album rating: ★★★★☆
Genre: Chanson / chanson engagée / poésie chantée. L'été 68 is one of the most significant albums in the career of Léo Ferré (Monaco, 1916 – Castellina in Chianti, 1993), the anarchist poet, composer and singer who stands alongside Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel as one of the three supreme figures of twentieth-century French chanson. The album was released in January 1969 and was Ferré's first studio record to appear after the events of May 1968 — the general strike and student uprising that shook France to its foundations. Originally released without a title (the name L'été 68 derives from the fourth song on side one, which evokes the spirit of freedom and hope of the immediate post-May period), it contains some of Ferré's most celebrated and enduring songs: 'C'est extra', 'Les Anarchistes', 'La Mémoire et la Mer' (a vast, twenty-verse meditation set to a melody by Thomas De Hartmann), 'Rotterdam', the title track 'L'été 68' and 'Pépée'. All texts and all music are by Léo Ferré. The album was accompanied by a Bobino concert in February 1969 that became legendary — the live recording was released in May 1969 — and confirmed the extraordinary enthusiasm of a young, politicised audience that found in Ferré a voice equal to the magnitude of the historical moment.
Label: Barclay Records (France), released January 1969.
Producer: No individual production credit; the orchestra consists of session musicians hired for the recording. Artistic supervision by Barclay.
Recording studio: Studios Barclay, Paris, France. Recorded 11 and 13 December 1968 and 7 January 1969.
Critical reception: The album was received with enormous enthusiasm in France and has been consistently regarded as one of the peaks of Ferré's output and of French chanson as a whole. Album of the Year records a user score of 85/100. The official Léo Ferré archive notes that the album 'could only embrace the libertarian convulsions' of post-68 France, while also observing that Ferré 'still sings on the bank of the old world, of his world' — classical in form, revolutionary in spirit. 'C'est extra' and 'Les Anarchistes' became anthems for a generation.
Commercial success: The album sold strongly in France and generated four singles (released on Barclay 45-rpm issues). The Bobino concert that immediately followed its release was, according to the official archive, sold out completely and received with 'spectacular enthusiasm from the young audience, still carried by the spirit of post-May 68.' The album was subsequently reissued as part of the integral Barclay anthology and as a standalone volume in the fourteen-volume retrospective series.
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