A crowd of over 400,000 attended this open air event, a fund-raiser for the French Communist Party. The Who came onstage at 6pm, preceded by Country Joe McDonald. Townshend had invited a reclusive Eric Clapton and his then girlfriend Alice Ormsby-Gore to watch the show from the wings but during the band’s set Eric was mistaken for a fan and ejected by a roadie.
Usual set opener “I Can’t Explain” was short and to the point, ditto the band’s version of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues“. “Baba O’Reilly” required the band to play along to a taped synthesiser track, as did “Relay“. These last two tracks were written for Townshend’s Lifehouse project and whilst the former had already appeared on “Who’s Next” the latter would not be released until December 1972 as a non-album single. “Relay” is longer than the recorded version with call and response vocals and a brief drums-only interlude before Townshend and Entwistle solo simultaneously.
The last word goes to Roger Daltrey who thanked the enormous crowd by saying “we’d like to speak in French. Unfortunately we didn’t go to school, so we can’t”.
All tracks recorded live at the Fête de l’Humanité at Parc Georges-Valbon, Paris on September 9th 1972 and broadcast on the RTL commercial network
Roger Daltrey – Vocals, harmonica, Pete Townshend – Guitar, vocals, John Entwhistle – Bass, vocals, Keith Moon – Drums, vocals
The Fat Angel Sings 