A red noise

pop and politics in post-1968 France

Jonathyne Briggs

pp. 15-27

in: Timothy Scott Brown, Andrew Lison (eds), The global sixties in sound and vision, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

In 1971, a group of French students from the École des Travaux Publics organized a rock concert at the Palais des Sports in Paris, featuring Soft Machine, Yes, Gong, and Iron Butterfly. An audience of nearly 5,000 young people was in attendance, and many of them had broken through the doors to secure the free access to the stadium promised by organizers. During Gong's set, young listeners destroyed seats as they drummed along with the band and requisitioned the concession areas in a strange replay of the occupation of the Sorbonne in May of 1968, when students occupied the campus buildings in the Latin Quarter (subsequently destroying seats in numerous classrooms there). Throughout the concert, members of the audience interrupted the music by taking the stage on several occasions, requisitioning the microphone to assert the political importance of pop music. Soon after, the contents of the concession stands rained down from the rafters, showering the audience with ice cream bars, cocoa powder, and fruit juice. By midnight, the stadium's power was cut, sending concertgoers to the exits as the remainder of the show was cancelled. The French riot police, the Compagnie Républicaine de Securité [CRS], had entered the area outside of the Palais to restore order and subsequently a melee broke out between members of the audience and police.¹ In his review of the event, Rock & Folk journalist Philippe Parginaux questioned the assumed connection between pop music and politics and the depth of young people's political motivations in France after 1968.