(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Stills)
Wed 31 December 2025 15:05, UK
Got any plans for New Year’s Eve? Well, you better cancel them because you’ve just nabbed a spot at the hottest party of 1968, an invitation-only TV broadcast from Paris featuring performances by the likes of The Who, Small Faces, Pink Floyd, The Troggs, Booker T & The MGs, Marie Laforet, Fleetwood Mac, The Equals, Françoise Hardy and Jacques Dutronc. Remember to pack a turtle neck and a gram of the good stuff: it doesn’t get choicer than this.
The three-and-a-half-hour New Year’s Eve Surprise Party was broadcast on ORTF, the only French TV channel at the time. The audience featured many famous faces from the world of fashion, music, art and film – all of whom arrived impeccably dressed in the latest styles. The performance immortalised a liminal moment in 1960s pop culture, standing at the threshold between the glitzy pizzazz of the early ’60s and the rock revolt of 1969.
Many of the artists performing were captured in an equally undefined mode, with The Who lip-syncing tracks such as ‘I’m A Boy’, ‘Magic Bus’ and ‘I Can See For Miles’ while doing their best to ignore that they hadn’t had a hit in a whole year. Unperturbed by this downturn, months later, they released their rock opera, Tommy, cementing their legacy with a fittingly non-commercial classic.
Small Faces, meanwhile, didn’t even plug in their instruments. Was it satire, was it disgruntlement? Well, they would part ways less than a month later, so perhaps that explains the evident apathy.
Pink Floyd also struggled to find their feet, having recently bid farewell to vocalist and songwriter Syd Barrett. This marks the footage as a rather pivotal moment in their history, as they looked to reinvent themselves without their dazzling founder. By 1969, they were back in the game, recording their fourth album Ummagumma, showcasing a band very much deciding to just be themselves. Clearly, the Surprise Partie was something of a watershed moment.
The broadcast also features performances by The Equals and a pre-Fleetwood Mac featuring Jeremy Spencer on lead vocals. Spencer would leave the group two years down the line and join the religious cult: the Children of God. Once again, this cements the significance of this footage, capturing a moment when the group were teetering on the brink of disastrous turmoil that would, nevertheless, in due course lead to the reinvention of Rumours.
This being French TV, there are also performances by classic ’60s garage outfit Les Variations, and the hottest couple in history: Françoise Hardy and Jacques Dutronc. Francophilia was firmly a feature of ‘60s, and with swaggering coolness like this, it is so easy to see why tha you may well have ordered a chic double-breasted suit before the video concludes.
But the reverie on display wasn’t just cool, it was vital. It had been a tumultuous year in France. In May 1968, a wave of protests, riots and occupations spread across the country, sparking fears that the nation might be on the cusp of a full-blown revolution. For a moment, this is where it looked like counterculture was set to politically assert itself in a perfunctory fashion.
By the end of May, the French government was on the verge of collapse, General de Gaulle having fled. With the ineffectual French government surrounded, officials began burning documents and organising emergency flights out of the country. However, after an election was called on May 30th, revolutionary sentiment began to fade. By winter, things were relatively stable. A new year was on the horizon. Champagne was being quaffed. Cake was being eaten. Les Who were playing ‘I Can See For Miles’. And all was largely for fun once again. A metallic backdrop said the future awaits. 1969 was moments away.
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