that turned it into a monumental object. The Canadian brand Sound City plagiarized Marshall’s overhead shot of a full stack that year, adding a drawing of a fist breaking through the upper speaker128 After all, didn’t the fist symbolize the violence of a punchy sound? The American brand JBLansing adopted a more original approach by illustrating its “obstacle course” with a black-and-white shot of three amps in various sizes in the foreground, a man on a horse jumping over the middle one in a forced perspective shot.129 Another American manufacturer, Ampeg, modestly announced its SVT 600 watts using the following English description: “The most powerful and the best sound of the world”!130 To undo any doubts, the brand did not hesitate to call upon the biggest names in music at the time, borrowing from Marshall’s practices: Chicago Transit Authority, Blood Sweat and Tears, the Rolling Stones, Johnny Hallyday, and Aphrodite’s Child, “like so many others [who] now tour using Ampeg.” To drive its point home, the manufacturer even quoted CTA’s bassist Peter Cetera, who said it had “the biggest bass sound I’ve ever heard.” Ampeg would go on to mention “the maximum power in a full stack131 of its V4, using a small photo of its equipment next the brand’s logo. Hooked up to it is a guitarist six feet above the amp, breaking out of the frame of the advertisement for “maximum power” indeed! As for the German label Stramp, it borrowed the low-angle and three-quarter-angle imagery of the full stack to reinforce its slogan “For those who want punch and power.”132 The Amercian brand Leslie began its technical description of the Pro 900 by saying, “Let’s talk power.”133 The Spanish manufacturer Music-Son offered another example with its “super powerful” full stack, used by Zoo, which had the unique feature of being convertible into a version falling within the “‘monster’ category.”134 There were no captions, however for the Elkatone 150-watt half stack that was “easier to transport.” It was useless, since the power suggested by the full-page photograph of the machine practically spilled over the edges of the magazine.135 There were “no more transportation issues” either with the German brand Dynacord’s stand-mounted speakers because “power no longer depends on size.”136 An unembellished low- and three-quarter-angle shot was enough for the Italian brand Montarbo when selling the power of its amps, which seemed impressively tall.137 With its “special orchestra[-like]” sound, the French manufacturer Freevox depicted three of its speakers rising up like buildings alongside the slogan “the only sound system that solves the problem of feedback,”138 meaning that competitors should watch out for these powerful amps with no feedback. The Dutch brand Woodstock’s half stack promised not only more than power and even “more than a festival! … [but] a revolution in sound”!139 Using irony, Sound showed a hand holding a jack occupying a good quarter of the advertisement and a group of six amps displayed like dominos in the background, with the following slogan in between : “Look what Sound offers at the other end of the jack !..” 140 Elkatone also ventured off the beaten track by selling happiness instead of power: before “he was sad,” but now “he’s happy again with the ‘international 2000 p’ and the ‘Elkatone 150 w 2 corps’ cabinet.”141 As for SNS, it sold its guitar amps—using the striking phrase “of course, the SNS ensemble is the most expensive on the market”—by highlighting aesthetics and technique: “A designer said, ‘It’s beautiful, its’s very beautiful, it’s the Triumph of sound!’ while a musician exclaimed, ‘A technician has finally looked at what musicians want and fulfilled our wishes!’”142 The sound barrier was broken by Acoustic, which claimed that “what was unattainable until now you can obtain with Acoustic”!143

  • 144 Rock & Folk 29 (juin 1969): 11 [see Annex IV “Des stars utilisées par des marques d’amplis” /40].
  • 145 Rock & Folk 44 (septembre 1970): 28 [IV/41].
  • 146 Rock & Folk 29 (juin 1969): 12 [IV/42].
  • 147 Rock & Folk 41 (juin 1970): 82 [IV/43].
  • 148 Rock & Folk 41 (juin 1970): 83 [IV/44].
  • 149 Rock & Folk 51 (avril 1971): 24 [IV/45].
  • 150 Rock & Folk 18 (mai 1968): 60 [IV/46].
  • 151 Rock & Folk 19 (juin-juillet 1968): 57 [IV/47]. The undated photograph was possibly taken during th (...)
  • 152 Rock & Folk 26 (mars 1969): 59 [IV/48]. The band had just released its first album Nador (Pathé, 19 (...)

31To convince buyers and sell products, the argument employed by every brand relied like a leitmotif on the sonic power of instruments. A small number of brands, however, sought to adopt other marketing approaches by associating their equipment with either an artist or a well-known band or with a person used as an object, child, man, or woman. The good old advertising formula based on celebrity marketing was quickly applied to selling amplification equipment, from Jimi Hendrix in a full-page ad enraptured by a Marshall half stack144 to the “mind-blowing” pantheon of celebrities gathered around various amps by the same brand;145 Johnny Hallyday center stage at the vast Palais des Sports with Standel amps prominently displayed behind him;146 the Melody Makers posing with a Kustom sound system in the middle of a field;147 Smoke practically absorbed by transfer printing on a Laney half stack;148 and Martin Circus and their dog posing in front of a wall of Semprinis, asking the reader, “Are you looking for an avant-garde sound system?”149 While these are all examples of manufacturers focusing on powerful sound, Shade (distributed and guaranteed by the French brand Garen) highlighted more modest musicians in 1968, such as Francis Lemaguer, guitarist in Claude Bolling’s ensemble,150 or the guitarist Jacques Liébrart and the bassist Marcel Dutrieux, who played in a trio with Juliette Greco.151 Shade’s slogan happened to be a relevant one: “Why not you?” This was the hidden argument used by music stores like Music Center (50 rue de Douai in Paris) when promoting Vox amps, illustrating its slogan “The best groups in Paris use Music Center” with a photograph of the Variations.152

  • 153 Rock & Folk 47 (décembre 1970): 90 [see Annex V “Enfants, hommes et femmes-objet” /50].
  • 154 Rock & Folk 44 (septembre 1970): 22 [V/51].
  • 155 Rock & Folk 16 (mars 1968): 52 [V/52].
  • 156 Rock & Folk 57 (novembre 1971): 26 [V/53].
  • 157 Recurring advertisement published notably in: Rock & Folk 44 (septembre 1970): inside front cover [ (...)
  • 158 Rock & Folk 70 (novembre 1972): 108 [V/55].
  • 159 Rock & Folk 29 (juin 1969): 22 [V/56].
  • 160 Rock & Folk 47 (décembre 1970): inside back cover [V/57].
  • 161 Rock & Folk 58 (novembre 1971): inside back cover [V/58]; republished in black and white in Rock &  (...)
  • 162 Rock & Folk 30 (juillet 1969): 76 [V/60].
  • 163 Rock & Folk 52 (mai 1971): 36 [V/61].
  • 164 Rock & Folk 30 (juillet 1969): 60 [V/62].

32Another, more subtle, formula consisted of using the image of an unknown person to lend an advertisement a certain rhythm. In 1970, when the brand Fratelli showed a little girl who had lost her first tooth in front of an Apollo Bass half stack, it was probably to emphasize the height of the amplification system,153 just like Garen, which added to the effect of the overhead shot of its 6.5-foot full stack by placing a guitarist bent over his instrument in front of the system, thus cheating on the proportions.154 Two cases of men used as objects humorously illustrate the qualities of the equipment being promoted. In one, a chubby, balding man wearing suspenders smiles contentedly to illustrate the brand Écholette’s slogan, which promised “complete satisfaction.”155 In another, totally different advertisment, a young, hairy, bearded man in boxer shorts and socks mockingly diverts the reader’s attention away from his slim, unmuscular nudity by stressing the quality of Stramp amps: “100 W, 50 kg, I’m at peace.”156—meaning such a light weight for so much power! Using women as objects was much more frequent. There was no humor or mockery, as was the case for men. Instead, a woman and her body was simply used to arouse the desire to consume. These sexist examples immediately highlight two approaches to advertising. While sonic power was no longer emphasized, advertising utilized another form of power: (extreme) sexual power. Such ads clearly targeted a primarily male clientele. Women were usually confined to decorative roles. In a Sound advertisement, a smiling woman rests her elbows on a half stack.157 Steelphon depicts a woman in pants, with a more discreet smile and a lost look, sitting on a series of guitar amps and holding this instrument—which is not hooked up—for what is clearly the first time if you look at the position of her left hand.158 Steelphon had already adopted this approach in 1969, when it had an elegant woman in an evening gown and necklace propped on a combo surrounded by its products in a sophisticated pose like a model.159 Kustom advertised its sound systems and amps the same way and in color,160 as did Binson.161 Both have two smiling women—perhaps the same woman, the resemblance being so striking—posing among the equipment: the first, dressed like a hippie, holds a microphone, and the second, in a miniskirt and high boots, adjusts an amp. These advertisements differ from the others in that there is no slogan, the exploitation of a woman’s image and the sexist stereotypes associated with women being enough in the advertisers’ eyes. In a similar vein, a smiling woman in a suit sits with her ear to a JBLansing loudspeaker that she has just taken apart, judging by the screwdriver on the ground in front of her. This scene seems to suggest that the system is so easy to assemble that even a woman can do it!162 The peak of sexism was reached by Simms-Watts and Sound City. “We dare to say it: the best and the cheapest! With Simms-Watts,”163 says the slogan presenting a group of sound systems for guitar and bass, record players, and Ned Gallan guitar beside the profile of a naked woman in lascivious, erotic pose with her eyes looking up at the material as if she were captivated by the orgy of virile instruments. Sound City, “irresistably yours… ,”164 promoted its “ultrapowerful” and “irresistible” equipment by highlighting “the best English groups” that had chosen this brand but especially by exposing the body of a naked woman in the Vajrāsana yoga position sitting on her heels on an amp head! Whether it was an accident or an assumed choice, nudity evoked the purity, simplicity, and beauty of an irresistible sound, while the position recalls meditation, concentration, strength, and extreme power.

Conclusion

  • 165 La Cause du peuple 24 (2 juin 1970).

33In Campus, Michel Lancelot examined the evolution and excesses of American society, which was split between violence and non-violence. This analysis by an observer of the time lacks a chapter on the same contradictions that were also dividing French society, which was barely recovering from the trauma of May 1968. Violent police confrontations were becoming more frequent and had an impact on public opinion—notably after the demonstration at Jussieu on May 27, 1970, which Alain Geismar from Gauche prolétarienne had called for to protest the trial of Michel Le Bris and Jean-Pierre Le Dantec, editors of the newspaper Cri du peuple.165 Police repression also came as a shock during the demonstration on February 9, 1971, which was organized by the Secours rouge in support of the workers occupying the Batignolles factory in Nantes. It ended with Richard Deshayes, a member of the FLJ, being shot in the face with a teargas grenade. He would later give the following account:

  • 166 Richard Deshayes, “Mes vingt ans éclatés”, Le Nouvel Observateur 37, cited by Jean-Claude Vimont, “ (...)

34I was hit directly in the face with a projectile that a police shot at me using teargas gun. I have a sunken face, a shattered eye that was quickly removed. The other is torn. I no longer have a nose. My jaw and teeth are broken. That makes a total of forty fractures on my face.166

  • 167 Delfreil de Ton, “La rubrique anti-flics”, Charlie Hebdo 14 (février 1971).
  • 168 On assassine à Paris !, pamphlet by the Groupe des Anti-fascistes, 1972, from the personal collecti (...)

35Then there was the case of the Lycée Chaptal and the arrest of the high-school student Gilles Guiot, all within the tense context of anti-riot laws and special brigades, “the motorcycles carrying individuals in tracksuits armed with batons who chase after men rodeo-style.”167 In February 1972, the title “Halte au fascisme !” (“End Fascism!”) in Cause du peuple denounced the February 25 killing of the militant Maoist Pierre Overney in Boulogne-Billancourt (Fig. 12): “The working class will not work with a gun held to its back.” The victim was killed while handing out flyers denouncing crimes perpetrated against “dozens of Arab workers … found dead, many openly killed by racists. And all in silence and indifference.”168

Fig. 12: Pierre Overney’s funeral, March 4, 1972

Fig. 12: Pierre Overney’s funeral, March 4, 1972

Photograph: Jean-Claude Vimont

36This “state of violence” had largely exceeded the usual realm for demonstrations, simultaneously infiltrating the pop music festivals in the South and a few Parisian concerts. The wild night at the Palais des Sports on January 31, 1971, which promised a wonderful line-up for young pop music fans, highlighted the rock scene’s slippage toward anti-establishment and occasionally politicized views. Despite ultimately implicating only a few hundred young people and involving very few concerts, the violence of the rioters and ticket dodgers resulted in halting the development of a new youth culture, as Jean-Michel Boris’s account of abandoning pop concerts at the Olympia illustrates. The authorities and concert organizers tried to contain the public’s enthusiasm for what France called “Pop Music,” a new kind of progressionist music that effectively had only a soothing effect on young audiences instead of encouraging them to get involved in the fight. The contradiction was not lost on journalists, who, as observers of these sometimes decadent and noisy concerts, repeatedly reported on the apathetic, intellectual audiences who attended concerts by bands like Soft Machine, Julie Driscoll, and Martin Circus. Pop music had apparently calmed young people down so much in the 1970s that bands like Deep Purple preferred cutting their French tour short because they were tired of the French spectators’ indifference. During the same period, this young audience contrasted with the feisty, aggressive, and rebellious working class youth who attended Johnny Hallyday’s concerts, which were aways tempestuous affairs. “Rockers” were contained by impressive security measures to protect the idol, deemed an “explosive musical phenomenon” and viewed by the press as a special case. The vocabulary of violence and non-violence ended up systematically figuring in newspaper columns, rarely describing violent events in concert halls (Hallyday in Le Havre) and more frequently providing an account of the wild energy emanating from performers and audience members during live performances (Triangle, Little Bob, Dogs, and Scorpions). It was also used by journalists to analyze the musical elements of progressionist and pub rock bands, whose harmonies, rhythms, metrics intensity, loud volume, and lyrics left listeners with an impression of musical violence (Transition, Nemo, Zoo, Plat du Jour, Catherine Ribeiro, and Heavy Metal Kids). The vocabulary of violence also became the norm for slogans created by advertising agencies in order to sell increasingly larger and louder amplifiers.

37It should therefore be remembered that violence was generally absent from rock concerts and that those highly publicized acts of violence were actually exceptional (the case of Johnny Hallyday) and specific to a few, mainly Parisian, circles (the case of the FLJ and festivals). This leads me to conclude that, beyond the intrinsic energy of this music—be it rock and roll, pop music, pub rock, or hard rock—and the energy that made audiences jump around and dance, physical violence was a minority feature at concerts, but the violence discussed here was, on the contrary, a frenetic and festive from of expression, a kind of excitement. This analysis of the violence that was perceived while listening to this new music, which combined aesthetic elements and outrageous sound systems needs to be analyzed in more depth. At the end of this approach, I have no choice but to note that the initial elements I have gathered are not enought to establish a typology of violence and non-violence based on such a broad corpus covering a decade between May 1968 and the advent of punk. It is still difficult to write a factual and statistical history of rock in France. We ultimately know very little about the tours involving French and foreign rock bands in Paris, the nearby region, and provincial areas. Nonetheless, this account can still evolve thanks to contributions to the project we have just undertaken to retrace the work of rock bands in France based on listings, reports, short accounts, and readers’ letters published in the specialized (Rock & Folk) and general press.169

Haut de page

Bibliographie

Alessandrini, Paul. “Pourvu qu’on ait l’ivresse : où se trouve l’esprit pop, capable d’unir les publics pop ?” Rock & Folk 41 (juin 1970): 64-67 and 101.

Bacquet, Thomas. “Le Rock en Haute-Normandie entre 1968 et 1977 à travers les annonces du Paris-Normandie.” Master’s thesis, Université de Rouen Normandie, 2009.

Bacquet, Thomas, ed. “Rock en Seine-Maritime : des Yéyés au Punk (1968-1977).” Dezède. dezede.org/dossiers/id/15/.

Bacquet, Thomas, and Joann Élart, “Faire l’expérience du rock en Seine-Maritime des yéyés au punk (1968-1977).” In This Is The Modern World. Pour une histoire sociale du rock, edited by Arnaud Bauberto and Florence Tamagne. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, forthcoming.

Kervran, Perrine and Anaïs Kien. Les années Actuel. Contestations rigolardes et aventures modernes. Marseille: Le Mot et le reste, 2010.

Kœchlin, Philippe. “Pop et violence ou les grosses ficelles.” Special issue “Été pop.” Rock & Folk 44 (septembre 1970): 64-65.

Lancelot, Michel. Campus. Paris: Albin Michel, 1971.

Leroy, Aymeric. Rock progressif. Marseille: Le Mot et le Reste, 2010. Two chapters on France, pp. 195-205 and 290-298.

Manœuvre, Philippe, ed., Rock français. De Johnny à BB Brunes : 123 albums essentiels. Paris: Hoëbeke, 2010.

Pirenne, Christophe. Le rock progressif anglais (1967-1977). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005.

Pirenne, Christophe. Une histoire musicale du rock. Paris: Fayard, 2011.

Tamagne, Florence. “L’interdiction des festivals pop au début des années 1970 : une comparaison franco-britannique.” Territoires contemporains, no. 3 (2012), And in Festivals & sociétés en Europe xixe-xxie siècles, edited by Philippe Poirrier, http://tristan.u-bourgogne.fr/CGC/publications/Festivals_societes/F_Tamagne.html.

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Notes

1 Michel Lancelot, Campus (Paris: Albin Michel, 1971). The third part, entitled “L’homme condamné”, covers the controversial topics of the times, such as the death penalty (“L’Homme condamné par la Loi,” pp. 167-87), euthanasia (“ L’Homme condamné par la Science”, pp. 189-212), and homosexuality (“L’Homme condamné par la Morale”, pp. 213-36). The fourth part is a compilation of interviews with the singers Georges Brassens (“Georges Brassens alias ‘le Gros’”, pp. 239-67) and Léo Ferré (“Léo Ferré ‘Tête de lard’”, pp. 269-85). It ends with a chapter on pop music’s political involvement (“Les nouveaux partisans… ”, pp. 287-303). The publication of this book was announced in an article entitled Un guide et Campus”, in Rock & Folk 52 (mai 1971): 9.

2 Ibid., 9.

3 Ibid., “Le nouveau destin des hippies”, 23-35.

4 Ibid., “Les Weathermen ont pris la relève”, 37-52.

5 Ibid., 28.

6 Ibid., 79. This issue was analyzed by comparing texts by Freud, Jung, Marcuse, Evola, and Mendel (Ibid., “La chute de l’empire”, 53-87 [I/3 et 4]).

7 Ibid., “Campus spécial Lanza del Vasto”, 91-108.

8 Ibid., “Campus spécial Don Helder Camara”, 109-24.

9 Ibid., “Campus spécial Martin Luther King”, 125-43.

10 Ibid., “Campus spécial Mohandas Gandhi”, 145-63.

11 Special issue Jazz Hot, Rock & Folk 220 bis (juillet 1966): 9.

12 Thomas Bacquet, “Le Rock en Haute-Normandie entre 1968 et 1977 à travers les annonces du Paris-Normandie” (master’s thesis, Université de Rouen Normandie, 2009). See also Thomas Bacquet and Joann Élart, “Faire l’expérience du rock en Seine-Maritime des yéyés au punk (1968-1977)”, in This Is The Modern World. Pour une histoire sociale du rock, eds. Arnaud Baubérot and Florence Tamagne (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, forthcoming).

13 This annex was listed as a dossier on the web portal Dezède: Thomas Bacquet and Joann Élart, eds., “Rock en Seine-Maritime : des Yéyés au Punk (1968-1977)”, Dezède, 2018, dezede.org/dossiers/id/15/.

14 See Christophe Pirenne, Le rock progressif anglais (1967-1977) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005), in particular “Rock progressif, rock progressiste,” at the beginning of the introduction (pp. 13-16) and the first chapter “Le concept de musique progressive dans le rock” (pp. 25-55).

15 Actuel 6 (mars 1971).

16 See Paul Alessandrini, “Fête sauvage à Pavalas”, Rock & Folk 56 (septembre 1971): 11-12. Alessandrini described the FLJ as an “organization whose vocabulary and actions crystallize all the defensive reactions and suppressed rage of marginal youth. With a means of action that can alternate between naive, utopian, violent, and suicidal, but which attests to the need for freedom, stifled by education or, more directly, in daily life, the street, etc. …” (ibid., 11). After clashes with the police on the morning of August 4, the festival was cut short.

17 See Philippe Kœchlin, “Pop et violence ou les grosses ficelles”, special issue “Été pop,” Rock & Folk 44 (septembre 1970): 64-65. He evoked “the current issue of ‘pop and politics’ … a giant contraditions in terms … nothing has ever been more apolitical than the pop movement.”

18 Actuel 6 (mars 1971).

19 Actuel 6 (mars 1971).

20 “Due to recent incidents, the Théâtre du 8e (Lyon) is canceling all pop concerts (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin)” (“Télégrammes,” Rock & Folk 50 (mars 1971): 4).

21 Rock & Folk 50 (mars 1971): 74-75.

22 Rock & Folk 50 (mars 1971): 27.

23 Philippe Aubert, “L’agit-pop”, Actuel 13 (août 1971): 14. On the banning of festivals in France, see: Florence Tamagne, “L’interdiction des festivals pop au début des années 1970 : une comparaison franco-britannique,” special issue “Festivals & sociétés en Europe XIXe-XXIe siècles,” Territoires contemporains, no. 3 (2012), and in Festivals & sociétés en Europe XIXe-XXIe siècles, ed. Philippe Poirrier, http://tristan.u-bourgogne.fr/CGC/publications/Festivals_societes/F_Tamagne.html; Johanna Amar, “Festivals pop 70 en France ou ‘le souci de tous ceux qui voient un lanceur de bombe dans un amateur de Rock’n’Roll’”, Criminocorpus: Rock et violences en Europe, Violence et politique, http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/3990.

24 Rock & Folk 54 (juillet 1971): 26.

25 Ibid., 25.

26 Ibid., 26.

27 Actuel 6 (mars 1971).

28 Both groups headlined the evening at the Roundhouse in London on October 15, 1966. The music, at least for the former group, was referred to as “psychedelic pop” as early as 1967. See Christophe Pirenne, Une histoire musicale du rock (Paris: Fayard, 2011), especially chapter 5, “Danser sur un volcan. Le psychédélisme” (1966-1970), pp. 157-59.

29 Bruno Le Trividic, “Nemo dans la jungle”, Paris-Normandie, 21 février 1974. Pirenne cites Melody Maker (Pirenne, Le rock progressif anglais, 39) to remind readers that Soft Machine “performs its compositions before an audience of intellectuals” (Melody Maker, 28 juillet 1973, p. 35) and that Hatfield and the North’s music is not easy music to listen to” and “calls for a certain degree of concentration from the audience (Melody Maker, 17 novembre 1973, p. 3). In a chapter devoted to the idea of a complete work of art, he mentions “the audience’s change in behavior” and notably “one revolution in progressive rock [that] consists of having seated spectators.” In his view, this is the result of “mutual consent,” bolstered by two eloquent examples: the Wish You Were Here tour, photos of which show “seated, attentive spectators,” and the Tales from the Topographic Oceans tour, during which “it was imperative that all of the spectators … be seated before the show began” (Pirenne, Le rock progressif anglais, 313). Bearing witness to the year 1970, Alessandrini distinguished between the various types of rock audiences in the following way: after the violent “old” rockers, the new rock audience—“made up of clean-cut youngsters” who had “become petty bourgeois and reactionary”—“was bent on distinguishing itself from the pop audience,” much like the “primarily African rhythm-and-blues audience; as for the pop audience, it was divided into a “fashionable audience” and an “intellectualized audience (Paul Alessandrini, Pourvu qu’on ait l’ivresse : où se trouve l’esprit pop, capable d’unir les publics pop ?”, Rock & Folk 41 (juin 1970): 64-67 and 101).

30 See: Bacquet; Bacquet and Élart.

31 “Julie Driscoll sur la côte normande”, Paris-Normandie, 5 août 1968. Concert, August 2, 1968, casino, Saint-Valery-en-Caux, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3408/.

32 Ibid.

33 François Vicaire, “L’Open-Circus : un spectacle trépidant pour un public qui ne l’est pas”, Paris-Normandie, 27 mars 1970. Festival Open Circus, March 23, 1970, Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3497/.

34 “Les Martin-Circus aux Oubliettes : une ‘tiède’ démonstration de pop-music”, Paris-Normandie, 19 janvier 1970. Concert, January 16, 1970, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3447/.

35 “Déception à Elbeuf : le ‘Deep Purple’ n’est pas venu”, Paris-Normandie, 3 novembre 1970. Concert, November 2, 1970, cinema-theater, Elbeuf, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3507/.

36 Bruno Le Trividic, “‘Deep Purple’ absent : ‘Zoo’ a consolé le public”, Paris-Normandie, 4 novembre 1970. Concert, November 2, 1970, cinema-theater, Elbeuf, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3507.

37 Roger Balavoine, “Les Soft Machine : une stupéfiante révélation,” Paris-Normandie, 7 mars 1970. Concert, March 5, 1970, Centre culturel Maxime Gorki, Le Petit-Quevilly, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3448/.

38 “‘Triangle’ au Cirque : une ambiance survoltée,” Paris-Normandie, 15 mai 1972. Concert, May 12, 1972, Cirque Boulingrin, Rouen, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3557/.

39 “Le Neubourg : Eddy Mitchell et Jacqueline Alan ont assuré le succès de la soirée de la philatélie,” Paris-Normandie, 4 novembre 1968. Concert, November 2, 1968, big top, Le Neubourg, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3416/.

40 Pierre Joly, “Vingt rappels... Non, vingt blessés : le récital havrais de Johnny Hallyday,” Paris-Normandie, 4 juillet 1970. Concert, June 29, 1970, covered municipal stadium, Le Havre, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3503/.

41 Ibid.

42 Bernadette Poulain, “Johnny Hallyday au Parc-Expo”, Paris-Normandie, 1er avril 1975. Concert, March 28, 1975, Parc des expositions de Rouen, Le Grand-Quevilly, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48223/.

43 Poulain, “Johnny Hallyday dit une messe de solitude pour cinq mille personnes”, Paris-Normandie, 15 décembre 1976. Concert, December 14, 1976, Parc des expositions de Rouen, Le Grand-Quevilly, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48222/.

44 “Johnny Hallyday le 28 mars au Parc Expo”, Paris-Normandie, 15 mars 1975. Concert, March 28, 1975.

45 “Johnny Hallyday ce soir au Parc-Expo”, Paris-Normandie, 14 décembre 1976. Concert, December 14, 1976.

46 Poulain, “Johnny Hallyday au Parc-Expo”.

47 Poulain, “Johnny Hallyday au Parc-Expo” (author’s emphasis).

48 Poulain, “Johnny Hallyday dit une messe” (author’s emphasis).

49 Paul Alessandrini, [Untitled], Actuel 6 (mars 1971).

50 See Bacquet and Élart.

51 Serge Bolloch, “Malgré des conditions matérielles difficiles, succès pour le concert de Nemo”, Paris-Normandie, 10 mai 1975. Concert, May 7, 1975, chamber of commerce, Elbeuf, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48224/.

52 “M. Annegarn n’a pas voulu jouer”, Paris-Normandie, 29 janvier 1977. Concert, January 26, 1977, municipal hall, Grand-Quevilly, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48225/.

53 “Les Martin-Circus aux Oubliettes : une ‘tiède’ démonstration de pop-music”, Paris-Normandie, 19 janvier 1970. Concert, January 16, 1970.

54 Pirenne, Une histoire musicale du rock, 161. Pirenne refers to Pink Floyd, criticized by a BBC presenter in 1967 because they played to loud.

55 Pirenne, Une histoire musicale du rock, 161.

56 Pirenne, Le rock progressif anglais, 303.

57 “Tous les soirs, spectacle permanent à partir de 19 heures, au Parc-Expo : ‘Open Circus’”, Paris-Normandie, 25 mars 1970. Festival Open Circus, March 23, 1970.

58 P. D., “Au Cirque de Rouen : la bonne surprise de ‘Soft Machine’”, Paris-Normandie, 9 mai 1972. Concert, May 8,1972, Cirque Boulignrin, Rouen, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3552/.

59 Ibid.

60 Roger Balavoine, “Demis Roussos, vedette du gala Joe Dassin”, Paris-Normandie, 17 mars 1973. Concert, March 15, 1973, cinema-theater, Elbeuf, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48226/.

61 S. L., “Public réduit au casino de Dieppe : un bon Nino Ferrer dans un mauvais spectacle”, Paris-Normandie, 29 juillet 1968. Concert, July 24, 1968, casino, Dieppe, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3407/.

62 “Après Saint-Valéry-en-Caux, Jacques Dutronc au gala des Étoiles à Lillebonne”, Paris-Normandie, 27 août 1968. Concert, August 24, 1968, casino, Saint-Valéry-en-Caux, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3410/.

63 See Bacquet and Élart, eds, “Rock en Seine-Maritime : des Yéyés au Punk (1968-1977).” The dossier provides a reconstitution of 219 “rock concerts” in the Seine-Maritime region based on listings published in the newspaper Paris-Normandie.

64 Bruno Le Trividic, “‘Deep Purple’ absent.” Concert, November 2, 1970 (author’s emphasis).

65 Zoo, Zoo (Riviera, 1969), https://www.discogs.com/Zoo-Zoo/master/339274 (album playlist, YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYJGDStDl6w&list=PL94gOvpr5yt0G9pPBgx-73pSvWNzJhclP); Zoo, I Shall Be Free (Riviera, 1970), https://www.discogs.com/Zoo-I-Shall-Be-Free/master/386001 (album playlist, YouTube, July 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnAfi_hhWbU). The former is on the list of “123 essential albums” by Philippe Manœuvre, ed., Rock français. De Johnny à BB Brunes : 123 albums essentiels (Paris : Hoëbeke, 2010), 42-43 (chronicle by Philippe Thieyre).

66 Nicoletta (accompanied by Zoo), Visage (Riviera, 1970), https://www.discogs.com/Nicoletta-2-Zoo-Visage/master/455908.

67 Léo Ferré (accompanied by Zoo), La Solitude (Barclay, 1971), https://www.discogs.com/fr/Léo-Ferré-La-Solitude/release/834048. Zoo’s appearance on the following two tracks should also be noted: Amour anarchie – Ferré 70 (Barclay, 1970), https://www.discogs.com/fr/Leo-Ferre-Amour-Anarchie-Ferré-70/release/717461 (“Le chien” and “La The Nana”). See Stan Cuesta, “1971. Léo Ferré. “La Solitude” (Barclay),” in Manœuvre, Rock français (Paris : Hoëbeke, 2010), 54-55.

68 Bruno Le Trividic, “Little Bob et ses amis sont de fameux rockers”, Paris-Normandie, 22 octobre 1974. Concert, October 19, 1974, Le Pressoir, Le Trait, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48228/ (author’s emphasis).

69 Paris-Normandie, 9 novembre 1974. Concert, November 22, 1974, Sainte-Croix-des-Pelletiers, Rouen, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48229/ (author’s emphasis).

70 Little Bob Story, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood (Arcane, 1975); Little Bob Story, Let Me In (Arcane, 1975).

71 Little Bob Story, Little Bob Story (Chiswick Records, 1976).

72 Little Bob Story, High Time (Arcane, 1976).

73 Alessandrini, “Fête sauvage à Pavalas”, 11.

74 “Demain soir, salle Sainte-Croix-des-Pelletiers : ‘Plat du Jour’ et ‘Les Gosses de Métal lourd’”, Paris-Normandie, 12 novembre 1974. Concert, November 13, 1974, Rouen, Sainte-Croix-des-Pelletiers, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48231/ (author’s emphasis)

75 Bruno Le Trividic, “Il y a dans la région des soirées qui bougent”, Paris-Normandie, 19 novembre 1974. Concert, November 13, 1974 (author’s emphasis).

76 “Mardi à la Fac de Lettres : le retour de ‘Plat du jour’”, Paris-Normandie, 21 avril 1975. Concert, April 22, 1975, university literature department, Mont-Saint-Aignan, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48232/ (author’s emphasis).

77 “Ce soir, à la Fac de lettres : le groupe ‘Plat du jour’”, Paris-Normandie, 22 avril 1975. April 22, 1975 (author’s emphasis).

78 “Demain soir, à Sotteville : six formations pour un spectacle musical exceptionnel”, Paris-Normandie, 5 juin 1975. Benefit concert for the Mouvement pour la liberté de l’avortement et de la contraception (MLAC), June 6, 1975, village hall, Sotteville-lès-Rouen, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48233/(author’s emphasis).

79 Ibid.

80 “Plat du jour – Plat du jour”, https://www.discogs.com/fr/Plat-Du-Jour-Plat-Du-Jour/release/2819740.

81 “Plat Du Jour - Plat Du Jour 1977 (FULL ALBUM) [Progressive Rock],” YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejI3DiyxSqo.

82 Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes, Le Rat débile et l’homme des champs (Philips, 1974), YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXzyaD4ZABg.

83 “Samedi, au théâtre Montdory, à Barentin : Catherine Ribeiro et ‘Alpes’”, Paris-Normandie, 28 novembre 1974. Concert, November 30, 1974, Théâtre Montdory, Barentin, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48234/ (author’s emphasis).

84 “The lyrics in this song only concern the author.” Philippe Thieyre refers to the “unusual” warning that accompanied the lyrics for Libertés ? by Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes (Fontana, 1975), “undoubtedly the band’s most violent work … with the perfect balance between strength, power, musical impact, cries of pain, and call for revolt” (Philippe Thieyre, “1975. Catherine Ribiero + Alpes. “Liberté ?” (Fontana)”, in Manœuvre, Rock français (Paris : Hoëbeke, 2010), 80-81).

85 Alessandrini, “Fête sauvage à Pavalas”, 12.

86 Bruno Le Trividic, “Nemo dans la jungle”, Paris-Normandie, 21 février 1974. Concert, April 20, 1974, Salle Sainte-Croix-des-Pelletiers, Rouen, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48227/ (author’s emphasis).

87 Serge Bolloch, “Un festival : Higelin, Nemo, Albert”, Paris-Normandie, 26 février 1975. Pop music festival, February, 22, 1975, Parc des expositions de Rouen, Le Grand-Quevilly, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48250/(author’s emphasis).

88 “NEMO - Kick A Tin Can”, YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFdvrjZaCBc.

89 “Nemo - Grandeur et misère du Perou”, YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-DgTmSXIhQ.

90 Nemo, Nemo (Agave, 1973), https://www.discogs.com/fr/Nemo-Nemo/master/807435.

91 “Nemo (70’s) – Doin’Nuthin’ (1974) – Baron Samedi & The Waving Theme”, YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In8HSSCribY.

92 Ibid.

93 “Nemo – Suzy Chong Song – French Rock 1974”, YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW-ydo4EN_Y.

94 Nemo, Doin’ Nuthin’ (Agave, 1974), https://www.discogs.com/fr/Nemo-Doin-Nuthin/release/2464999.

95 “Demain soir, salle Sainte-Croix-des-Pelletiers : rock d’été avec ‘Little Bob’ et ‘Heavy Metal Kids’”, Paris-Normandie, 8 juillet 1975. Concert, July, 9, 1975, Salle Saint-Croix-des-Pelletiers, Rouen, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48304/ (author’s emphasis).

96 Ibid.

97 Heavy Metal Kids, Heavy Metal Kids (Atlantic, 1974), https://www.discogs.com/fr/Heavy-Metal-Kids-Heavy-Metal-Kids/master/280271. Their second album Anvil Chorus, released on Atlantic in 1975, seems to have not yet been available in record stores when they played in Rouen.

98 Heavy Metal Kids, Anvil Chorus (Atlantic, 1975), https://www.discogs.com/fr/The-Kids-Anvil-Chorus/master/242297.

99 “Younger Every Day,” Panorama, BBC, 1974, extract 10:42-17:32, YouTube, accessed July 4, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z8bjTNNfIU.

100 Scorpions, Virgin Killer (RCA Victor, 1976), https://www.discogs.com/fr/Scorpions-Virgin-Killer/master/29415. This album followed Fly to the Rainbow (RCA Victor, 1974) and In Trance (RCA Victor, 1975), which formed the band’s first major trilogy in the hard rock category after their more psychedelic first album Lonesome Crow (Brain, 1972).

101 Didier Estable, “Premier festival pop havrais : Un délire de décibels,” Paris-Normandie, 2 novembre 1976. First pop festival on October 29, 1976, municipal stadium, Le Havre, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/48305/ (author’s emphasis).

102 “Invités par la M.J., jeudi : Dogs à Sotteville”, Paris-Normandie, 1er novembre 1977. Concert, November 3, 1977, village hall, Sotteville-lès-Rouen, https://dezede.org/evenements/id/3486/ (author’s emphasis).

103 Guy Kopelowicz, “Doors et Jefferson Airplane”, Rock & Folk 21 (octobre 68): 23.

104 Pirenne, Une histoire musicale du rock, 166.

105 The rare advertisements for hi-fi equipment (ultimately little represented given the dense column devoted to records) should be added, in addition to those for reading music and playing guitar (notably the audiovisual method published by Labat Éditions Nouvelles), clothing stores (primarily Western House and L’Indien des Puces in Paris), and airline companies (Panama).

106 Beginning in May 1972.

107 Rock & Folk 4 (février 1967): 56 [see Annex I “J. Collyns, des amplis sur orbite” /1]. Please note that the numbers in brackets refer to the downloadable annex and the number of the advertisement.

108 Rock & Folk 5 (mars 1967): 56 [I/2].

109 Rock & Folk 7 (mai 1967): 14 [I/3].

110 Rock & Folk 8 (juin 1967): 52 [I/4].

111 Rock & Folk 27 (avril 1969): back cover [I/5].

112 Rock & Folk 28 (mai 1969): back cover [I/6].

113 Rock & Folk 31 (août 1969): back cover [I/7].

114 Rock & Folk 32 (septembre 1969): back cover; Rock & Folk 33 (octobre 1969): back cover [I/8].

115 Rock & Folk 40 (mai 1970): inside back cover [I/9].

116 Rock & Folk 41 (juin 1970): inside front cover [I/10].

117 Rock & Folk 49 (février 1971): back cover [I/11].

118 Rock & Folk 50 (mai 1971): 28 [I/12].

119 Rock & Folk 28 (mai 1969): 66 [see Annex II “Rien au-dessus de Marshall” /13].

120 Rock & Folk: 37 (février 1970): inside front cover [II/14]. Variations on this pink-backdropped advertisment were published notably in Rock & Folk 49 (février 1971): 24 [II/15]. Here the background was red with different lettering for the brand.

121 Rock & Folk 56 (septembre 1971): 14 [II/16].

122 Rock & Folk 64 (mai 1972): 22 [II/17].

123 Rock & Folk 71 (décembre 1972): 106 [see Annex III “D’autres amplis explosifs et percutants” /18].

124 Rock & Folk 4 (février 1967): 11 [III/19].

125 Rock & Folk 68 (septembre 1972): 87 [III/20].

126 Rock & Folk 68 (septembre 1972): 88 [III/21].

127 Rock & Folk 31 (août 1969): 62 [III/22].

128 Rock & Folk 32 (septembre 1969): 54 [III/23].

129 Rock & Folk 37 (février 1970): 10 [III/24].

130 Rock & Folk 38 (mars 1970): 66 [III/25].

131 Rock & Folk 63 (avril 1972): 24 [III/26].

132 Rock & Folk 39 (avril 1970): 30 [III/27].

133 Rock & Folk 40 (mai 1970): inside front cover [III/28].

134 Rock & Folk 41 (juin 1970): 70 [III/29].

135 Rock & Folk 57 (octobre 1971): 16 [III/30].

136 Rock & Folk 65 (juin 1972): 15 [III/31].

137 Rock & Folk 59 (décembre 1971): 12 [III/32].

138 Rock & Folk 59 (décembre 1971): 26 [III/33].

139 Rock & Folk 59 (décembre 1971): 82 [III/34]; Rock & Folk 70 (novembre 1972): 106 [35].

140 Rock & Folk 61 (février 1972): 24 [III/36].

141 Rock & Folk 68 (septembre 1972): 20 [III/37].

142 Rock & Folk 68 (septembre 1972): 22 [III/38].

143 Rock & Folk 71 (décembre 1972): 13 [III/39].

144 Rock & Folk 29 (juin 1969): 11 [see Annex IV “Des stars utilisées par des marques d’amplis” /40].

145 Rock & Folk 44 (septembre 1970): 28 [IV/41].

146 Rock & Folk 29 (juin 1969): 12 [IV/42].

147 Rock & Folk 41 (juin 1970): 82 [IV/43].

148 Rock & Folk 41 (juin 1970): 83 [IV/44].

149 Rock & Folk 51 (avril 1971): 24 [IV/45].

150 Rock & Folk 18 (mai 1968): 60 [IV/46].

151 Rock & Folk 19 (juin-juillet 1968): 57 [IV/47]. The undated photograph was possibly taken during the the Berlin tour in 1962, when the live album À la philharmonie de Berlin (Phillips, 1962)—in which both musicians are credited—was pressed. It should also be noted that Marcel Dutrieux produced Juliette Greco’s album Peut-être que… (Phillips, 1968).

152 Rock & Folk 26 (mars 1969): 59 [IV/48]. The band had just released its first album Nador (Pathé, 1969) and knew how to promote its image as a “fashionable” band in another advertisement, in which the musicians modeled for the clothing store (Campton, Rock & Folk 27 (avril 1969): 60 [IV/49]).

153 Rock & Folk 47 (décembre 1970): 90 [see Annex V “Enfants, hommes et femmes-objet” /50].

154 Rock & Folk 44 (septembre 1970): 22 [V/51].

155 Rock & Folk 16 (mars 1968): 52 [V/52].

156 Rock & Folk 57 (novembre 1971): 26 [V/53].

157 Recurring advertisement published notably in: Rock & Folk 44 (septembre 1970): inside front cover [V/54]; Rock & Folk 53 (juin 1971), 28.

158 Rock & Folk 70 (novembre 1972): 108 [V/55].

159 Rock & Folk 29 (juin 1969): 22 [V/56].

160 Rock & Folk 47 (décembre 1970): inside back cover [V/57].

161 Rock & Folk 58 (novembre 1971): inside back cover [V/58]; republished in black and white in Rock & Folk 62 (mars 1972): 18 [V/59].

162 Rock & Folk 30 (juillet 1969): 76 [V/60].

163 Rock & Folk 52 (mai 1971): 36 [V/61].

164 Rock & Folk 30 (juillet 1969): 60 [V/62].

165 La Cause du peuple 24 (2 juin 1970).

166 Richard Deshayes, “Mes vingt ans éclatés”, Le Nouvel Observateur 37, cited by Jean-Claude Vimont, “Les manifestations en réaction à l’arrestation du lycéen Guiot et aux blessures très graves subies par Richard Deshayes”, Rock, culture et politique, blog, July 17, 2009, http://rcp-rouen.blogspot.com/2009/07/les-manifestations-en-reaction.html.

167 Delfreil de Ton, “La rubrique anti-flics”, Charlie Hebdo 14 (février 1971).

168 On assassine à Paris !, pamphlet by the Groupe des Anti-fascistes, 1972, from the personal collection of Jean-Claude Vimont, Rock, culture et politique, blog, July 18, 2009, http://rcp-rouen.blogspot.com/2009/07/pierre-overney-militant-maoiste-tue.html.

169 Joann Élart, ed., “Rock and France,” Dezède, https://dezede.org/dossiers/id/261/ (dossier currently being updated).

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Table des illustrations

Titre Fig. 1: Actuel 6 (mars 1971)
Légende Drawing by Jo.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/docannexe/image/5886/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 446k
Titre Fig. 2: Poster, “Live and conquer together” for a “wild international festival” organized by the FLJ in Montpellier, August 3-5, 1971
Crédits © Personal archives of Jean-Claude Vimont
URL http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/docannexe/image/5886/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 179k
Titre Fig. 3: FLJ flyer, [1971]
Crédits © Personal archives of Jean-Claude Vimont
URL http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/docannexe/image/5886/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 176k
Titre Fig. 4: FLJ flyer for a General Assembly in Jussieu, May 15, 1971
Crédits © Personal archives of Jean-Claude Vimont
URL http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/docannexe/image/5886/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 164k
Titre Fig. 5: Actuel 6 (mars 1971)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/docannexe/image/5886/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 129k
Titre Fig. 6: “Revolution at the Palais”
Légende Rock & Folk 50 (mars 1971): 73.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/docannexe/image/5886/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 484k
Titre Fig. 8 : “Deep Purple in France”
Légende Rock & Folk 46 (novembre 1970): 32. Advertisement for Deep Purple’s French tour, which was cut short at the Olympia in Paris.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/docannexe/image/5886/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 209k
Titre Fig. 9: Album cover for Plat du jour by the band Plat du Jour (Speedball, 1977)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/docannexe/image/5886/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 139k
Titre Fig. 11: Siné, “It’s still not loud enough!..”
Légende Rock & Folk, special issue Jazz Hot (octobre 1966): 15.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/docannexe/image/5886/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 385k
Titre Fig. 12: Pierre Overney’s funeral, March 4, 1972
Légende Photograph: Jean-Claude Vimont
URL http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/docannexe/image/5886/img-10.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 272k
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Référence électronique

Joann Élart, « Violence and Non-Violence at Rock Concerts: 1970s French Society Confronted With Its Contradictions »Criminocorpus [En ligne], 11 | 2018, mis en ligne le 07 janvier 2019, consulté le 19 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/5886 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/criminocorpus.5886

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Auteur

Joann Élart

Joann Élart est maître de conférences en musicologie à l’université de Rouen et membre du Groupe de Recherche d’Histoire (GRHIS, EA 3831). Il enseigne beaucoup l’histoire de la musique classique et un peu l’histoire du rock. Ses travaux portent sur la vie musicale en France entre la fin de l’Ancien Régime et la Restauration. Ses recherches actuelles portent sur la diffusion de l’œuvre de François-Adrien Boieldieu entre la Révolution française et la Première Guerre mondiale, et sur la diffusion du répertoire de l’Opéra-Comique en province entre la Révolution française et la Restauration. En 2012, il fonde avec Yannick Simon et Patrick Taïeb le portail Dezède (https://dezede.org), portail sur l’histoire et la chronologie des spectacles. Il a codirigé avec Sophie Victorien le dossier Musique et justice publié en 2013 sur le portail Criminocorpus (http://criminocorpus.revues.org/2560), Quatre siècles d’édition musicale, mélanges offerts à Jean Gribenski, avec Étienne Jardin et Patrick Taïeb (Peter Lang, 2014) et les Nouvelles perspectives sur les spectacles en province avec Yannick Simon (PURH, 2018).

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