Dr Zab Zaboitzeff raconte
Zaboitzeff's memories...

From 1971 until ...

On the occasion of this year's anniversary of my 50 years with music, I will write for you about my musical experiences, encounters, anecdotes...

I have always thought that if you want to go far, from time to time you have to look back in order to know where you came from. Happy new year to all and see you soon on this page.


T. Zaboitzeff le 08/01/2022

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EPISODE 1: 1970 - 1971

On the occasion of my 50 years of music and at the request of people close to me and those further away, of the public, of the fans who have accompanied my, our journey, I will try to tell you my story with simplicity...

The following words are my own and my memory.
I will try to be as accurate as possible, but if any information or details are inaccurate, please let me know via this link
Below are a few photos of the period, I am waiting for some older ones. This page will be updated regularly.

Maubeuge and Valenciennes (F), it's in these two towns in the North of France that it all started, Gérard Hourbette was at the conservatory studying violin and percussion and I was on an apprenticeship contract in a printing shop. In my spare time, I desperately strummed the guitar on my own and also sometimes in more collective circumstances but not very interesting at the time. I used to go for lunch nearby in a young workers' hostel that Gérard also frequented from time to time. I remember, some time before, having put up a poster saying that I was looking to meet a percussionist or in general other musicians... Our meeting was therefore quite natural, first over a cup of coffee and then with an instrument in hand in the minutes that followed...


That was the trigger, the sudden desire to do something together, we were not very fixed at the age of 16-17, but we had common desires and passions.
Gérard listened more to classical and contemporary composers (Bartok - Xenakis - Ligeti ...) and I listened to experimental and progressive rock, which was not yet called so at the time
(the very first Pink Floyd - Soft Machine - The Mothers of Invention - King Crimson - Amon Düül II...)

Very quickly we launched into crazy electro-acoustic improvisations: Electrified violin / Twelve-string guitar, all passed through the mill of tape echo chambers and spring reverb. Nothing could stop us anymore, so we had to organize our first concerts (hall rental, ticketing, flyer and poster printing) and get people to come and see our thunderous improvisations... We had organized two concerts in Maubeuge, one at the Salle Sthrau, the second at the young workers' hostel where Gérard and I had met the very first time (Foyer Sangha).
In the weeks that followed our first concert, a friend and bass player (Guy Judas) joined our crazy adventure and did the improvisation! This time with a bass : Class !

On an idea of Gerard, our group was baptized Rêve 1 and the title of our future concerts would be: "Voyage towards Kadath", title and name of the group inspired by a novel of
H.P Lovecraft.

In the summer we decided to take a break and to travel to the south of France to stay with friends I had met on an epic trip to Corsica where I lived and slept on the beach. I broke my contract with the printing company and decided on another destiny far from normality, I knew nothing of life, of the difficulties we would encounter later on but youth and curiosity were our strength.
 For this short stay in the south, we had taken our instruments with us, which helped us a little financially because we played here and there on the terraces and other busy places. Very quickly, we got tired of this hippy life and decided to return to the north and to consider our future in music more seriously and as soon as we returned, we resumed our thunderous improvisations, still in trio...

I don't remember exactly why Gérard had to go to a music shop in Valenciennes (to repair a violin microphone or something else?) As soon as he entered the shop, with his violin under his arm, the conversation started quite quickly with Rocco Fernandez and other Art Zoyd musicians present that day. Exchanges were going on and intentions of collaboration were slowly emerging, so much so that Gérard returned the same evening to Maubeuge in the company of Rocco and another member of the band (Serge Armelin?) in their superb van (Ford Transit) put at their disposal by their record company at the time: "Opaline Records - Chant du Monde" following the recording of their first single : "Sangria / Something in Love". We were quite impressed at the time... Then naturally, after the usual introductions and some buttered toast soaked in coffee (our only dish of the day), we all gathered in Gérard's parents' cellar, where we were rehearsing, for a "Boeuf" like we had never experienced before. In my distant memory, there were not enough instruments to really play together, we exchanged, we tested each other and the current passed very well... Rocco Fernandez (a look-alike of Franck Zappa), Serge Armelin (?), Guy Judas, Gérard Hourbette and myself were present that evening. A few days after this magical evening, we met again (Rêve 1 : Gérard Hourbette on violin - Guy Judas on bass - Thierry Zaboitzeff on 12-string guitar) in Valenciennes to join the Art Zoyd group at the invitation of Rocco Fernandez.
 We thus became true " ZOYDIANS ".
The group will then become Art Zoyd III.

TO BE FOLLOWED...

Thierry Zaboitzeff
26/01/2022

Art Zöyd
Origins

<< In this photo from left to right: Jean-Paul Dulion: Bass | Jean-François Cantagalli: Guitar | Rocco Fernandez: Guitar | Claude Ascensio: Drums.

In 1969, Rocco Fernandez founded Experimental Music which became Art Zöyd when they recorded their single in 1971. The group then took the name Art Zoyd III when Gérard Hourbette and Thierry Zaboitzeff joined in 1971-72. In 1975, after the departure of Rocco Fernandez, the group became Art Zoyd and only the association supporting the group's projects kept the name Art Zoyd III.

There have been many fanciful spellings of the name Art Zoyd, but here is what can be retained in spite of the various errors noted over the years.

Concert
at the Fort de Leveau Feignies (F)

Backstage

Concert on the Avenue de France in Maubeuge (F) 1973

Thierry Zaboitzeff

Art Zoyd : Press photo - 1971

From left to right : Thierry Zaboitzeff - Rocco Fernandez - Jean Marc Lomprez - Patrick Zolteck - Gérard Hourbette

art-zoyd-sangria-single

Sangria/Something in Love
Single Art Zoyd 1971

Photo shooting - 1972-73

From left to right : Christian Paul Dubois de la Saussaye - Gérard Hourbette - Michel Canone - Serge Armelin - Rocco Fernandez - Thierry Zaboitzeff

Photo shooting - 1972-73

From left to right : Christian Paul Dubois de la Saussaye - Serge Armelin - Thierry Zaboitzeff - Gérard Hourbette
En bas de gauche à droite : Rocco Fernandez - Michel Canone

Concert on the Avenue de France in Maubeuge (F) 1973

From left to right : Rocco Fernandez - Serge Armelin - Gérard Hourbette

EPISODE 2: 1972 - 1973

The rehearsals were going well and we were all pumped up.

Rocco was the exclusive composer of the band until 1975. He composed with the musicians, instruments in hand, we all tried, sometimes exchanged our parts, adapted, and started again until it was in phase with what he had imagined. I remember our rhythmic difficulties as young beginners (Gérard and I...)

We were rehearsing at that time on rue de l'Intendance in Valenciennes, opposite the Maison des Jeunes, in an old building made available to many very active rock groups in the Valenciennes area. Walking through the corridors, we could hear the accents, chords and other feedback of the musicians in action.

We spent all our time in these vaulted cellars that we had whitewashed and sanitized, trying to find a musical path together. Often some of us ate and slept there and the daily material life became more and more difficult. The first one to get discouraged was Guy Judas, bass player of Rêve 1, who had moved with us to Art Zoyd. For him, music was not compatible with the constraints we were under, the compromises we accepted, such as taking out a loan to buy our instruments, playing at dances, getting into the system... He preferred to go back to the road, the road...

The question of replacing the bass player suddenly arose: in my memory, it was quickly resolved. Addressing the other musicians, Rocco announced: "Thierry will play the bass! I was very proud and terrified at the same time...

I was determined to take up this challenge by switching from the twelve-string to the bass, and I became aware of my future rhythmic role in the band with the drummer. Apart from Gérard Hourbette and Serge Armelin who were readers, we were all self-taught and had to redouble our efforts to memorise all the musical parts we had experimented with during the day, so as to be able to reproduce them the next day. This exercise, repeated over many months, had the advantage of being able to play each piece without notes or sheet music.

Before our arrival in the group, Art Zoyd had just recorded a single with Opaline Records (Le Chant du Monde), following a victory at the Tremplin du Golf Drouot, and this assured him a certain notoriety and facilities (supply of posters, a mini-bus...). For the concerts it was quite different. Coming from a ballroom musician background, Rocco had good connections with a touring agency based in Valenciennes and covering all the regions north of Paris. This agency placed us quite often. The problem was that we had to play at balls, which meant playing at a ball that lasted five hours (which I personally never did because in that case there was an occasional bass player who was more experienced in this specific duty) or being programmed as an "attraction" in the middle of the ball for an hour and thus having the possibility of really playing our repertoire, which was very often unsuited to the situation. At that time, there were two kinds of audiences at balls: those who wanted to go dancing and others for whom, in the provinces, it was the only place to hear rock music in all its forms. We had some funny scenes during our performances between the pros and cons and it sometimes turned into a fight in the audience.

We were obviously looking for other networks or tried to initiate some as well.

We used to go to the Maison des Jeunes de Valenciennes (Youth Centre), which was located just opposite our rehearsal space. At the same time, we learned that other cultural establishments (MJC: Maisons des Jeunes et de la Culture) all over France were beginning to open their programming to free music and rock groups... That would be our rescue!

As early as 1973, the Maison des Jeunes de Valenciennes programmed our first concert outside the ball circuits in the region; other independent concerts followed fairly quickly in larger, more central venues. We were then going to take our management in hand and integrate ourselves into the MJC network initiated by our "cousins" Gong, Magma, Ange...

But let's go back a bit.

In order to be heard and listened to during our concerts, we had to seriously equip ourselves (sound system, amplifiers, instruments, microphones, mixing desk...). The solution was a loan, but given our insolvency with the banks, we quickly fell back on more family-based solutions. Gérard's parents (lovely people) offered to support us in this financing in exchange for the repayment of the monthly instalments. During our concerts, each sum earned was divided between the repayment of this debt, road and fuel costs, payment of posters, photocopies of press etc. We didn't give up and continued our prospection in all directions in order to find concerts everywhere, first in our region, then one thing leading to another, further and further away, throughout France. We didn't shy away from anything : concerts in university campuses, MJC, night-clubs, campsites, high schools, animations of public places, all negotiated by phone... An intense experience directed at that time by Rocco and shared by all of us, members of Art Zoyd, in this bubbling 70's.

A little later, during 1973-1974, new musicians will join the band, others will leave, our network will grow like our music and our artistic desires will sharpen during these difficult but hopeful years.

See you soon for the rest...

Thierry Zaboitzeff, 4/02/2022

EPISODE 3: 1973 - 1974

As I explained in the previous episode, our decisions of autonomous management combined with the offers of the booking agency of Valenciennes began to bear fruit. Moreover, a fan who had become a friend and collaborator, freshly arrived from the Grand Ouest, came to help us in this task and we started to travel all over France (MJC, municipal theatres, balls, support galas...). From Valenciennes to Metz, passing through Reims, then Dijon, Lille, Dunkerque, Amiens, Rouen, Le Havre, Paris, Versailles... Then Bretagne, etc.

Through the booking agency, we occasionally crossed paths with Martin Circus, Dynasty Crisis, Zoo, Triangle... I vaguely remember a performance at a ball somewhere around Le Havre. We were playing in the middle of the evening for an hour and Triangle had to follow; I can still see the members of Triangle behind the curtain during our set, completely stunned by what we dared to produce in this kind of place. I think I remember that we weren't very good, even bad, tired and dressed up as it was not possible... long multicoloured tunics and gigantic pseudo-African masks, in an almost improvised sound chaos between Hendrix, Zappa, Sun Ra, Amon Düül... Just imagine this scene in a ball !

We were often on the road in our old VW Combi with our "Freevox" amplified speakers and my nicely padded red "Kustom" amp as seats, and drum toms and other misplaced guitar handles as headrests. The trips were organised according to our budget: no hotels, no restaurants... We took food and drinks with us, as well as a very basic camping equipment and a few sleeping bags just in case... On the "days off" between two dates, some slept in a tent , at the forest edge, out of sight (wood fires, coffee, bread...) often woken up by the police: identity check very early in the morning. And others in the bus, when we heard unusual noises around our camp still a little lit by the embers. Some policemen had just arrived and inspected our set-up with great interest: indeed, for the scenic needs of our concerts, we were carrying a female model wrapped in a blanket on the roof of our bus and obviously, these gendarmes had a lot of humour and started joking with us about this young lady on the roof of our van. I think I remember that after a cursory check we had coffee together around our campfire.
In some MJC-type venues, we were often paid a percentage of the tickets sold, with a small fixed fee that barely covered our expenses, and as there was no question of paying for hotel rooms in addition, we often negotiated to sleep on the floor behind the stage after the concert. An album project still seemed far away at the time and our musicality and means left much to be desired. But we kept the faith, our course.

Despite our high spirits, one day we had to face the facts: we were finding it increasingly difficult to pay our debts and to make a decent living. So we took the bull by the horns and started looking for a house in which we could live together, in community, and rehearse. Rocco had previously played with a bass player whose uncle was a florist and who had a piece of land with abandoned greenhouses and a house in the middle of all that abandoned nature. We were able to move in quite quickly, after some basic work and a lot of cleaning. Everyone could find a minimum of privacy and comfort and together we saved on food, rent, etc.

It should be noted that a few weeks before, those (including myself) who did not have a room or a flat sometimes slept in the bus parked discreetly on a square in Valenciennes. The cold was so intense that we set up a tent inside (VW Combi and then a Peugeot D4B bought for almost nothing from a Valenciennes laundry). We just had to push the car to start.

There were about ten of us (musicians, women, children). When we came back from the concerts, we paid the expenses, the petrol, the monthly payments of the loan we had taken out for our equipment (when we could). The rent of this new house was also taken care of and at the end of the day, most of the time, we only had three or four francs per day per person, hence the advantage of the community, even if this was not always well experienced by some.

But I am not being miserly, I am very happy and proud to have lived through this period in this way. What a school!

In those difficult times, this community house seemed to me a haven of peace and freedom, we finally had a little place of our own. It was also in this house that Rocco built his famous three-necked guitar (electric, of course: 6 strings, 12 strings + a small neck: simulating 6 frets). Bare and braided electric wires, like guitar strings, stretched over this small neck, came into contact with soldered points on a copper plate when the fret was pressed, just like on a guitar. This contact triggered the note, the sound of a penophone (monophonic synth) attached to the back of the guitar. It was an unbelievable piece of tinkering with a sometimes improbable operation, but it was brilliant at the time.

These two years were full and intense, with concerts all over France and great experiences. The band went through many personnel changes. The base had become solid (Gérard Hourbette - Rocco Fernandez - Thierry Zaboitzeff). Serge Armelin (tenor saxophone), who had taken a break, returned to Art Zoyd; Christian Paul Dubois de la Saussaye left us, Michel Prugnaud replaced him on drums; and finally Joël Caron (alto saxophone) joined us. The colour became more jazz. The new drummer and the wind players had a lot to do with it.

We were constantly looking for the little detail that would make the concerts more attractive and with this in mind, we had a little visual moment during our sets: a sort of diabolical pas de deux between a masked, disguised character and an inanimate mannequin in a shop window... I don't have any extraordinary memories of this, but the experience was pleasant and very intriguing for the audience. The role was always played alternately by "roadies" or companions, friends or drivers who followed one another during these two years.

See you soon for the next episode!

Thierry Zaboitzeff, 10/02/2022

EPISODE 4 : 1974 - 1975

Concert dates - as many as possible, at any price, everywhere it was possible, this was our motivation during three years (1973 - 1974 - 1975) and longer.

To give you an idea: we performed all over France, between 1973 and 1976, in Abbeville, Agen, Albi, Amiens, Armentières, Arras, Avesnes-sur-Helpe, Avignon, Alençon, Angers, Bagas, Bar-le-Duc, Beauvais, Berck-sur-Mer, Besançon, Beuvry-la-Forêt, Blois, Bordeaux, Bouchain, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Boussois, Brest, Béthune, Bourg en Bresse, Caen, Calais, Cambrai, Cannes, Carcassonne, Carpentras, Carmaux, Castres, Caudry, Chalon-sur-Saône, Charleville-Mézières, Chartres, Chaumont, Cherbourg, Châlons-en-Champagne, Chauny, Châteauroux, Châtellerault, Cholet, Denain, Dieppe, Dijon, Dôle, Douai, Dunkerque, Épernay, Épinal, Étaples, Fontevraud-L’abbaye, Forbach, Fougère, Fourmies, Fréjus, Gaillac, Gap, Gray, Grande-Synthe, Guingamp, Grenoble, Hazebrouck, Guise, Hénin-Beaumont, Hérouville-Saint-Clair, Hirson, Joué-lès-Tours, La Ciotat, La Courneuve, La Roche-sur-Yon, Langres, Laon, Laval, Lavaur, Le Havre, Le Mans, Lens, Le Portel, Lille, Limoges, Liévin, Le Touquet, Loos-en-Gohelle, Lorient, Lunéville, Lyon, Malo-lès-Bains, Marcq-en-Barœul, Maubeuge, Merlimont, Metz, Millau, Mons-en-Barœul, Mont-de-Marsan, Montauban, Montbéliard, Montbard, Montigny-lès-Metz, Montreuil-sur-Mer, Morlaix, Muret, Mâcon, Nancy, Nantes, Nœux-les-Mines, Nevers, Nice, Niort, Orléans, Oyonnax, Paris, Poitiers, Périgueux, Quimper, Reims, Rennes, Rodez, Roubaix, Rouen, Saint-Brieuc, Saint-Chamond, Saint-Dizier, Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, Saint-Leu, Saint-Malo, Saint-Nazaire, Saint-Pol-sur-Mer, Saint-Priest, Saint-Quentin, Saint-Raphaël, Sarreguemines, Saumur, Sedan, Six-Fours-les-Plages, Soissons, Somain, Solesmes, Strasbourg, Tergnier, Thionville, Toul, Toulouse, Tourcoing, Tours, Trith-Saint-Léger, Valenciennes, Vallauris, Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, Vannes, Versailles, Vesoul, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Viry-Châtillon, Vitry-le François, Wattrelos, Wignehies…

We have been to some of these cities several times. I'm sure I'm forgetting some and I'll come back and correct them.

I can't certify that all these dates took place, but the vast majority did! Everything was negotiated by telephone, often in a phone cabin. We had plastic bags full of yellow coins, we squatted on the premises in order to conclude our deals as well as possible, then by simple letter we confirmed by sending contracts, posters, photos... We did not have a telephone at our house, but our landlord did, so sometimes he would tell us that someone had called to confirm this or that concert. Our house was situated below his, about fifty metres away, and it was not unusual to hear him shout: "Telephone!!!", after which we would go up to his shop to conclude a negotiation from his office.

A lot of time on the road, in our exhausted van with slick tyres. We used very secondary routes as much as possible (very few motorways or national roads) in order to avoid road checks, which sometimes made the journeys much longer. This is how, in 1972, we went to the Bordeaux region (Bagas) to participate in a festival where we finally did not play because the organisation could no longer pay us due to a global deficit... We tried to negotiate, without success. OK! Before leaving, we attended two wonderful concerts (Gong and Magma).

On another road trip, this time with good tyres, we were on the Paris ring road heading north. Suddenly, the bus began to cough, graze and then stop on the emergency lane. Rocco, who understood what was happening because he was driving, shouted at me: "Thierry, quick! Thierry, hurry up!!! Take off the lowest string of your bass guitar, the throttle cable has just broken!!! A bit dazed and surprised, as I had fallen asleep in the back seat, I finally did it and, in a few minutes, our musician-in-chief Rocco, a handyman in all circumstances, installed this new cable ("Rotosound", for the experts). We were thus able to escape the hell of the ring road and returned to Valenciennes.

In fact, I now realise that every bus journey could become an extraordinary adventure and lead us to experience things that were far removed from the purely musical context. By the way, with all these concerts, our repertoire had improved a lot and became more and more original. We were slowly starting to move away from the idioms of rock music, even if the instrumentarium was still close. The sound was getting sharper, more aggressive, the tempi were getting faster, the time seemed to have come for us to break away from the labels we were often rightly stuck with (King Crimson, Zappa, Captain Beefheart and other progressive rock bands).

It was at this point that we started experimenting with rhythmic and cinematic breaks, the beginnings of the songs that would later become, in a completely different form, « Les fourmis » and « Scènes de Carnaval ».

Then concerts, more concerts. Like this festival in Lorient where we shared the bill with Barricade II, which had become a kind of Big Band, completely crazy and joyful. Their sound check was a monstrous howl of brass instruments lasting no more than 20 seconds. We were seduced and got in touch, so that after the concerts, we found ourselves in a forest near Lorient, in the middle of a completely surreal scene, surrounded by our respective vans, a campfire in between and a large camping table covered with a white tablecloth to break out the champagne at around five in the morning. To force the image, try to imagine these fifteen or so people, some dressed in black, others in pink rain coats, yellow shoes and dark glasses... Unfortunately, we didn't have a camera to immortalise this scene, which is somewhere between the end of a story from Asterix and Obelix and the outdoor meal in Werner Herzog's film "Nosferatu" (minus the rats).

In 1974, we were invited to a series of concerts in Avignon, during the OFF festival. A local musician, whose name I forget, invited groups to perform every evening during the festival. The concerts were held outdoors in the courtyard of a house that also housed us for the time we were there. In my memory, the setting was quite nice. The stage was set up at the foot of this tree-lined house and every evening the courtyard was filled with an audience unaccustomed to experimental rock concerts... (We repeated this operation a year later, after Rocco Fernandez left, but with Frank Cardon on the violin). To attract the public, we paraded, pulled, dressed up, every late morning in the centre of Avignon, in order to arouse the curiosity of possible visitors. After which we went to the end of the market to collect fruits and vegetables too fresh to be sold, which ensured us, among other things, excellent ratatouilles and fruit compotes... To go to Avignon, there was no alternative, it was with our old D4B Peugeot, still him! It was tired, poor thing... As soon as we entered Burgundy, the gearbox gave up the ghost, fortunately in the countryside, near a garage next to a car cemetery. The garage offered to replace the gearbox, which it had purchased nearby, and, if we wished, to camp in its grounds bordered by a pretty river, while the repairs were being carried out.

Staff changes were also accelerating: Serge Armelin (sax) left, then Joël Caron (sax), then Michel Prugnaud (drums), the latter being replaced by Jean-Jacques Reghem (Mickey). In January 1975, Jean Pierre Soarez (trumpet) joined us following a rumour that Gérard Hourbette was going to leave the band and that we were looking for an instrumentalist to replace him. Personally, I never heard of this rumour and Jean-Pierre was welcome anyway. This violin/trumpet colour, so characteristic of a bygone Art Zoyd, was thus born. A guitarist, Bernard Boyssens, joined the band and left in 1975.

All our efforts started to bear fruit, more and more curious spectators attended our concerts. We even played at José Arthur's Pop Club (France Inter), who was worried about the fish in his aquarium after our live performance. Then, following a concert as the opening act for Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes in Lille (Faches-Thumesnil: La Rotonde), Rocco Fernandez, tired and bored, announced his desire to leave the band! He was determined, wishing to move on to something else and not necessarily in music.

After a few days of reflection, Gérard Hourbette and I decided, with Rocco's approval, to continue with our artistic signature the work done until then. A new Art Zoyd was born in 1975, composed of Gérard Hourbette (violin, keyboard), Jean-Pierre Soarez (trumpet), Jean-Jacques Reghem (drums), Thierry Zaboitzeff (bass, voice). The (then) guitarist Frank Cardon will also join us. This Art Zoyd prefigured the 1976 formation.

See you soon, for the next episode, where everything will accelerate in a radically different form.

Thierry Zaboitzeff on 20/02/2022

EPISODE 5: 1975 - 1976

Until 1975, Rocco Fernandez was the band's composer. Gérard and I had a few ideas, but it was not yet the right time, especially for me... Rocco composed instruments in hand during our rehearsals and in this context, each one could bounce back with his know-how and personality. We kept this way of doing things for some time after his departure, and our 1976 repertoire and album Symphonie pour le jour où brûleront les cités were born partly in this spirit, with the difference that Gérard began to present us with his sketches, which quickly became: "Brigades Spéciales - Masques - Simulacres", compositions that were also edited collectively. We also adapted Rocco's compositions, which became "Scènes de carnaval" and "Les fourmis", in more concentrated, condensed versions. They will be re-orchestrated without drums a few months later. As I wrote in the previous episode, Franck Cardon (guitar, cello, violin) had just joined us. We will do many more concerts in this formation, until the departure of Jean-Jacques Reghem who was our last drummer.

We wanted to take the opportunity to approach composition from a different angle, as we were often very irritated by having constantly to move musically between the regular and systematic pulsations of the drums and percussion. From this reflection and desire, an Art Zoyd without drums was born. Consequently, according to our aesthetics at the time, we could assign very different roles to our instrumentarium (two violins, a trumpet and an electric bass): sometimes one was percussion, the other harmonic, and we thus changed roles according to our desire for arrangements in our compositions. Our sounds thus gradually left the traditional framework of a "jazz-rock" band, evoking more theatrical and cinematographic atmospheres and flirting with the colours of 20th century classical music. This unusual approach led us to unexpected encounters. Indeed, Cyril Robichez (director, actor and director of the Théâtre Populaire des Flandres) invited us to compose and record the music for one of his productions: Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot, which was performed in Lille at the Palais Rihour in October 1976. Gérard Hourbette composed the music, which was performed by Art Zoyd. Everything began to move feverishly. At the same time, through Philippe Asselin who was then employed by the TPF, we met Jean René Pouilly (Variétés Contemporaines) who initiated a project of touring under a big top throughout the Nord-Pas-de-Calais: "Le TPF Circus", piloted by the Théâtre Populaire des Flandres. The big top was set up for a whole week in a town with a programme including : The National Orchestra of Lille, Le Cirque Imaginaire by Jean-Baptiste Thierrée and Victoria Chaplin, a jazz concert, Art Zoyd. Afterwards, Jean René Pouilly will be our agent. In collaboration with Michel Besset and Georges Leton (Magma's manager), he finalised our participation in the concerts at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris, and later organised one of our last concerts with Magma at the Hippodrome in Douai on 16 November 1976.

But let's go back a few months earlier, during the winter of 1975... We received a visit from Michel Besset and his wife Rosine who, on the advice of Erik Fabre-Maigné, a great admirer of Art Zoyd from Toulouse, came to our community house from their native South-West. I was alone with my dogs that day, the house was not heated, the other musicians having returned to their families. Michel and Rosine were on their way to London to visit members of the Henry Cow band whose concert they had organised the previous autumn. I suggested they meet Gérard who lived 40 kilometres away (Maubeuge). He was married and no longer lived in our house in Valenciennes. We spent a little time at his house, then we set off again, but we had to deal with the freezing rain so typical of the North of France in winter. We had to stop on the outskirts of Maubeuge to take refuge in a bar for most of the morning, and we took advantage of the opportunity to taste the Christmas beers…

Since 1972, I think, Michel Besset was already organising concerts in his region of Carmaux, Albi... (Léo Ferré, Magma, Gong...), first in partnership with Michel Grèzes "Tartempion", then with his own association "Transparence" which invited us to play in June 1975 in Carmaux. He also put us in contact with other organisers in the South-West: Castres, Albi, Montauban, Gaillac, Muret... Michel also managed some concerts in Spain, he accompanied us there and lived live with us these galley tours with a sick child, theft of suitcases, break-in of the bus, and other complicated moments due to Gérard's dialysis which was suffering from kidney failure. For these concerts our line-up was increased by the presence of Michel Berckmans, the bassoonist of Univers Zéro whom we had just met. Michel Besset will also put all his energy into our opening act for Magma at the Halle aux Grains in Toulouse, where Art Zoyd had a huge success in front of 2,500 people.

Very quickly, we became friends with Michel Besset and this complicity led him to become the producer of our first opus Symphonie pour le jour où brûleront les cités, then of our tours. For the recording of this album, he created the Art Zoyd III association and borrowed 10,000 francs from the Houillères to carry out our project. This record will be recorded from August 30th to September 9th 1976, at the Tangara Studio in Toulouse by François Artige and Jean Pierre Grasset, in a particular technical and economical situation. No re-recording or individual takes, the pieces were divided into the shortest possible logical sequences and we recorded them all together. If we made a mistake or misinterpreted something, we started again until we had a perfect take. Everything was put together, glued together in the end. A lot of stress combined with a mix of cigarettes, coffees, beers... Cigarettes, coffees, beers... Cigarettes, coffees, beers... cigarettes, coffees, beers... screams… crazy laughter...

About twenty dates followed in support of Magma, including eleven concerts at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris (from October 23 to November 2, 1976) where the public rushed to buy our freshly made album during the interval. On the best nights, we sold 40 copies of this now cult vinyl. But before this tour and the recording of the album, Franck Cardon will leave the band and will be replaced by Alain Eckert on the guitar and who, very quickly, will also start playing the violin.

As you will have understood, the meeting with Michel Besset was very important and decisive for Art Zoyd and also his career. Michel will say about us : " Art Zoyd built me up on a musical and human level, on the life on tour, on the collective. The one in which you have to give everything and share everything. It is the group that I liked the most and that taught me the most „.

Note: Art Zoyd from 1975 to 1976 after the departure of Rocco Fernandez:
- Gérard Hourbette : violin, viola
- Franck Cardon : guitar, cello, violin
- Jean Jacques Reghem : drums (he will leave the band in 1975)
- Jean Pierre Soarez : trumpet
- Thierry Zaboitzeff: bass, voice
- Alain Eckert: guitar (he joined the band shortly before the recording of the album Symphonie pour le jour où brûleront les cités and the tour with Magma.

But there will still be a few twists and turns very soon!
See you soon for the rest...

Thierry Zaboitzeff 07/03/2022

Pique-nique

Picnic

Concert in MJC (?)

Thierry Zaboitzeff - Art Zoyd - Théâtre municipal d'Albi - 1976

Gérard Hourbette - Art Zoyd - Théâtre municipal d'Albi - 1976

Art Zoyd - T.P.F Circus

Michel Besset

Art Zoyd - Magma
Carmaux 16 octobre 1976

Bébert (Goélette Renault) Our means of transport in 75-76, capable of a
Paris -Toulouse in the night!

From left to right: Franck Cardon - Thierry Zaboitzeff - Jean Pierre Soarez and on the right: Gérard Hourbette (Toulouse 1976)

Art Zoyd - opening act for Magma - 1976

Art Zoyd - Press photo - 1976

Art Zoyd : Press photo 2 - 1976

From left to right : Thierry Zaboitzeff - Alain Eckert - Gérard Hourbette - Jean Pierre Soarez

Symphonie pour le jour où brûleront les cités. Art Zoyd's first LP.

Poster - Magma - Art Zoyd - Théâtre de la Renaissance - Paris - 1976

Jean-Pierre Soarez - Gérard Hourbette - Thierry Zaboitzeff - Alain Eckert - 1976

EPISODE 6: 1977 - 1978

After the concerts with Magma and our various tours in the South-West, the rhythm slowed down and the concerts were less frequent. Alain Eckert, the guitarist of "Symphonie..." left the group for the first time and Franck Cardon (violin) returned to the group.

We had some very interesting encounters, especially during an after-concert-gathering. At the organisers', I discovered one of the rare copies of Univers Zero's 1313 album. It was a shock, a magnificent surprise that this "Chamber Rock" band, exists so close to us and at the same time so far away. I was, we were thrilled and intrigued. Moreover, to learn that we were neighbours (we from Maubeuge, a town on the Belgian border, and they from Nivelles in Belgium, a few kilometres from France) added to the pleasure of such a discovery. A few weeks later, I met Daniel Denis at a Henry Cow concert in Hénin-Beaumont. Then a little later, Univers Zero visited us in Valenciennes and that was our first real contact. We talked about our working methods and influences. This naturally led to a friendship and mutual respect. The bassoonist of Univers Zero, Michel Berckmans, played a number of dates with us, because following a serious car accident that damaged his lips, Jean-Pierre Soarez could no longer play all his magnificent and intense trumpet parts. And it was only natural that Michel Berckmans joined the Art Zoyd adventure for a while on bassoon and English horn, at our invitation. We reworked the orchestrations accordingly, and Michel Thomas (saxophones) also joined the group. At the same time, Daniel Denis and Roger Trigaux asked me to replace their bass player, who was leaving: I accepted this proposal with great pleasure, on the sole condition that I remain completely available for Art Zoyd. So I did only three dates with Univers Zero in 1978: Nancy, Nottingham, and London for the first RIO, before Guy Segers took over. During these three concerts, we had already shared the repertoire, essentially centred on the 1313 album.

Back from Dr. Petiot, Carabosse et Compagnie, a big project was waiting for us: Musique pour l’Odyssée. In the wake of Symphonie pour le jour où brûleront les cités, we had already put down and experimented with a few ideas, and now it was time to move on to the big job, so to speak! On this occasion and for the first time, I signed the composition Bruit silence, bruit repos. Quite a programme! A piece composed with the help of scribbles, diagrams, sketches, rhythms, melodies repeated and firmly fixed in my memory, in order to transmit orally, but with precision, this music to my fellow musicians who, at the time, had to redouble their efforts to understand what I was asking them. I am still very grateful to them today.

We were suddenly going to migrate to less choppy, less sequenced music with longer tones, and I already sensed that my bass pizzicati weren't going to do the trick. So I decided innocently and wildly to take up the cello. And to tell the truth, after a few weeks, I began to doubt the feasibility of something that I was completely self-taught. I can remember hours of elbowing my way across a table, practicing my bow with my wrist only, trying to get the most elegant and rhythmically free sounds out. Sometimes it was enough to make you cry. But willpower and perseverance eventually paid off and after a few months, with the encouragement and precious help of Gérard and Franck, I was able to play the cello, not only in my own compositions but also in the orchestrations Gérard proposed for his piece Musique pour l’Odyssée. A whole new world of sounds opened up to me. Our album Musique pour l'Odyssée was prepared and played live in 1977-1978 and was finally recorded for Atem Records in January 1979. Daniel Denis (Univers Zero) played some discreet percussion on it. We had just met Gérard N'Guyen, who had created the magazine Atem devoted to 'new' music. Atem also became a label with which we produced three albums: Musique pour l'Odyssée, Génération sans futur, and the re-recording of Symphonie pour le jour où brûleront les cités.

Following Univers Zero, we became part of the "Rock in Opposition" movement initiated by Chris Cutler and the members of the Henry Cow band. We played until 1979-1980 in some festivals labelled RIO : Milan, Stockholm, Reims, Maubeuge, Ljubljana... To be continued in the next episode.

Art Zoyd and Univers Zero sometimes got together on stage, what we called reunion concerts, a kind of Big Band of the apocalypse (hi hi !). For the occasion, we re-orchestrated our masterpieces of the time (UZ and AZ) and played them in an expanded formula. These events were rare and difficult to organise for financial and availability reasons. Michel Besset organised a few in the South-West, including one in Toulouse on 12 May 1978 at the Théâtre du Taur. We were also programmed, for one of the last times in this formula, in October 1980 at the Nancy Jazz Pulsations festival. I think I remember that the hardcore jazzmen had an unpleasant time.

The next episode will evoke the years 1979-1980. To be continued.

Thierry Zaboitzeff - 29/03/2022

EPISODE 7: 1979 - 1981

A lot of comings and goings during these years, to get lost in it !

1979 will see the arrival of a young lady to Art Zoyd, in the person of Patricia Dallio, formidable pianist, companion and colleague in music of Alain Eckert, our guitarist at the time. Patricia was fourteen years old when she saw us for the very first time in Chaumont, her home town (during the Art Zoyd-Rocco Fernandez period) and it was only a few years later that she saw us again at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris. Then, on her return from a stay in Great Britain where she had accompanied Alain Eckert who was working on a project with Pip Pyle, Phil Milller and John Greaves, if I remember correctly, Patricia and Alain came to visit us somewhere in the North of France where we were giving a concert. During an evening at Gérard's house, Patricia played Ravel's Sonatina for him. And from sympathy to affinity, we quickly began to build our new repertoire around the compositions that would make up our next album, "Génération sans futur", then to rearrange the old "Symphonie pour le jour où brûleront les cités", which we re-recorded in 1980 and which was released in 1981 for Atem Records with this new line-up. Indeed, the original master had been lost and moreover, we were dissatisfied with the very dry and almost monophonic sound of the very first version.

Patricia Dallio: piano; Alain Eckert: guitar; Gilles Renard: saxes; Franck Cardon: violin; Gérard Hourbette: violin, viola; Jean-Pierre Soarez: trumpet; Thierry Zaboitzeff: bass, vocals; Eric Faes: recording and mixing.

Our first concert in this formation took place in the open air, somewhere in the Somme on the property of a castle whose name I have forgotten... We played the same programme as the group Odeurs. With this new formula, we found there, thanks to the piano, a more seated, precise, direct and efficient way of interpreting our rhythms, sometimes deep in time, far from the fixed classical interpretations. This was my feeling, shared also by the other members of the group during this period.

The transition to the 80's was difficult, because we had far fewer concert dates than before, although some were more prestigious, like our participation in the various RIO (Rock In Opposition) festivals: in Milano in May 1979, Stockholm in September 1979, Reims in April 1980, Ljubljana in June 1980, Maubeuge in November 1980.

We had huge difficulties to keep our head above water financially, because in those days, without any real financial support from institutions, except the loan of a rehearsal room by the Maubeuge town hall which will help us in a more consequent way in the following years, we could only rely on ourselves. In spite of this heaviness, we were a band of cheerful characters, not lacking in humour, jokes and puns during our bus trips. The masters of ceremonies in this field were generally Alain and Gérard, closely followed by Patricia, encouraged by our fits of laughter... Time passed much more quickly during a Maubeuge-Stockholm trip in a three-speed Citroën Tube running at full speed on the European roads of that time...

Strange years too, because the composition of the group often changed. Patricia and Alain worked as a duo, then with other artists such as Jacques Thollot and could not necessarily be there full time, which explains their coming and going.

Musically, as with every album or project, we were looking for new ways, yet the formation of that time and our living conditions did not totally allow this in my opinion. I personally found the repertoire of those years too diluted, not radical enough, despite the two masterpieces "Génération sans futur" and "La Ville". But patience, time and our perseverance will do the trick.

As the months went by, our respective personal financial situations became absolutely catastrophic and the beautiful utopia of living solely from music evaporated almost instantly. Most of us had to look for gainful employment for at least a few months. The band lived in slow motion, but continued to exist and to meet for the few rehearsals and concerts that had been planned for a long time. Gérard made deliveries for his father, Jean-Pierre worked on the building sites and for my part, through a family relationship, I very quickly managed to find a job which consisted of spending eight hours a day at the bottom of a barge bringing sand towards the centre of the hull so that a mechanical shovel could evacuate it to the quay. I think I lasted three months working 3 x 8 hours. I used every day off to sleep and then try to maintain my technique on the instruments. I had so much pain in my arms that I despaired, it was a very, very hard time in my life that my partner at the time, Carole, who was to become my wife from 1984 to 1997, helped me to get through, especially as soon as she got her job as a drawing teacher in a secondary school. I left that hellhole and our situations improved somewhat.

In 1980, Jean-Luc Aimé (violin), from the west of France, joined the group. We played a few concerts together: Lyon, Arènes de Fourvière at the invitation of the group Vortex, then in Brest where we broke down again with our van, forcing us to spend a few days on holiday camping in Le Conquet, a town in the far west of France. A whole program of nice moments and difficulties. Then Jean-Luc left Art Zoyd for Univers Zero.

In June 1980, on our way to Ljubljana via Trieste, we were blocked at the Yugoslav border because the customs employees stopped working from Friday evening to Monday morning and could not give us the famous sesame (a stamp on our ATA carnet) to cross the border with our equipment. We were already exhausted from all the kilometres we had travelled and had decided to spend the whole weekend on the huge car parking place between Italy and Slovenia, as we couldn't even go back to Italy... Suddenly, as if in a hallucination, a mirage, we saw a luxury tourist bus with a driver pulling up for the control. Inside the vehicle was a jumble of young people dressed in black, flight cases and instruments hastily stowed away and on closer inspection we saw that it was indeed Univers Zero going to the same festival as us. They had broken down in Venice and had been forced to hire a somewhat oversized replacement vehicle. What a bargain (for Art Zoyd)! We were able to escape this forced stop and reach Ljubljana with Univers Zero, whose customs papers were in order. We returned on Monday morning to the customs post for the formalities, then went back to Ljubljana for a magnificent concert in the open air in a sort of very large „Biergarten"...

Later in 1981 we did our first tour in the DDR thanks to Nick Hobs who was managing Henry Cow (Rock In Opposition). He put us in touch with the Künstler-Agentur der DDR who supervised the dates (the East Berlin concert was organised, recorded and broadcast on the national radio...).

Reminder of the important events of the period 1979-1981:

1979
- Festival des Musiques Nouvelles - La Gaité Montparnasse - Paris
- Festival Rock In Opposition - Milano (I)
- Festival Rock In Opposition - Uppsala (S)


1980-81
- Nancy Jazz Pulsation (F) 1980 - Art Zoyd and Univers Zero - reunion concert 
- Festival Rock In Opposition - Maubeuge (F) 
- Festival Rock In Opposition - Reims (F) 
- Festival Rock In Opposition - Ljubljana (SI) 
- Release of the album Art Zoyd " Génération sans futur " 
- Video of 13 minutes produced and broadcasted by FR3 
- Tour in D.D.R. 
- Concert at King's College - London (GB)
- Re-recording of " Symphony for the day when the cities burn "

The musicians who took part in the Art Zoyd adventure during these three years :

Patricia Dallio : piano | Alain Eckert : guitar, violin | Gilles Renard : saxophone | Gérard Hourbette : violin | Jean-Luc Aimé : violin | Paul de Prekel : violin | Franck Cardon : violin | William Schotte : cello, double bass | Michel Thomas : saxophone | Jean-Pierre Soarez : trumpet | Thierry Zaboitzeff : bass, cello, voice.

See you soon for the continuation of this extraordinary adventure.

Thierry Zaboitzeff on, 26/04/2022

N.b. This story depends of course on my memory, facts and some dated documents, if you knew well this period and you notice some error or omission,
contact me here.

EPISODE 8 : 1981 - 1983

From 1981, we radicalised our writing around a formula of piano, winds, strings, electric bass and a few discreet effects prepared on tape. Personally, I became more liberated and decisive in terms of composition. With all our strength and virtuosity, we brought out the cult double vinyl album "Phase IV" on Recommended Records in 1982.

The very young pianist Thierry Willems and the saxophonist Didier Pietton join the adventure. We went to perform in London at Kings College in front of a bunch of punks, not really knowing what to do with our rhythms, sounds and harmonies ... but we gave them such a fiery performance, such a crazy energy, such a brutality in our playing, such a level of sound that we managed to convince them in spite of a few cans thrown at us as is customary in this kind of concert... What a n audacity! It smelled good of beer and weed... Then, when the concert was over, some visibly cool and phlegmatic London policemen asked the audience to leave the place, leaving the ground strewn with countless pieces of rubbish and broken cans...

During a concert in the Paris region, we met Richard Castelli, who very quickly became our manager, friend and then partner. During the Livry-Gargan concert he organised, I found him so open, attentive, friendly, efficient and incomparably motivated that, as soon as we got home, I tried to convince my colleagues, and mainly Gérard, to invite Richard to manage us. After some reluctance, which quickly disappeared, I took it upon myself to contact Richard again and invite him to manage us in the most open sense possible, which he did quickly and brilliantly. From that moment on, everything changed. Richard would always keep a global vision for the group: creation of promotional documents, scripted photos, videos ... some of which would win prizes. It was no longer a question of being confined solely to the conventional underground and alternative scenes. With him, and thanks to his work, we were programmed in all sorts of very different places: art festivals, jazz festivals, contemporary music festivals, National Theaters ... His address book grew month by month and we went much later to the Lincoln Center in New York, to the Adelaide Festival, to the Womad Festival in Bath ... But I'm already getting into the 90s. I'll come back to this later in another episode.

In those years, music has become the most important thing to me and I can't imagine living without it. Every day is music, I compose as I can, in the transport, at night, in my room, in the kitchen and sometimes I fix ideas on a rotten cassette recorder that only I can decipher and transmit. Living conditions are still a bit difficult and odd jobs are still part of the survival programme. Rocco Fernandez (founder of Art Zoyd in 1969), who had set up an advertising agency, offers me a job to assist the graphic designer and to develop the films used for editing in the lab. I often spent long hours in front of the red light ... Those days of all analogue seem very far away to me now. I am still very grateful to Rocco today.

My partner Carole and I have managed to rent a very large flat in the centre of Valenciennes. We occupy almost all of it, except for a large room in the very centre. I set up Art Zoyd's rehearsal room there for a while. It is there that we will begin to set up the pieces of "Phase IV".

Shortly after, I met Philippe Asselin (a director from Valenciennes) with whom I became friends and who invited me to compose the music for the productions of first the "Collectif Théâtral du Hainaut", then the "Jeune Théâtre International". These were wonderful years when, in parallel with Art Zoyd, I took my compositions on unsuspected paths. Thus, for the first two projects within the framework of this collaboration, I put everything back together, with the help of Thierry Dupont, then administrator, and Philippe Asselin, director of the company, who provided me with the technical means to produce these original tapes. Here, no computer, just a Revox A77, a few microphones, an upright piano rented for the occasion, a bass, a cello, a Casiotone MT40, a drum, maracas, an old Stratocaster, my breath, my voice, a few guests (Francine Auger, Carole Grave, Didier Pietton? ), a lot of nerve and already a great know-how in cutting and pasting magnetic tapes, so much so that I will sometimes recover and reattach a piece of resonance or reverb that has been mistakenly thrown away ... It is the first time that I compose outside of any constraint linked to an instrumentarium like that of Art Zoyd. I feel reborn in a great artistic and musical freedom. Later, I would rework these materials to make a vinyl LP, "Prométhée", which was released in 1984.

Between 1981 and 1983, we made two trips behind the Iron Curtain, touring Belgium, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Scandinavia and the two German Republics. During one of these tours in East Germany, there was a long journey by car, with equipment on the roof of the vehicles and its breakdowns, delays, checks by the Volkpolizei and accommodation in those hotels for tourists, which were very well supervised and frequented almost exclusively by businessmen from the Eastern bloc, Africa or Asia.

We are paid in Ostmark and therefore unable to exchange this money. So we have to spend everything on the spot, for example buying musical instruments for possible resale in the West, when we can find them. Otherwise, we bring back records, clothes, shoes ... So much so that one evening, Richard Castelli, our manager, decides to invite us all for his birthday in a fancy restaurant, "The Moscow", in East Berlin. This restaurant is located in a hotel of the type I mentioned earlier, populated mainly by tourists, apparatchiks and members of the Stasi. We are of course under surveillance, but we enjoy it and are very careful with the friends we have made there so as not to compromise them. Our gourmet and very drunken birthday party ends late at night: beers, wine, vodka, desserts, laughter ...

I think I remember that this tour was passing through Halle where, the day after the concert, we were invited to a lunch held at the end of a congress on contemporary music in Eastern Europe. When the door of the hall opened, we were astonished to receive a huge standing ovation, as all these people had attended our concert the day before. It was a very gratifying and at the same time intimidating situation. I should mention here that we barely got out of bed, our clothes not fitting properly, our hair even less and the night still in our eyes. Very nice memory.

We will have many more adventures on these epic tours, like somewhere in Finland or Germany (???). On our way to a concert, we have to take Gerard, who suffers from kidney failure, to a hospital for dialysis. We drove all night, then parked our bus in the middle of the city, not far from the hospital, and we arranged some precarious car seats to take a rest before continuing our journey, as soon as Gerard would be finished. I can still see at the foot of the bus all the shoes on the pavement as well as a briefcase certainly full of "Ostmark" or "Crowns", which one of us forgot in half-sleep, or which he carelessly moved for his comfort. This leads to funny scenes from surprised passers-by, who avoid getting too close to our improvised resting place.

In West Berlin, we play at the "Loft in Metropol", a very punk-oriented club, where, surprisingly, as in London, our music is finally well received, but not without difficulty ... The most difficult thing is to get through the first ten minutes without the usual artillery: guitar, bass, drums... but with the sound system on full blast ... Perhaps it is at this point that we inherit the label "Chamber music for punks".

In April 1983, we went on a new tour to the East, which included Czechoslovakia (Brno and Prague). For this tour, Gérard, who had to undergo a surgical operation, was replaced by Michael Nick on the violin. In Prague, I remember this crazy evening at the French Embassy in 1983: a room with 400 seats at most and several hundred people trapped and prevented by the police on the avenue next to the building where our concert was to be held. We can easily observe the situation from the window and the balcony of our backstage. The hall is already full, but the avenue continues to fill up despite the police presence. People are scaling the walls of nearby buildings, hoping to find access to the venue. When we arrive on stage, it is difficult to breathe as the hall has filled up more than it should. It's extremely intimidating and very gratifying to be in contact with this audience that wants to attend our concert, whatever happens to them, and to experience it as something unique. A crazy evening ... After playing our first song, I look up and see Vaclav Havel in the front row: wow! In the excitement of the evening, I am not sure if it is him, but it will be confirmed later.

This is another time when we are ready to take up all sorts of challenges, whether they are musical, by introducing in our live orchestrations several turntables in order to throw some prepared sounds in the middle of our wild neoclassical orchestrations, or whether they are strategic. We are not afraid of anything to get our audience.

For example, already in 1978-79, if you'll allow me to go back a bit, we learnt that a regional live radio show was going to be programmed next to us, like "La province a du talent", if I remember correctly. With some local stars, the children of the countryside ... the actor Jean Lefebvre and therefore Art Zoyd. At that time, we played the repertoire of "Musique pour l'Odyssée" and "Génération sans Futur", and then a few snippets of "Phase IV". Just to give you an idea of the cultural gap. We don't give up and we play like hell. Even Jean Lefebvre paid us a compliment after our amazing performance. And this is where a very beautiful story begins, because somewhere in the Douai's countryside, Daniel Poteau, director of photography at SFP (Société Française de Production) hears us on the radio. He was both delighted and very intrigued, he contacted us, we got to know each other and he was given carte blanche to produce a 13-minute programme on FR3 in the region Nord Picardie: "Musique pour l'Odyssée". Later, in 1982, Daniel Poteau, strengthened by this first experience, did it again, still with FR3 Nord Picardie, but this time, it was a 52-minute programme broadcast nationally and in prime time: an Art Zoyd concert in public produced and filmed by FR3 Nord Picardie at the Hôtel de Ville in Maubeuge (F).

Didier Pietton : saxophones, Jean-Pierre Soarez : trumpet and percussions, Thierry Willems : piano, Gérard Hourbette : composition, violin, viola, keyboards, Thierry Zaboitzeff : composition, voice, cello, electric bass.

On the day of its broadcast in 1983, a major political television programme preceding our concert went way over schedule. But very late in the evening or the next day, Richard Castelli, our manager, received a call from the production, and then from the choreographer Roland Petit who had just seen part of our concert by chance on his way back from rehearsal. I think he asked to see the whole thing and very quickly, a few days later during a meeting we had arranged in Paris, Roland Petit commissioned us to write the music for his next ballet, which was to become "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell". We were very impressed and honoured by this trust, as the previous choreographic production of Roland Petit and the Ballet National de Marseille associated with rock music had taken place in 1972, with Pink Floyd live.

To be continued.

ART ZOYD IN 1981-83
- Patricia Dallio: piano, will be absent for a while and will return in 1983
- Thierry Willems: piano
- Didier Pietton: saxophones
- Jean-Pierre Soarez : trumpet
- Gérard Hourbette: composition, violins, keyboards (Michael Nick will replace Gérard on violin for a few months in the spring of 1983)
- Thierry Zaboitzeff: composition, electric bass, cello, voice

ALBUMS RELEASED DURING THIS PERIOD
- Phase IV (1982)
- Les Espaces Inquiets 1983

For this episode, I would like to thank Didier Pietton and Thierry Willems who, from afar, refreshed my memory a little. Thanks also to Marie Laurence Fauconnier for some of the photos illustrating this episode.

TZ GH et Daniel Poteau

Thierry Zaboitzeff - Gérard Hourbette - Daniel Poteau - 1982

Etienne Connod et Gérard Hourbette

Sunrise Studio: Etienne Conod and Gérard Hourbette during sound recording

Art Zoyd et Daniel Poteau pendant le tournage

Art Zoyd and Daniel Poteau during the filming of Phase IV

ART ZOYD - PHASE IV - FR3
52' film directed by Daniel Poteau - 1982


Photo credits for this page : Editta Braun | La Voix du Nord | Michel Laloux | Nord Matin | Jean Michel Monchecourt | Alessandro Achilli | Unknown | Marie Laurence Fauconnier | Claus Löser | Didier Pietton

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