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Album review
CERRONE
The Return of the French Disco King
13/07/2001 -
Cerrone made his comeback in style on a balmy night in June, taking to the stage at the VIP Club - a hipper than hip venue on the Champs-Élysées - at one o'clock in the morning. With the dancefloor packed to bursting and a febrile buzz of excitement shooting round the room, Cerrone brought the house down, accompanied by his legendary percussion outfit Kongas and his favourite vocalist Jocelyn Brown. The crowd went wild from the moment they heard Cerrone's opening beats, welcoming their 'disco hero' back for his first French gig in almost twenty years.
After many long years in the music wilderness, Cerrone finally seemed to be reaping the success he deserves. Even when U.S. disco fans were going wild for his fat drum beats in the 70s, Cerrone remained a figure of fun in France. Critics slammed his repetitive 'boom-chack-a-boom' loops and nicknamed him "the lumberjack" because of his lack of finesse.
But two decades later Cerrone is firmly back in vogue thanks to the release of the compilation album Cerrone By Bob Sinclar (which features a selection of Cerrone's greatest hits 're-looked' by today's hottest house stars and mix-masters). Given a new lease of life by the 'French Touch' movement, and heavily sampled by the likes of Modjo and Bob Sinclar, Cerrone's fat drum beats whisk dance fans back to the carefree glamour of the disco era.
Given that so many of today's hottest DJs have been trawling through Cerrone's back catalogue, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with the bright idea of re-releasing the Disco Drummer's first five albums. In fact, Love in C Minor, Cerrone’s Paradise, Supernature, Golden Touch and You Are The One are due out on vinyl later this month. And the best thing is, the albums are not just about to come out on any label, but on Cerrone's own label, Malligator. (Unlike many of his 70s co-stars, Cerrone was clever enough to keep a firm hold on the artistic copyright on his colossal 24-album back catalogue!)
Cerrone came charging to the fore in the heatwave summer of '76, taking U.S. dancefloors by storm with his pounding percussion, incendiary brass section and swirling violins. But back at home French radio stations (controlled by a state monopoly at the time) refused to succumb to Disco-mania and the sound was pushed underground into the clubs.
Flying the flag for dance music alongside Giorgio Moroder, Donna Summer and Nile Rodgers, before the Bee Gees took the world by storm with Saturday Night Fever in 1978, Cerrone was involved in laying the foundations of the disco movement. In fact, the French drum king claims to have had a hand in inventing the word 'disco' itself!
"Very early on in the piece I found myself completely marginalised," says Cerrone, "No-one wanted to know about me on the mainstream – I just got pushed to the back of this little drawer. I was dismissed as someone who made 'music for discotheques'. So one day, intending to come up with a clever marketing pun, I took the '-theque' off the end and made this sticker saying "Cerrone No. 1 Disco Star" and the expression stuck!"
Cerrone's career took off in earnest in 1972 when he met Eddie Barclay, the legendary cigar-smoking label-owner responsible for discovering everyone from Jacques Brel and Boris Vian to Georges Brassens. Spotting the potential of Cerrone's hard-hitting percussion outfit, Barclay signed Kongas on the spot and the group were soon playing non-stop gigs up and down France. Cerrone has fond memories of that period, recalling that "Just putting the Barclay logo on the poster was enough to pack venues out overnight. Barclay was really a stamp of quality, a label people took very seriously indeed!"
But towards the end of '74 when pop groups like Martin Circus began to emerge on the French scene, Kongas's artistic director began to try and fit Cerrone and his disco colleagues into a mould they didn't like. "We suddenly discovered that our idealistic Utopian vision of rock'n'roll was completely out of sync. with what was going on around us!" says Cerrone. There was nothing left for it but for Kongas to call it a day!
It was at this point that Cerrone decided to play his final trump card. Rather than abandon his musical vision altogether, he financed the production of his iconoclastic debut album himself, going off to London to record Love In C Minor at the legendary Trident Studio (where Genesis were working away on their psychedelic guitars next door.)
"The thing is, I just wasn't interested in making pop music,"Cerrone recalls, "I actually stopped making music altogether for one and a half or maybe two years. I just couldn't make myself do it any more! When I went into the studio to make "Love in C Minor" I honestly thought it would be my last album, that I'd give up music altogether after that … "Love in C Minor" was my swan song!"
With its funky intro and 16 minutes, 17 seconds of infectious beats tailor-made for disco dancefloors, "Love in C Minor" was light years from any French pop production of the day. Not surprisingly then, when Cerrone did the rounds of the major labels with a demo of his new album, he was turned down by all. Determined to see "Love in C Minor" through to the end, however, Cerrone decided to set up his own label, Malligator, and released his debut album on that - delivering copies of "Love in C Minor" to record stores himself!
The album cover alone was enough to make music history. In fact, it couldn't have been much more representative of the 70s if it had tried! The photo of a super-macho moustachioed Cerrone, dressed in a skimpy black kimono, with a naked sex-bomb on his arm, exuded all the libertine debauchery of a decade when the words "AIDS" and "mass unemployment" had yet to enter the collective vocabulary.
Cerrone may have been ignored in France, but Ahmet Etergun, head of the powerful Atlantic label, had been swept up by disco fever in the States and went on to throw his considerable weight behind the new 'dance' movement. Disco was soon hot, hot, hot and Love In C Minor exploded onto the U.S. club scene, smashing sales records overnight. Before he knew it, Cerrone was being crowned King of Disco and jetting off to Los Angeles to receive his first Grammy Award! (Not surprisingly, the French drum-master would soon re-locate to California, although he continued to visit London and Paris for recording purposes).
"You can't even begin to imagine what winning a Grammy meant to someone like me,", Cerrone says, with obvious pride, " I mean, there I was this little French artist who'd grown up in the suburbs … and I'd had to overcome so many hurdles in the course of my career. Because, let's face it, it's no easy business getting to the top as a drummer who doesn't sing! It wasn't really normal for drummers to try and take centre stage and make a name for themselves like that. I didn't have an easy time of it at all! So I didn't have a moment's hesitation when it came to leaving France. I mean, why would I possibly have wanted to stay in a country where I was looked down on and dismissed as a musical 'lumberjack'?" In 1978, the year the Bee Gees' Saturday Night Fever took international dancefloors by storm, Cerrone went on to win a further 5 Grammy Awards! And the French drum-master went on to dominate clubland until 1984, when under onslaught from punk and new wave, disco was relegated to the sales bins.
Fortunately, being a prolific songwriter, arranger, composer and producer, Cerrone was better equipped than most to survive his period in the music wilderness. "I was lucky because I didn't need to record new albums to make a living," Cerrone admits, "I had a vast back catalogue which kept the cash rolling in. In the past three years, for instance, I must have contributed to at least 70 compilations worldwide!"
And how does the 70s disco king feel about the current revival of interest in his music?
"Well, so far I'm taking it all in my stride," he says, with a nonchalant grin, "You know, back (towards the end of the disco movement) when I started to see sales dropping off, I didn't hang around to watch. I was like 'OK, guys, I'm off!' I had, thank God, sold a hell of a lot of albums by then and I knew I could hang on as long as I wanted without putting anything else out. As far as the current interest in my work is concerned, all I can say is I haven't tried to force anything. Everything's just happened very smoothly, very naturally. It's got nothing to do with business or the marketing side of things. Basically, it's the fact that kids have suddenly gone poking around in their parents' old LP collections and are re-discovering the music from that period. And that's the generation the DJs who've been sampling and re-mixing my stuff are interested in."
Given that today's electro scene essentially revolves around instrumental music, the tables have finally turned for Cerrone. "You know, everything that was against me at the time – the fact that I wasn't really a singer, but trying to be centre stage as a musician – has finally turned in my favour,"the French drum king says, "Apart from in America where I won awards for my music, I had a really, really hard time of it trying to break through as a drummer. But it's wonderful now, not being a singer actually counts in your favour, because DJs are only interested in sampling instrumental stuff in their mixes!"
"The thing is," muses Cerrone, philosophically, "You have to let things take their course. You have to learn to sit back and be patient. I could turn round and say to you that I've been waiting for this moment for a long, long time, that I've finally got my 'revenge'! … But I can honestly say I don't feel that way at all!" .
And why should he? After all, the taste of new success is sweeter than revenge! The man who signed his first contract with Eddie Barclay back in '72 is about to have his entire back catalogue - out of stock for nearly thirty years in France! - re-released on the Barclay label. Now, that's what we call justice at last!
Text: Gérard Bar-David
Translation: Julie Street
"Cerrone By Bob Sinclar", Malligator/Barclay (dist. Universal)
27/11/2002 -
03/02/2003 -
