We were so hoping to see him back on stage, crying once again while waiting for “my mother’s eyes”, yelling with him “Damn fuck, it’s really good, we’re all Europeans”, laughing at his surreal jokes… But the neon “Vivre” which flashed on his last concerts went out. After two years of a heroic fight, Arno succumbed to his pancreatic cancer, his agent announced on Saturday April 23 in a press release. The other king of the Belgians, tutelary figure of two generations of musicians, from dEUS to Stromae, died at the age of 72. After having put his last strength in the recording of a final album. “I will soon visit my mother (who died when he was 24)”, he announced to his audience in March during his last concerts. Singing seated, emaciated, weakened, with an emaciated face, rare and shaggy gray hair, the singer managed to make a final tour of Belgium and gave his last concert on March 11 in Ostend. Arnold Charles Ernest Hintjens has come full circle. an extraordinary life in his hometown. This Ostend, its sea wall and its bars that he sang with emotion in “Oostende bonsoir”, this city where he was a cook for a year for Marvin Gaye in 1981 and 1982. When he had no more money and had accepted to make “soul food” for the soul star, who was then looking for calm and rest on the shores of the North Sea, two years before his death, assassinated by his father in Los Angeles. Some forty albums, including thirty and a soloIn 1981, after a chaotic decade, Arno and his first group, TC Matic, finally found the way to success with two songs, “Ho La La La”, then “Putain putain”, a hymn to Europe. in 1983. His punk group stopped in 1986. We remember the same year of a chaotic concert in Bercy, in the first part of the rock stars Simple Minds, where the new wave public whistles them all along and Arno insult back. We imagine Arno railing against this “sacred mess”, one of his favorite expressions. But his career was launched. Arno was lucky to be born in a Belgium open as much to Anglo-Saxon rock as to French song and we saw in him the European cousin of a Tom Waits, the punk son of a Brel or a Ferré, which he repeated several times. Her hoarse voice, her lyrics between poetry and realism, her electrified blues, worked wonders on stage, where her lanky figure mesmerized the audience. He also had the art of making his iconoclastic covers better than the originals, from Adamo’s “Filles du bord de mer” to Dalida’s “They changed my song” with Stephan Eicher via “Knowing Me Knowing You” by Dalida. ‘Abba.VIDEO. Our meeting with Arno in 2016 In fifty years, he has recorded around forty albums, including thirty-one solo. “I make records to go on tour,” he said. Not all of them were as great as “Charlatan”, “Ratata”, “A la française”, but they were all unique. Because the hoarse Flemish had created his own language, between French and English, with song titles – “Life is a partouze” – and punchlines to study in rap schools, like “It’s better to be with an ugly smile than with a beautiful and boring woman”, “I’m fine with nothing, but better with little”. And on stage, Arno, it was always great! His blues evolved over time and his encounters, from the piano of a Ferré to the electro of a Stromae. No wonder that these two surrealists without blinkers have shared the stage several times, until one of Arno’s last concerts, on February 14. Stromae called him “uncle Arno” and praised in his interviews his singular way of telling life, women, dramas, in his songs. “I stuttered and the music cured me of all that” With his charisma, Arno could only catch the eye of filmmakers. He played in a dozen films, for Michel Piccoli in 1997 in “Alors voilà”, for Samuel Benchetrit in “I’ve always dreamed of being a gangster” in 2008. A mythical and funny scene with Alain Bashung where they both play their own role. At the beginning of March, the Ostend film festival awarded him a prize for all of his work. In mid-March, he was awarded the medal of Officer in the Order of the King, the equivalent of the Legion of Honor. At Le Parisien, we had the privilege of interviewing him four times, in Paris and Brussels, and each meeting was unforgettable, in his bazaar apartment, where he had welcomed us, apologizing for not having anything to drink. In his favorite bar, “The Archduke”. At his Pias record label. Arno was familiar with you from the start, always offered you a drink, talked about life as in his songs, with banter and derision but often right. “In Europe, we live with our ass in butter”, he told us during our last meeting, in November 2021 in Brussels. He had lost weight, but had not lost his sense of humor. “I’m a Chippendale now,” he laughed. He was the first surprised to hold out on his cancer, after five months of hospitalization. “Music is adrenaline and adrenaline heals me. Always. When I was young, I had autism, I stuttered and music cured me of all that. It happened to me several times to have a cold or the flu at the beginning of a concert and to be cured at the end. It’s incredible. “Arno had not said his last word, he had written new songs and recorded a last album. “Yesterday is dead, tomorrow does not exist. I am alive today”, he told us one last time to sum up his appetite for living in the present. He was no longer afraid of death. “Pff, I had a great life, I have no regrets. I was lucky, I saw the whole world, played everywhere, in Japan, in Vietnam, in the United States, in all Europe. I can not complain. »