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| Arsenic in 1977 |
He has very kindly answered a few questions about Arsenic, with help from the rest of the band including guitarist Jérôme Savy, and I am very happy to post them here for volume 143. The story is an interesting one with ups and downs, one of which I found quite shocking regarding the band's manager, the real stuff of rock n' roll lore indeed!
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| Arsenic in 1980 |
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| Front and Back LP cover |
Track list and timestamps
00:00 - A1 - Nameless
02:35 - A2 - Going To London
05:32 - A3 - I Feel So Happy
08:17 - A4 - Tipsy Girl
10:59 - A5 - Emergency Exit
14:12 - B6 - Mister X's Dream
16:58 - B7 - Sweet Mary
20:32 - B8 - Three Days With The Flip
24:27 - B9 - Never More
Interview with Bertrand Repellin
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| Bertrand in 2022 |
Bertrand: The history of the group Arsenic is unusual because we met at the age of 12 (1972/73) in the same class in a school in Lyon. We came from middle class families, not all of us particularly music lovers, but we quickly shared our taste for the pop-rock music of those years. Our friendship and our beginnings as musicians were practically built together, and the idea of forming a music group came quickly, almost before we learned any instruments.
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| Arsenic in 1977 |
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| Arsenic in 1977 |
The name was found quite quickly for what it represents, its sound, its simplicity, and its international readability.
Q3. What musical scenes and artists were the newly-formed Arsenic enjoying and listening to?
We were still children at the beginning of our meeting, each one had varying culture & musical tastes. For some of us, it was the records of our big sisters and brothers. Pop, rock, rhythm 'n blues, mainly English and American. In addition to the "old" rock & roll classics, our references were the main big bands of the time such as: The Stones, Beatles & The Who, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Creedence and Led Zeppelin....and all the bands present at the Woodstock festival. We had to wait until we were a bit older to get parental permission to go and see these bands live! Our musical tastes and influences grew over time, and as we matured, each of us developed our own preferences in rock, pop, progressive rock, blues and country rock...
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| Arsenic on stage |
For the anecdote, our first public performance at 14 years old was a concert for an association of deaf and hard of hearing people, where we were asked to turn down the volume that was judged too loud! Then, we really started to perform at the age of 15 (1976) in various venues in Lyon with mainly a repertoire of covers (Stones, Beatles, Chuck Berry, classic rock...) and some early original compositions. We quickly moved-on to only playing original titles.
Q5. Which bands were playing along with Arsenic at these shows?
Between 1977 and 1980 we played in larger venues in the Lyon region, notably in front of a university amphitheatre full of 1200 spectators for the release of our record. Otherwise, we often shared stages with important French bands, Rock or New Wave, when the city of Lyon was named "Capital of Rock" by the press. For example, a night concert in an ephemeral but mythical club, the Rock and Roll Mops (link), with the leading French bands of the time, like Téléphone, Bijoux, Ganafoul, Jacques Higelin, Starshooter....
"The Rock'n'roll Mops will consist of three rooms: one with 800 seats, another with 250 and the last one which will be able to accommodate a hundred people, all spread over three floors with lots of nooks everywhere […] It will be the sanctuary of hard and soft rock, the home of blues and country, the haven of new wave and blues rhythm. Other music will certainly find its place there, it's up to them […] Local groups, refine your riffs, check your balance, polish your brass, the Lyon scene awaits you”."
Facing administrative closure the same year it opened, Electric Callas, Marie et les Garçons, Bijou, Starshooter, Telephone, Ganafoul and many others took the stage for the final show at the Mops.]
Q6. How did Arsenic get recorded by the Verseau label?
We were able to make this album thanks to a meeting with Farid ZaÏche, a personality from the Lyon artistic scene. He noticed us and became our manager, and quickly proposed to record and release an album by creating his Label, “Verseau”.
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| The band with Farid ZaÏche (on right) |
Q7. Could you please confirm the band members of Arsenic who recorded your self-titled album, and tell us about the guest musicians like Noel and Antoine, mentioned on the album?
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| Images from rear cover |
Guitar, Vocals - Bertrand Repellin
Guitar - Jérôme Savy
Bass - Thierry Monod
Drums - Christophe-Pierre Dupraz
Keyboards - Pascal Viscardi
Our guest musicians for the LP recording were:
Bongos, Maracas - Noel Kapoudjian
Bottleneck slide guitar - Antoine Stacchetti
Harmonica - Jean-Yves Astier
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| Noël Kapoudjian, playing in 'Slaughter and the Dogs' at UK Rebellion Punk fest c.2014 |
They brought a complementary touch on some songs, but never played with us in concert. And we thank them and other relatives for their valuable support, because they had driving licences and cars and often accompanied us and carried the instruments to the studio sessions and concert halls! Some of these older friends, whom we were particularly close to, visual artists, former students of the fine arts, also brought us a rich artistic opening beyond rock and roll...
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| Arsenic in 1977 |
The recording of the album was enriched by the contribution of experienced musicians: Antoine Stacchetti and Geni Detto for the acoustic guitars and their arrangements, Noël Kapoudjian with the percussions... But apart from recording the disc, we often were with friends who were a decade older than us, who were jazz musicians, folk musicians, avant-garde visual artists or both. They liked our youth and our talent, and they introduced us to styles of expression other than rock and roll. Contemporary art in painting, Frank Zappa or John Renbourn in music, for example. It didn't influence our pop rock music directly, but it opened us up intellectually. In fact, even if we were mostly part of the "classic" rock scene in Lyon at the end of the 1970s, more so than the punks and other "new waves", we didn't belong to any fashion or chapel.
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| Bertrand, 1978 |
Thanks to Farid Zaïche who managed the whole project, we recorded this album during the summer of 1978 at the Cybernis studio. A 16-track analogue studio isolated in the countryside in the Rhône Alpes region. The electric guitars were two beautiful Fender Stratocasters and a Fender Music Master plugged into a Hiwatt 50W amplifier, with no intermediate effects pedal other than distortion, sometimes, and plugged directly into the console for the clean sounds. The bass was a Fender Precision bass, plugged directly into the console. Orange (?) drums. Keyboards: Grand piano, Würlitzer electric piano and Moog synthesizer. Various percussion instruments by Noël K.
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| Geny Detto, sound engineer |
A lot of arrangement work took place during these recordings. Our songs, which were quite "raw", were reworked under the influence of Geny Detto, the sound engineer, and Farid. This careful production gave our songs a more "mainstream" dimension. We improved in precision, melodic and harmonic details, and structures. Were the original interpretations as on the pre-record demo more authentic and representative of pure and raw Arsenic? Perhaps. But our demo tape won't tell us, it has disappeared...
Geny Detto was an "old-fashioned" sound engineer, guitarist and arranger, having collaborated with Graeme Allwright among others. But we can say that he did a very good job.
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| 1979 |
Our creative process was quite classic. The start of a new song was based on an idea of riffs, a sequence of chords, a theme from one of the two guitarists. The rest was built together in rehearsal. It was up to the singer to find his melodies, the keyboardist, bassist and drummer their parts, the guitarists their solos and their respective interventions always complementary and balanced. A rich alchemy operated thanks to this musical and human connivance that linked us. As a singer, I (Bertrand) wrote the lyrics. We were teenagers, so the themes were either the problems of a young person in society, at school, everywhere. The abstract desire for somewhere else, for an absolute love. The refusal to be ensconced in the reality of society. In the form of poetry that sometimes flirts with the romantic-fantasy (Nameless, Mister X's dream, Never More, Emergency exit).
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| 1979 |
Tipsy Girl is nobody in particular, probably a girl drunk with the chaotic world around her. The idea for “Going to London” came from our vision of this city as the place for music as we loved it, where it comes from and lives, where the "real" bands are. Like a desire to escape to an elsewhere that we imagine to be better. “Three Days With The Flip” simply tells the story of one of us having a bad trip after consuming "hallucinogenic" substances. Knowing that we weren’t very wise in this respect compared to other bands we knew. Drugs and groupies were not part of our daily life!
Q13. Why did you choose to sing in English?
The English language was a given for rock bands at that time, with its sound that fits so well with the style. Writing and singing "well" in French is not gifted to everyone, few bands dared to do it, at the risk of "doing french variety".
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| Jérôme Savy in 2022 |
Jérôme Savy: I particularly like “Mister X's Dream” for its guitar parts, the crazy notes and sound of the Moog synthetiser, and the title of this track.
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| 1979 |
Farid Zaïche was in charge of making the album cover. Once again, we trusted him, as we had no idea on the matter (the idea was still to show something else than five guys in the street...). Nicole Besacier and Sophie Dargacha were two beginner graphic designer friends of his. We didn't really know them. The first project was based on a beautiful female face taken from a magazine, but it could not be retained because of a lack of authorization. The final result earned us some mockery from our artist friends who found it a bit childish. But personally, I like it and I think it fits well with our music, and it makes me think of the title Mister X's dream... But I have to admit that the back cover looks very amateurish!
The album was released in September 1978, with a rather small print run, a few thousand copies? We don't know the exact number that were sold. It was very well-received by the public and the press, but unfortunately only at a local level, as it was not released internationally.
It lacked the next step of wider distribution and promotion with a major company. In fact, we were 17 years old, still at school, a bit too naive, we trusted our manager Farid, without worrying enough about the details of things and the accounts. When one day we asked him for explanations, he didn't really answer, and then shortly afterwards disappeared... It was through the newspaper, with an article and his photo between two Italian policemen, that we learned that he had tried unsuccessfully to hijack a plane from Rome to Tunis, demanding the release of Tunisian political prisoners!
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| 1980 |
After some contacts between us and Farid from his prison in Palermo, we knew that he had been extradited to Tunisia. Then, silence. It is assumed that he was eliminated there... This event broke our momentum a bit, we had trouble bouncing back. We continued until 1981; without Pascal Viscardi, the keyboard player having left the band sometime after the release of the record, but we started again with French compositions, because in the meantime, the record companies had begun to only sign French songs, after the success of the groups like Téléphone and others. But, in spite of the ever-present concert successes, a good evolution of our songs, promising new titles and demos; the absence of a manager, a certain disillusionment and wear and tear took the group's toll.
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| 1980 |
When Arsenic broke up, Jérôme joined the group Carte de Séjour (link1, link2). [Editor: Carte de Séjour had success throughout the 1980s]
I (Bertrand) put together a group that didn't last, with Thierry, Christophe-Pierre and a female singer. Then I had various musical adventures and am now a TV sound engineer. Thierry Monod became a lawyer, Christophe-Pierre a show manager. Jérôme is a teacher of modern music. Our strong friendship never wavered throughout the years that followed Arsenic, seeing each other regularly, each having kept the love of our instruments and of music. Unfortunately, Christophe-Pierre has left us, he passed away in January 2019
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| 2017 Arsenic reunion (l-r) Thierry Monod, Bertrand Repellin, Christophe-Pierre Dupraz (R.I.P), Jérôme Savy |
See you on the next one!
Rich
Related TDATS posts:
Volume 127: Blue Planet interview with Art Bausch
Jodo Interview with Rod Alexander
Roy Rutanen interview
Volume 119: Panda interview with Jaap van Eik
Volume 111: Cobra interview with Rob Vunderink
All interviews posted so far can be seen here.
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