The Belgian singer Arno, known in particular for his cover of seaside girls of his compatriot Adamo, died at the age of 72, his agent Filip De Groote announced on Saturday April 23, quoted by Flemish television VRT and The evening.
The singer, who had been battling pancreatic cancer since 2019, had to cancel all of his concerts scheduled in France, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands until the end of 2021 last July, his doctors having prescribed “rest“.
“He will be missed by all of us, his family, his friends and his musicians. He will always be with us thanks to the music that kept him alive until the end”Filip De Groote said in a statement.
After many postponements, Arno, self-claimed “addict“to the music which he said had it”Safe“, was finally back on stage in February 2022, scheduling half a dozen dates in Brussels and Ostend, his hometown. During his last shows, the artist, seated in front of a microphone, face thin, regularly alluded to his audience to his state of health.
According to VRT, the gravelly-voiced singer, sometimes described as “Belgian Tom Waits“, was working in the last weeks of his life on a new album, which will be released posthumously. “The disc is not finished yet”said Filip De Groote. “We prefer to finish it quietly rather than release it quickly.”
Born on May 21, 1949 in Ostend, a Flemish coastal town to which he remained very attached and which he evokes in his songs, Arno Hintjens began his career with the rock group TC Matic in the 80s, notably with Damn, damn (“Damn, damn, that’s really good, we’re still all Europeans”), a title recently taken up in duet with another Belgian, Stromae.
It was solo that he then revealed himself to a wider audience, thanks to songs like My mother’s eyes or the covers of which he had made a specialty, in particular Girls by the sea of Adamo, but also The good God by Jacques Brel or Eliza by Serge Gainsbourg.
Unclassifiable singer, mixing blues, rock’n’roll, punk and bal musette, poet of the flat country, lover of words, women and freedom, the dilapidated Arno never stopped creating, singing and telling his stories and heartaches drowned in alcohol – his title Health recounts the setbacks of all cuckolds around the world.
An insatiable lyricist, a hard worker, he wrote hundreds of titles in English, French or Flemish and left about fifteen solo albums. In the last, a moving record called Live, released in 2021, he repeated many of his successes in piano-voice version with the young Lille pianist Sofiane Pamart.
It is also on stage that he felt most alive, he confided on March 23, just a month ago, to Augustin Trapenard in the Boomerang program on France Inter. “I had a wonderful life, I traveled all over the world through music, I enjoyed life. I take this happiness with me. Thank you life ! But now, in my state… Today comes first“, he added. Because “in the state I am in today, the past no longer exists, only the truth counts“.