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Arno
Biography ArnoArno Hintjens needs no introduction. He’s had books and television programmes devoted to him. You’ve known who he is for a long time. And what about his music? Any self-respecting person already knows it by heart. And his concert performances? They sell out in no time. Young or old, male or female, beautiful or ugly, fat or thin, clean or dirty—everyone from Ostend to New York by way of Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Geneva, Marseille, Beirut...everyone is left spellbound by so much conviction on stage.So, do we have anything new to say about ARNO? Well, yes, in fact, we do. For example, with “Covers Cocktail” you’re in the possession of a unique CD that includes no fewer than 20 cover versions performed by a artist of genius, someone who could elevate the Brabançonne (Belgium’s national anthem) or the Marseillaise into a stirring piece of music. Although luckily he's never done that, at least not consciously. After TC Matic split up in 1986, he very quickly released an eponymous solo disc (“ARNO”) but if we generously and lovingly overlook that and date his beginnings as a solo artist to "Charlatan”, it’ll be exactly 20 years since he truly captured attention under his own name. In all that time there's scarcely been a single ARNO record on which he didn't pay homage to a fellow artist with a well-chosen cover, or wrong footed his listeners by recording a song they wouldn't have expected from him, like ABBA’s “Knowing Me Knowing You” to name just one (that was a bonus track on 2004’s “French Bazaar”). Now, the best covers from all those years—from the classic "Trouble in Mind", recorded in 1988, to 2008’s “I Want to Break Free”—are for the first and only time collected on one CD. The main thing about “Covers Cocktail” is that it consists entirely of songs by other artists—some familiar, others much less so—that ARNO has revamped in his own manner, sometimes to the point of unrecognition, and thoroughly adopted as if he’d written the track himself. It's like a completely new song. These people must be extremely surprised to find themselves on the same disc: Melanie, the innocent young hippie girl of yesteryear (whose “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma” has been redone in franglais fashion, “Ils ont changé ma chanson”, by Arno and his current co-conspirator, Stephan Eicher), followed by ABBA, Jacques Brel (“Voir un ami pleurer”), Nino Ferrer (“Mirza”, from the tribute CD “On Dirait Nino”), Dave Davies (“Death of a Clown”), Dick Annegarn (a cracking “Ubu”), Mott the Hoople (the David Bowie-penned “All the Young Dudes”), Claude Nougaro (“Je suis sous”), Georges Moustaki (“Sarah - la femme qui est dans mon lit”) and Bowie & Jacques Dutronc, who made their acquaintance on “Jean Baltazaarrr”, a perfect rock mash-up of “The Jean Genie” and “La fille du père Noël” that Arno sings with Beverly Jo Scott. Less surprising, but no less enduring, are the tracks from albums like “Charles et les Lulus”, “Water”, “Charles and the White Trash European Blues Connection”, “Le European Cowboy” and “Charles Ernest”: “Mother’s Little Helper”, from the Rolling Stones; a formidably wild version of the Beatles’ “Drive My Car”; “Trouble in Mind”; Rufus Thomas’s “Walking the Dog”; the blues classic “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”, made popular by Muddy Waters; and Nina Simone's "See-Line Woman". And then of course there’s "Hot Head", with its blistering harmonica solo, and “Gimme That Harp, Boy”, by Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart, whose words, thoughts and exploits have made him one of ARNO’s icons. Nor could we forget “Elisa”, the pop tune that Serge Gainsbourg sang for Jane Birkin in 1969 (see the video “Serge Gainsbourg/Elisa” on You Tube) and that ARNO covered nearly a quarter of a century later with the same Jane Birkin on “Charles Ernest”. Add to all that his previously unreleased version of Queen’s “I Want To Break Free”, backed by a gospel and blues choir with harmonica solo, and you’ve got a record that scores a perfect 20 for 20. Artists often release cover albums in lieu of studio work—though that’s not the case here—to hide the discouragement and doubt they’re feeling in their careers, but there’s none of that on “Covers Cocktail”. Over time, ARNO has plucked some classic tracks from the blues, pop, rock, funk and songbook traditions, turned them upside down and then right side up again—sometimes with reckless abandon and sometimes with sober restraint—and added them to his repertoire! And on “Covers Cocktail” they form a whole, comfortably sitting side by side despite the years that separate them (these recordings span nearly two decades), despite the diversity of the source material and despite the fact that times have changed quite a bit, to say the least, since 1988. A correspondent from Belgium’s famous Rock Werchter festival wrote that “although it sounds crazy and impossible on paper, his combination of blues, absurd comedy, hard rock, street theatre, traditional songcraft and amazing funk culminated in a gigantic dance free-for-all…”. “Covers Cocktail” is a more modest project: you can’t invite all those crowds of people into your living room. But it’s a celebration of both (musical) good taste and raw emotion. Arno is still the number one ranking Belgian in the rock world, even when he’s not borrowing songs from somewhere else. Foto's |
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