ARNO. Belgian singer Arno, real name Arnold Hintjens, has died at the age of 72, after two years of battling pancreatic cancer.
[Mis à jour le 25 avril 2022 à 10h26] His broken voice was recognizable among all: the singer Arno, a Belgian figure on the rock scene, died on Saturday at the age of 72. For two years, he had been battling pancreatic cancer, which finally got the better of him. It was in 2019 that Arno announced the diagnosis. Since then, he chained the treatments and had to postpone several tours and concerts
Arnold Charles Ernest Hintjens, the real name of Arno, had nevertheless performed in Ostend, his hometown, on the coast of the North Sea, in Belgium, last February and March, a neon “Live” shiny in a black decor (photo). He had participated last May in the project of the same name, with the pianist Sofiane Pamart. His final tour ended in this port city that has become a hotspot for Belgian tourism on March 11, 2022, the date on which he last lifted his microphone. Arno then told his audience that he was “soon to visit” his mother. A direct reference to death, the latter having died when the singer was 24 years old. A final album was in preparation before the announcement of his death.
Since the announcement of his death, there have been many tributes to Arno. Anonymous as personalities, artists or politicians, all salute the career of the Belgian singer. “It is with great sadness that I learned that you had left Tonton! All my condolences to the family”, writes another Belgian artist, Stromae, on Instagram. “Thank you for the tenderness”, tweeted Augustin Trapenard, host of the show Boomerang on France Inter, where Arno had granted one of his last interviews.
“How sad to learn of the departure of this wonderful artist”, was moved Nagui, when Laurence Bloch, director of France Inter adds: “He was poetry itself, punk and torn. We loved him so much at France Inter .” “I learned the terrible news at the end of the session, his departure touches me deeply,” Mireille Matthieu told AFP. “His almost testamentary desire was to record a duet with me. Two weeks ago in Brussels, he recorded his voice with great courage. Arno was a real poet, with a very particular way of telling himself through his songs. “, she continued.
Arno had therefore been ill for almost two years. His pancreatic cancer was diagnosed in November 2019. A disease which will force him to postpone concerts in Europe and in particular in France, very quickly, from February the following year.
Back on stage in the summer of 2020, Arno will again be forced to cancel his visit to Paris, at the Trianon, in December 2021. The announcement will be made several months earlier and will specify that Arno was forced to cancel all his concerts until the end of the year, “on the recommendation of his doctors”.
Arno, “the other king of the Belgians, tutelary figure of two generations of musicians, from dEUS to Stromae”, as Le Parisien writes, was also nicknamed the “Belgian Tom Waits”, reference of blues and American indie rock. , of whom he was an inexhaustible admirer. It is by singing in English first that Arno will impose his gravelly voice, his personality, but also his exceptional humor, which is reminiscent of the interpreter of “Hope I don’ t fall in love with you”. Then French and Flemish will bring him some of his most beautiful songs, allowing critics to seek new comparisons, on the side of Brel or Léo Ferré this time.
Arno first started with punk, with his group TC Matic and will know the long journey of artists stuck in anonymity before, one day perhaps, being revealed to the general public. This revelation will begin for him with “Ho La La La” and “Putain putain”, two titles of his group at the time, in the early 1980s. The second, an offbeat declaration of love for Europe (“Putain putain , it’s really good, we’re all Europeans”), sets the tone: Arno will continue to develop these raw, poetic, sometimes naive, often overwhelming texts, whispered or chanted with his hoarse voice throughout his career.
Arno will have recorded, in nearly 50 years, about thirty albums in total, solo or in collaboration (Freckleface, Tjens Couter, TC Matic, Charles and the Lulus, Les Subrovniks) and contributed to dozens of projects, some of which quite improbable like the Dutch version of the film Toy Story in 1995. His most famous albums remain “Charlatan” (1988), Ratata” (1990) “Idiots Savants” (1993) or “À la française” (1995), summits of a decade in which he changed the face of French-speaking song, resulting in reference songs (“Les yeux de ma mère”, “Vive ma liberté”, “Lonesome Zorro”, “Tango de la peau”) at the crossroads of the requirement in the writing and the spontaneity of the rock, of which Arno was never really very far. Many other titles will be able to characterize the artist at the same time, like more recently the “I want to live”, ” Solo Gigolo”, “Someone touched my wife”, “I want to swim”, “He fell from the sky”…
Arno will also be known to the general public with several covers including the now famous “Girls by the sea”, originally sung by Adamo, or “They changed my song” by Dalida. The sometimes crazy rearrangements of certain references will become his trademark. The singer has also appeared in about fifteen films, including “Komma” in 2006, where he plays the main role.