Orange – more than just a thick-skinned fruit

Here are the edited highlights of Steve Clarke's long NME piece about Procol Harum's gig in the Roman amphitheatre on 16 August 1975 (by a sad stroke of fate BtP's lightning visit to the amphitheatre took place on 15 August 1975). Of course if anyone would like to type out the whole piece, they should get in touch!

Tiberius Claudius never saw it like this … Listen, 12,000 European hippies are stashed inside what used to be the Romans’ main gig at Orange, then a provincial capital of the Roman Empire in Transalpine Gaul, better known as France … the rock’n’roll to be presented over the three-day period is predominantly British, Tangerine Dream, if indeed one can call them a rock’n’roll band, being the only Continental act …

• Rather than the customary dope odour that hangs in the air at such do's, garlic is the predominant smell.
• Jess Roden’s music is essentially music to dance to … … lacks any real distinction
• Fairport Convention turned in the evening’s most surprisingly excellent set [with Sandy Denny!]
• John Cale looked wrecked out of his brain …. Cale is acting, I think.
• Bad Company … a great band with an energy level that is among the highest in rock [Paul Rodgers was upset when the police impounded Bad Company’s passports after an altercation with a waiter. The article goes on … ‘Rather than attend a meal given by their record company for Bad Co., he locked himself in his hotel room. Ralphs, Boz and Kirke did make the nosh-up which was memorable for an exchange by Kirke and that German gal Nico, terminally attired in black. Kirke’s humour had been the evening’s star attraction but it really came into its own when the lady in black, cool and sophisticatedly sullen, sat down next to Kirke who promptly enquired in street-yob fashion, ‘Wot was yer name again?’ To which Nico, ever nonplussed, sneering exquisitely, told him.]
• It was left to Nico to close the show … her music is ideal for either emptying the arena … those who stayed got off on her by all accounts. I left.
• On paper Saturday night’s bill didn’t look so attractive … John Martyn …
• The Feelgoods had wound the audience up to a peak of excitement, with demands for an encore that lack of time made impossible.

So Procol Harum had better be good. And there were, approximately ten times more exciting, more inspired and enjoyable than their first set at London’s Palladium the previous Sunday [reviews here (praise) and here (unpraise)].

Harum tapered their set to suit their shorter time allocation, and rather than spending and [sic] hour and a half warming up they came straight in and did it, combining cuts from their new album (I Keep Forgetting was especially good, the R&B side of Gary Brooker’s voice ideal for the song), old chestnuts like Homburg, Nothing but the Truth, Power Failure and encoring with, surprisingly, Be Bop a Lu La and You Know What.

Only their over-long version of Strauss’s Blue Danube was tedious. Otherwise Harum played as the great thinking rock’n’roll band. There was nothing either doomy or decayed about them. They had fire.

• Ginger Baker played beautifully throughout, showing a complete command over his kit …
• Tangerine Dream synthesised the day to an end … Orange was easily the most enjoyable open-air event I’ve been to this summer …

You know, those Romans were smart geezers. Hail Caesar. We who are about to lig …