Farewell Robots: In Praise of Daft Punk
Who never felt more Alive than in 2007...
Four weeks ago, someone named Johnny Airbag posted a video to YouTube. I happened to stumble across the link when someone shared it over Twitter, and frankly couldn't believe my eyes when I gave it a click. I’d been searching for footage like this for literal years; going all the way back to when I was researching and writing my first book Lighters in the Sky: The All-Time Greatest Concerts 1960-2016. This was some real Arc of the Covenant, Sankara Stones, Holy Grail stuff. A full, uncut recording of Daft Punk performing at Lollapalooza in Chicago’s Grant Park all the way back in 2007. Incredible.
“This source was shared w/ me by a tape trader friend,” Airbag explained in the caption. “They mentioned they'd recorded a raw Daft Punk ‘webcast’ feed at some point and offered to look for the disc. The video was captured via satellite during the event in 2007.”
I watched for about 10 minutes, then messaged the link to a cousin of mine. He’s an EDM artist and a major Daft Punk fan. Together, we collectively geeked out over this re-discovered, 90-minute gem. “They open with Kraftwerk?” he exclaimed. “What!” I hit him back with several exclamation-pointed expletives in response.
It’s hard to overstate just how groundbreaking Daft Punk’s live run in 2006/2007 was, and how close it came to never happening at all. I spoke with the duo’s booking agent Gerry Gerrard several years ago, and he told me that, essentially, his main job for years and years was to basically say “No,” to any and every offer that came their way. “They told me, ‘Playing live is not what we do,’” Gerard explained. “‘We are producers. We work in the studio. We will never play live.’’”
Then Coachella came calling with an offer they simply couldn’t refuse. Six figures reportedly, with most of the money served upfront. It was a necessary arrangement, because if Daft Punk were truly going to make their first live return in America after a decade-long absence — a decade in which they were the single, most requested act to play the massive, Southern California festival — they wanted to do something spectacular and they needed a lot of money to make it happen.
“For Coachella, they would advance just 10% as a deposit. Take it or leave it, no negotiations,” Gerrard said. “To [Coachella organizer] Paul Tollett’s credit he kept advancing them more and more and more until by the time the show happened, I think they had 80% of the fee. They spent every penny of it on that show.”
The result of all that time, hard work and cash speak for themselves, as you can see in the footage above. The pair constructed a giant LED-laced pyramid, from which they blasted a stultifying parabola of cosmic reds, electric greens, and galactic purples into the wild, dilated eyes of the euphoric masses spread out before them. “There were some of the best video people in the world standing next to me just going, ‘How the hell did they do that?’” Gerrard said. “They were doing stuff with visuals that no one had ever done before. It was just one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.”
40,000 people packed themselves into the Sahara Tent that cool, April evening in 2006 to witness what the French duo had in store for them. A little over an hour later, and many stumbled out out dazed and transformed forever. Some had seen either God or something very much like it that night.
“It’s a little bit chaotic,” Bangalter told Variety in a recently unearthed interview about their live show in 2007. “But the thing we focused on is what you get out of the show: an intense experience of music, lights and robots, with a thin line between fiction and reality. That is really the concept of this tour, which was not the concept of the stuff we were doing 10 years ago. We wanted to create an intense experience.”
What began as a single festival appearance eventually morphed into a full-blown world tour. At the time, I had the twin problems of being both terminally out of money AND on the verge of entering Basic Training into the Army. I missed seeing Daft Punk that year. Instead of dancing myself into oblivion among a sea of people while, “Robot Rock” battered my ribcage, I consumed the breathless coverage online, figuring I’d get my chance someday…
Three days ago Daft Punk posted a video to YouTube. It was simply titled “Epilogue.” The eight-minute clip opens with a shot of both Robots walking through a desolate desert landscape. One is wearing a gold helmet. The other silver. Both have their backs to the camera. The only sound you hear is the omnipresent whip of the wind, and the shuffle of stiff shoe leather on loose sand.
Eventually, the Gold robot sets a timer on a device located on the back of the Silver robot. 59 seconds turns into 58. 58 into 57, and so on. When the timer finally reaches zero, the Gold robot clenches his fist, as his companion is instantly atomized by the force of an explosion. Debris flies everywhere as the synth-kissed strains of “Touch” from their album Random Access Memories flood the speakers.
And then the suddenly, the purpose becomes clear.
Daft Punk is no more.
Shortly after the video dropped, the duo’s publicist came out and gave their break-up an official stamp. Personally, I’m not 100% convinced. As my buddy Josh Terry pointed out, “Who breaks up with a short film?” The timing itself also feels fishy. Why now? They haven’t put out a record in eight years, and no one is really doing much of anything at the moment. It certainly seems like something that could’ve waited, right? It also seems like something that didn’t need to be explicitly stated.
Could this portend to some kind of new iteration of Daft Punk where they don’t wear helmets? Could they be attempting to pull an LCD Soundsystem, announce their demise in a big public display, only to return to massive fanfare and increased festival guarantees in five year’s time? Could this be the beginning of an elaborate bait and switch, album release cycle? Maybe? Yes? No? I don’t really know! I’m just a guy sitting here in a tin foil hat writing a newsletter.
Conspiracy theories aside, if this truly is the end of Daft Punk you can’t help but marvel at what Thomas Bangalter and Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo managed to accomplish over the last 28 years. Four, genre-defining records: Homework, Discovery, Human After All, and Random Access Memories. Two, extremely intense live albums; Alive 1997 and Alive 2007. And one decent-to-good movie score for the sci-fi thriller Tron: Legacy.
Then there were the high-profile collaborations with some of the biggest artists in the history of popular music, with whom they created hip-hop, R&B, dance, and pop hits that will live on long after their disintegrated robot remains assimilate with the Earth. “Get Lucky” with Pharell and Nile Rodgers. “Starboy” with The Weeknd. “Stronger” and “Black Skinhead” with Kanye West.
They also created unique, and visionary music videos to pair with their twisted sonic visions, utilizing the talents of some of the best filmmakers on the Planet. “Da Funk” directed by Spike Jonze, for example. “Around the World” directed by Michele Gondry. The anime-inspired “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” put together by Kazuhisa Takenouchi. “Lose Yourself to Dance,” directed by Warren Fu.
Daft Punk’s legacy is singular. There is simply no other entity in music history quite like them. They exploded genre distinctions time and again, while creating music that plotted the way forward for thousands of up-and-coming artist and producers. They redefined what it meant to experience EDM music in a live environment. And, perhaps most impressively, they managed to create and maintain a veneer of mystique and mythology in a social media-driven age when oversharing is the coin of the realm. They were at once omnipresent, and never there at all.
It’s true, I may not get to witness Daft Punk for myself. The dream of 2007 exploded before my very eyes in a far off desert somewhere, perhaps even several years ago without me ever knowing it. It is what it is, I suppose. Some things in life just aren’t ever meant to be.
Shoutout to Johnny Airbag for giving me a glimpse at the glory I had missed…