New Year's Eve 1968 "Surprise Partie" with The Who, Small Faces, Booker T, Pink Floyd, Joe Cocker, Fleetwood Mac... Dawn of the Rock Revolution

“Surprise-Partie” (see clip below) was broadcast on French TV on December 31st 1968 from the ORTF Studios in Paris and features The Who, The Small Faces, Booker T and the MGs, The Pink Floyd, The Troggs, The Equals, Joe Cocker, Fleetwood Mac and French band Les Variations.

Nowadays New Year's Eve TV pop / rock specials are the norm - in the UK Jools Holland's Hootenanny has been running for nearly 20 years now - but back in the 60s Rock music was not accepted as mainstream family entertainment nor as prevalent on TV as it is now so this program is actually pretty cool and progressive for its time. Auntie BBC certainly weren't doing this kind of thing in the late 60s.

The Who

The Pipers at the Gates of Dawn
The program may have been a novel idea for its time but it also seems to show mid 60s pop culture in the last throes of its show-business trappings and on the cusp of the new age of rock. 1968 is remembered as a chaotic and revolutionary year - in France it almost brought the downfall of the government - but a musical revolution was also brewing which would affect all the bands here. 1968 can be seen as the last year in which rock'n'roll would still be seen as teenage "entertainment". The rock revolution of 1969 was about to turn it into an "art form" to be taken seriously and the hitherto "underground" hippy culture would go mainstream at Woodstock. The stage was set for change and some of the bands seen here, like The Who and Fleetwood Mac, would reinvent themselves and ride the new wave. Others, like The Troggs or The Equals, would soon find themselves cast adrift by the new rock cognoscenti who found their lightweight punk pop to be frivolous and ephemeral.

The transformation of The Who is perhaps the best example of the changes about to occur. They'd had a run of top 20 hit singles from 1965 to 1967 but had suffered a year long commercial dry spell in 1968. They were even starting to look washed-up. Yet at the time of this (mimed) performance of old hits they were just months away from releasing their rock opera Tommy, triumphing at the Woodstock festival and becoming one the great 1970s stadium rock bands.

It's also worthy of note that this show took place only 3 weeks after the band's stunning and show-stealing live performance in the Rolling Stones Rock'n'Roll Circus film. They didn't know it yet but The Who were about to have their most successful year ever in 1969.

The Small Faces

Unfortunately for the The Small Faces things looked bleaker. They were only weeks away from breaking up and this performance is possibly their last for TV. Singer and guitarist Steve Marriott, aware of the way rock was about to change and frustrated at being unable to shake off the band's Lazy Sunday / Itchycoo Park novelty "pop" image, went off to form rock boogie kings Humble Pie and conquer America. The Small Faces eventually cracked it by recruiting Rod Stewart and Ron Wood and reinventing themselves as the Faces.

Note - Look closely here, you can see Pete Townshend and Keith Moon sitting at the back of the stage - no doubt offering encouragement or the occasional acerbic witticism.

Fleetwood Mac were about to leave the blues behind and find considerable crossover success with chart hits like Albatross and Man of the World.

The Pink Floyd, however, were still finding their way after the loss of Syd Barrett 12 months earlier and were now on the way to becoming the premier live space rock band of 1969 - to which the live half of Ummagumma (recorded 5 months later) would be excellent testament.  

Joe Cocker, like The Who, was to find super-stardom the following summer when he put in a stunning performance at the Woodstock festival.  

The Troggs and The Equals, who might be about to find the new rock revolution a little tougher going, are certainly on fine form here and perhaps act as a portent of the late 70s punk era's return to the ethics of power and simplicity.

Fleetwood Mac

France's Les Variations are worth noting. This show was actually their TV debut and they soon left behind their rather splendid garage punk posturing here and started to write harder rock material that showed a strong north African and Moroccan influence. They became one of France's most successful bands of the early 70s and also the first French rock band to tour America and sign with an American label.

Booker T and the MGs

The Performances
All performances are live except The Who and The Small Faces who mimed for some reason. Did their gear get lost on the Channel ferry?

The Booker T and the MGs set is outstanding although there seems to be a bit of a mystery with regard to the date. The Stax / Volt tour of Europe with the MGs, Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, Carla Thomas and Sam and Dave was in early 1967. Did the MGs return on their own the following year?

The Equals, who were one the UK's first racially integrated bands, perform a frantic set of soul stompers. Fleetwood Mac are also on fine form with Jeremy Spencer, in full-on Elmore James mode, taking the lead on two of the three songs.  

Les Variations are simply classic 60s garage rock. Playing before an, at times, wildly enthusiastic home crowd this is an impressive TV debut. I'm sure many of those present would even have claimed that they stole the show.

Les Variations

All in all, this is great stuff. Like Hugh Hefner's "Playboy After Dark" it is another classic example of late 60s grooviness from a glittering day-glo era which was just about to change into a darker shade of denim and take itself far more seriously...

See below for artist order and tracklisting.

The WHO
01 - I’m A Boy
02 - I Can See For Miles
03 - Magis Bus
Roger Daltrey : vocals
Peter Townshend : guitar, vocals
John Entwistle : bass
Keith Moon : drums

The SMALL FACES
01 - Odgen’s Nut Gone Flake
02 - Song Of A Baker
03 - Rollin’ Over
Steve Marriott : guitar, vocal
Ian McLagan : keyboards
Ronnie Lane : bass
Kenny Jones : drums

BOOKER T & The MGs live at “Bibelot", unknown date”
01 - Green Onions
02 - Hooker Loo
Booker T Jones : organ
Steve Cropper : guitar
Donald “Duck” Dunn : bass
Al Jackson : drums

PINK FLOYD live at “Bilboquet" - Paris, Sept 7, 1968
01 - Let There Be More Light
David Gilmour : guitar, vocals
Richard Wright : keyboards, vocals
Roger Waters : bass, vocals
Nick Mason : drums

The EQUALS
01 - Softly Softly
02 - Equality
03 - Baby Come Back
Derv Gordon - lead vocals
Lincoln Gordon - guitar
Eddy Grant - guitar
Pat Lloyd - bass guitar
John Hall - drums

Les VARIATIONS
01 - Around & Around
02 - Everybody Needs Somebody
To Love
03 - Satisfaction
Joe Lebb : vocals
Marc Tobaly : guitar
Jacques “Petit Pois” Grande : bass
Jacky Bitton : drums

The TROGGS
01 - I Can’t Control Myself
02 - Peggy Sue
03 - Somewhere My Girl Is Waiting
Reg Presley : vocals
Chris Britton : guitar
Pete Staples : bass
Ronnie Bond : drums

JOE COCKER live at "Tour de Nesle" - Paris, unknown date
01 - I Shall Be Released
02 - With A Little Help From My Friends

FLEETWOOD MAC
01 - Homework
02 - My Baby's Sweet
03 - Dust My Broom
Peter Green : guitar, vocals
Jeremy Spencer : slide guitar, piano, vocals
Danny Kirwan : guitar
John McVie : bass
Mick Fleetwood : drums



Bonus tracks
Other artists who performed on the show but are not included in the clip above: Davy Jones, Marie La Foret, Jaques Dutronic, Aphrodite's Child, Antoine, Herbert Leonard, Johnny Haliday, Francoise Hardy and PP Arnold. The latter two are worth seeing though PP Arnold suffers from a bad sound mix.

Francoise Hardy - À quoi ça sert / Où va la chance / Suzanne

PP Arnold - If You Think You're Groovy
The Small Faces played on the recording but, funnily enough, are not here to mime to it.

More stranger than known

Hugh Hefner's "Playboy After Dark" 

Peter Green - "A Mind To Give Up Living" - The Blues of Despair and Salvation

The Faces BBC Sessions - 5 Guys Walk Into The BBC...

Parallax - The Pink Floyd BBC Sessions 

Amazing Journey - The road to "Live at Leeds". The Who Live in Philadelphia 19/10/1969

Ye-yé! Spanish Nuggets - Ten 1960s Garage, Beat and Psych classics from Spain.

At the end of July the 20th Euro Ye-yé festival takes place in Gijon in the North of Spain. It's a 3 day festival of 1960s style and music - especially all things Mod, Beat, Garage, Psych and Soul. There are bands (old and new - this year veteran soul singer Brenda Hollaway and new psych garage rockers the Night Beats headline), films, all-nighters and even a march of the mods scooter parade through town. It's a week-end long celebration 60s cool - especially the mod style that has been around for 50 years now and which still shows no sign of loosening its nostalgic grip on pop consciousness.

Ye-yé is actually a French term to describe the French singers and bands influenced by the Beatles in the mid 60s but there was also an awful lot of Ye-yé going on in Spain and the Spanish were actually pretty good at it - which is surprising when you remember that in the 1960s the country had a fascist government with an unfriendly attitude to anything new, young or liberal.

Spain was, as I said in a previous post on one the best Spanish bands of the era, Los Brincos, "a corrupt fascist dictatorship morally propped up by a Catholic church with an obvious antipathy towards the new "liberal" rock / pop culture emerging from the US and the UK. Spain was cut off and the climate was conservative and claustrophobic. Many Spaniards emigrated for reasons that were not just economic (anyone who has seen Spanish director Antonio Mercero's short metaphorical horror film "La Cabina" (The Telephone Box) will have an idea of what the atmosphere in Spain must have been like at the time). Such was this moral rigidity that even the Beatles were not warmly welcomed by the Spanish authorities when they played Madrid in the summer of 1965. Ringo Starr's abiding memory of playing in Spain (in the Beatles Anthology documentary) was of policemen beating up their young fans. However, despite all this, and rather amazingly, Spain actually had a thriving beat group scene in the 60s".

So, bearing in mind that these bands were all working, as John Lennon said, "against overwhelming oddities", let's have a look at ten of the finest examples of that thriving Spanish beat group scene. The bands they called Ye-yé because they sounded like the Beatles singing "Yeah Yeah Yeah". A scene that quietly subverted the conservative claustrophobia of their era and perhaps even offered a glimpse of a brighter future.  
Ye-yé!

Micky Y Los Tonys  - El problema de mis pelos ( = My hair problem) 1966
Micky (Miguel Ángel Carreño), and the Tonys  - Tony de Corral (guitar), Fernando Argenta (guitar), Juan Fuster (bass) and Enrique Moddell (drums) - were a very successful band in Spain in the 60s and even made a couple of films. Like most Spanish beat groups of the era they made a career out of covering UK / US hits translated into Spanish however they soon started writing their own tongue in cheek and wryly ironic material - 'No comprendemos por qué no somos millonarios' (We can't understand why we're not millionaires), 'No sé nadar' (I Can't Swim), 'Cuarto intento de éxito (Fourth Attempt at Success) and this one - 'El problema de mis pelos' (My hair problem).

After nearly a decade of hits the Tonys split in 1970 and Micky went on to have a big MOR solo hit in Spain with 'El chico de la armónica' produced by Fernando Arbex of Los Brincos. After an unsuccessful Eurovision entry in 1977 Micky's career started to decline and by the 1980s he was lost to the Spanish 60s revival circuit. However Micky is still around and in 2010 recorded an album with Jorge Explosión of Spain's best punk garage revival band Doctor Explosión.

Micky Y Los Tonys - Ya No Estas ( = You're not there). From the film "Megatón Ye Yé" (1965)

Los Zooms
A four piece Spanish Dutch collaboration. Otto van der Pol (vocals) and Eric de Leeuwe (drums) teamed up with Alex Sánchez (guitar) and Eduardo Amorós (bass) to record two of the best Spanish garage / psych singles of the era. A promising band that unfortunately met with no commercial success. They split up after only a few months together leaving behind these two classic singles.

Los Zooms - Algo Mas ( = Something more) 1968.

Los Zooms - Alguien Los Ha De Escucuchar ( = Someone must hear them) 1967

 
Los Archiduques - "Lamento de Gaitas" (= Bagpipe Lament / I love how you love me) 1967
Cover versions were standard practice at this time in Spanish rock. However this one is more original than most. A version of the Paul and Barry Ryan song by an Asturian band complete with Asturian bagpipes. The words were also rewritten and the song was changed to a lament for a dead girlfriend which I'm not sure really goes with the happy smiley tune but anyway...

Los Archiduques - Tino Casal (vocals),  Armando Pelayo (organ), Pedro Bastarrica (drums), Tony and Claudio (guitars) and Tito (bass) were all actually from Asturias in the north of Spain and, although this was not a hit, it may be the first time that bagpipes were used in a rock song. The shimmering fuzz tone guitar solo also adds to the rather tasty psychedelic stew the band manage to cook up. Psychedelic "fabada" anyone?

After the band split in 1971 lead singer Tino Casal emigrated to London and later reinvented himself, David Bowie style, as a kind of Spanish glam rock / new romantic icon for the 80s. He became part of the 80s Madrid "movida" scene, which also included film director Pedro Almodovar, and became one of the most successful Spanish solo artists of the 80s. Another Barry Ryan song, Eloise, gave him a national number one in 1988. He died in a car accident in 1991.

Los Brincos - Nadie Te Quiere Ya ( = Nobody wants you now) 1968
I've written more fully about Los Brincos here. They were the best and the most successful of the bands to come out of Spain at this time and were even known as the Spanish "Beatles". They maintained a consistent run of high quality hits throughout their six years together.  Nadie Te Quiere Ya is a psych classic taken from the 1968 album Contrabando recorded in London at Abbey Road in 1968 with Troggs' producer Larry Page at the controls.

Los Salvajes - Es La Edad ( = It's the age or It's an age thing) 1966
From Barcelona Los Salvajes (The Savages) were Gaby Alegret (vocals), Andy González (guitar), Julián Moreno (guitar), Sebastián Sospedra (bass) and Delfín Fernández (drums). If Los Brincos were the Spanish "Beatles" then los Salvajes were the Spanish "Rolling Stones" and had a much tougher sound. Es La Edad is a generational long hair anthem - its sentiments echoing the Who's My Generation.

Los Ángeles - Momentos 1969
Los Momentos - Poncho González (vocals, drums), Carlos Alvárez (guitar, vocals), Agustín Rodríguez (guitar, vocals) y Paco Quero (bass) - were one of the most successful bands in Spain in the late 60s. Momentos was a top ten hit in 1969 and shows a distinct mid 60s Beatles influence.

Los Íberos - Fantastic Girl 1970
Los Íberos - Enrique Lozano (Vocals), Adolfo Rodríguez (guitar), Diego Cascado (drums) and Cristóbal de Haro (bass) - were the first Spanish band to record an entire album in London. They were extremely popular in Spain and starred in a couple of films. The clip below is taken from "Topical Spanish" (1970), directed by Ramon Masats, and seems to bear a strong "Help" influence.

Los Bravos - Black is Black 1966
The one that made it. Black is Black was an enormous international success in 1966 reaching number 2 in the UK charts and number 4 in the US. It was actually the result of a certain amount of international co-operation as the song was written by three Brits (Tony Hayes, Michelle Grainger, and Steve Wadey), the band's manager, Alain Milhaud,  was French, the lead singer, Mike Kennedy, was from Germany and only the band - Antonio Martinez (guitar), Manuel Fernández (organ), Miguel Vicens Danus (bass) and Pablo Gomez (drums) were actually Spanish.

Quite a bit of the credit for Black is Black should go to manager Alain Milhaud who, after the band had already achieved success in Spain, aspired to even greater things in Europe and the US. The band's Spanish label Columbia were unconvinced but he struck a deal with UK Decca to record some sessions in London with a view to a possible UK release. Black is Black was chosen by arranger Ivor Raymonde and at first the band were underwhelmed by the song. Its hit potential was obvious though - the arrangement, especially the bass line, is very Motown inspired and Kennedy's vocals bear more than a passing resemblance to Gene Pitney. The band however did not play on the recording and what you actually hear are some of London's finest session musicians. The song was released in the UK on Decca in the summer of 1966 and picked up by Pirate station Radio Caroline who turned it into a hit. Unfortunately the band couldn't follow it up and, although they continued to have massive success in Spain, to the rest of the world Los Bravos remain one-hit-wonders.

Semi-interesting footnote: In 1970, after Mike Kennedy left the group, the band recruited a British singer, Andy Anderson, and recorded a single Individuality. Andy was the brother of Jon Anderson who was about to achieve mega-success with prog-rockers Yes.

Note; I've attempted to be accurate with the band line-ups but one of the many problems Spanish bands had at this time was the call-up. Military service was compulsory in Spain right up to the 80s and quite a few of these bands had members temporarily sacrificed to what in Spain was known as "La Mili"

Most of the band information here was sourced from the excellent Spanish online rock encyclopedia la fonoteca http://lafonoteca.net/ (in Spanish)

There seem to be very few decently written histories of this period in Spanish rock. Not even Los Brincos - one of the most important bands of the period - have a biography written about them. Compared to the US and UK where rock has become a nostalgia industry the Spanish seem quite uninterested in their recent past. An explanation for this apparent indifference could be, as I mentioned in my post on Los Brincos, "that for many Spaniards "the swinging 60s" did not exist. There was censorship and no freedom of speech. Any form of protest could get you locked up, beaten up or even killed. Spain would have to wait until the late 70s and the death of Franco to regain democracy. So, the Spanish tend not to look back nostalgically on the 60s as a golden era of change and musical / artistic development because, for them, it wasn't".

However, as I said in my introduction, in their own subtle way perhaps these bands offered a glimpse of a future where change was indeed possible.
For that they deserve respect.



more stranger than known
Los Brincos - Glorious 60s Garage Beat Psych Pop...

20 years of the Xixon Sound

Horizonte Eléctrico - 10 Great contemporary Spanish bands that should be better known outside Spain

Horizonte Eléctrico 2 - 10 Flamenco Rock Classics