The musician, a singular figure of French alternative rock, who was also an actor and music producer, died on Saturday February 25 at 66 years old.
by Stéphane Davet
Figure of French alternative rock, at the head of groups like Pigalle or the butchers, character with more multiple facets than his ogre punk physique, the singer, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist assumed to suppose And actor François Hadji-Lazaro died on Saturday February 25, in Paris, at the age of 66, after several months of illness, announced his record company Universal Music France.
Born June 22, 1956, in a 15 e de Paris still popular, this son of communist activists is first intended for a career as a teacher. Until his passion for music takes over. Far from electrical blasts, the discovery, in adolescence, of Bob Dylan converts him to the acoustic verve of folk.
After having put itself on the dry guitar, the self -taught parigot is formed in an instrumentation flowering good the campaign, whether it is American, Celtic, Auvergne, Mediterranean … Banjo, Dulcimer, Violin, Accordion, Old at Roue , Cornemuse, flute, mandolin, bouzouki: the singer will master up to twenty instruments which will serve him, throughout his career, to vary the atmospheres of his records as well as his concerts.
Metro corridors and trains act as first scenes, to the formation of the Penelope group, mounted, in the late 1970s, with comrades met on the folk circuit. Bucolic poetry, however, inspires him less than the urban reality of the nocturnal Paris which he immerses himself on a daily basis. He launched in 1982 with the bass player Daniel Hennion a new project, Pigalle, and began to stage a dark realism, observed in particular in the bars he frequented in the 18
“do it yourself” punk
In the mid -1980s, it was in this environment that a new Parisian rock scene began to assert itself. Recognizing herself in any media, ignored by record companies and concert organizers, she applies with determination the philosophy of “Do It Yourself” Punk, while freed from the Anglo-Saxon model. Squats like those of Palikao or waterfalls, Parisian cafes like at Jimi or Auvergne welcome the first performances of Bérurier Noir, Ludwig von 88, parabellum or wampas.
Accustomed to the places, where his build, maintained by the practice of rugby (at the Paris University Club) sometimes imposes it as a member of the order service, François Hadji-Lazaro recognizes himself in this autonomous effervescence. To the point of launching, in 1987, a new group, the butchers, mixing punk rage, carnivorous humor and French song.
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