A week into leg two of the European vacation, the Dead play a free outdoor concert in Lille, the northern capital of the Hauts-de-France region near the Belgium border. It’s a make-up performance for the gig they were to give a few weeks prior—necessitated by a sabotaged, broken down equipment truck and no gear—following two historic nights at the Olympia Theatre in Paris. Though the crowd was mostly made up of local residents who happened to be passing by the Lille Fairgrounds that Saturday afternoon, there were also a number of Dead Freaks who’d tried to see them a week earlier at the Rotunda in Faches-Thumesnil, including Philippe Andrieu who snapped the great photos included here.
When the Dead pulled into town that Mother’s Day afternoon, none of residents suspected anything. Before the ever-present force of social media it was, as Bill Kreutzmann would share in a later interview, “…catch us if you can.” The Lille weather was cold and overcast and the stage was exposed, with the exception of scaffolding tarps draped over the left and right speaker arrays. “There were some rain showers but it was certainly psychedelic,” Kreutzmann said. Phil Lesh would later recall that for those few hours on stage after the rain in the north of France, he lived in a Seurat or a Cézanne painting.
Before any music went down, there were the customary equipment hassles, tuning, and stage banter, which included Phil recounting a story for the unassuming French crowd about a guy who asked the Dead to take part in a movie where they gigged at a drive-in to an audience of cars. “Instead of clapping they wagged their windshield wipers,” quipped the ever-witty Bobby Ace.
With the gear issue resolved, the band goes with Bertha as the opener. The Hunter tune starts out with some feedback, but is extremely well played and the perfect number to greet the Les Nordistes. The 15-song first frame is loaded with highlights, including the newly penned Black Throated Wind, a sweetly sung Loser, a bad-ass Mr. Charlie, a swinging China Cat Sunflower > I Know you Rider pairing, and a damn lovely Sugaree. The big jam portion of the set is another extended Playing in the Band. Weir introduces Donna Jean and Donna Jean introduces the song. The take is remarkable, including an absolutely intense Tiger-styled meltdown.
The back half begins with an eventful 50-minute Truckin’ > Drums > The Other One > He’s Gone sequence. Truckin’ is played fairly straight ahead without a big outro portion. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful version from a tour with so many great performances of the song. A quick drum break serves as a bridge to an absolutely gorgeous Other One. The band locks in early and the music flows from mildly outside to more orbital. The song begins in the usual mode before falling off into a wandering, spacey section. Billy reestablishes an uptempo groove, Phil signals the Other One theme, and Weir sings the first verse. They follow this with more jamming on the 01 groove, before dropping into more spaceiness that they mine for a while. In time, Jerry’s kicks in the wah pedal and they’re off into the void, with lots of trademark slashing from Weir, eerie organ fills from Pigpen, Phil bombs, Billy’s free jazz moves and, of course plenty of arpeggios from Mr. Garcia. Late in the piece, Phil is clearly thinking about The Other One again, but the group isn’t quite there and are content to explore another theme before Bob finally sings the second verse and the ending crashes nicely into He's Gone.
A bluesy Hurts Me Too and upbeat Sugar Magnolia rise out of the ashes of the opening sequence, setting the table for the rocking finale—a ripcord Not Fade Away > Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad > Not Fade Away medley. And if that weren’t enough, they still have something left in the tank for their newest hit single to close out the afternoon. It’s undoubtedly one of the craziest versions of One More Saturday Night of the year, punctuated by Jerry’s unrelenting leads and his seeming unwillingness to let the song end.
With all the acclaimed performances from the Grateful Dead’s landmark Europe tour, the Lille gig often goes unmentioned. Even though it’s less well known than the Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Bickershaw, and London concerts, doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth a deep investigation. For me, the Lille tape is as good as any from tour—a phenomenal show with a high level of energy, creativity, and focused musicianship. Take Betty’s soundboard mix out for a spin, I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Betty tape (Partial Set 2 upgrade)
Of note, the Lille show was the first—albeit brief— post on my original Sitting in Mangrove Valley Chasing Light Beams blog, composed eight years ago on Mother’s Day, March 2016.
Vive la Europe ’72.
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