The Return Of A Maverick - Part One

The Return of A Maverick

by Ron Jonson

Part One - Brothers By Other Mothers

(Published 26 March 2021 - The Bloxwich Slacker)

As I waited patiently in front of my open laptop with Skype loaded, I wondered if this was really going to happen. I was about to speak to a living legend. A man synonymous with the kind of  high art that has left many casualties over the years, including himself. A man who hasn’t been afraid to take the lonely precarious path between critical acclaim and red faced laugh out loud embarrassment. He may have fallen over the edge a couple of times, but he’d survived, healed his broken bones and wounded ego, dusted himself down and carried on, with his reputation intact.

It was January 2021. The world gripped by a pandemic in which isolation and social distancing had become the norm. So it seemed fitting that a man who had spent the last twenty years in hibernation, who had become comfortable living in his own shadow, chose this time to break his silence.

I’d had to jump through many hoops and pull in a few favours to set this thing up. I had heard rumours on the street and in the underground art scene that the man was no longer dormant. I made some discreet enquiries, rebounding from contact to contact, I hit a few dead ends, retraced my steps and eventually turned a corner which led me to a man who could put me in contact with a man who was an acquaintance of someone in the great icons inner circle.

Now here I was, waiting for that face to pop up on my screen, in my house during a winter lockdown. The agreed time came and went and my conscience was just beginning to discredit my attempts to even be in the same conversation as this great innovator when suddenly it happened.

There he was, Jacque Stru’del, a moving picture in front of my eyes. The man that had made teenage girls evacuate their collective bladders with just the blink of his eyes. He looked sheepishly mysterious in his trademark white baseball cap which was pulled down over his eyes, themselves hidden behind dark sunglasses. If I had any doubts that it was in fact him, they were expelled when he spoke with that distinctively unique French baritone voice.

Having been an avid admirer of Stru’del’s work for most of my life, coupled with the fact that I had chosen to be a writer, I’d dreamt of one day meeting him. So when he opened with the salutation, “Ron, it’s a great pleasure to speak with you. I’ve been aware of your work since, well since you sent me a copy of the manuscript of your unofficial biography about Carol Decker many many  years ago, erm, now what was it called…”, I was about to prompt him, “Ah yes Double Decker, how could I forget.” God he’d actually remembered, I nearly shat myself. “Yes, your sensitive handling of her fight with obesity was admirable. Sorry I never got back to you though, you know how it is when I get wrapped up in one of my projects, yes?” Of course, I replied, don’t worry about it.

Jacque had recently had an epiphany. All great artists have at least one if they are lucky. It had struck him like a bolt of lightning while watching the news one night towards the end of 2020. It would be the spark for his latest project, and his first new music for a very long time. But we’ll get to that in due course.

After we’d exchanged small talk, and I was confident I’d stroked his ego enough, we began to chat about those early days when he’d started out. Stru’del shot to fame in 1964 as a member of the Stru’del Brothers. 

While out celebrating his 21st birthday, he had chanced across the now legendary, but then obscure Parisian underground avant garde jazz club Le Bâtard (The Bastard) . It was there that he came across Rene Trottier and Louis Toussaint, a guitar and drum duo performing as “Tremblements Du Monde Souterrain” (Tremors From The Underworld), playing a dangerous fusion of  new wave post funk punk mixed with liberal spoonfuls of free-tea-time bebop scattamatazz. Obscure tunings clashed with irregular time signatures as Louis, in a kind of transe, sang in tounges, creating a brand new vocabulary for each performance. Jacque had never listened to music that had made his ears bleed before and he immediately asked the lads to join his new band, adopting Stru’del as their stage name. 

After several weeks of experimental rehearsals and a few gigs that truly tested the audience’s mental health, the Stru’del Brothers came to the stark realisation that in order to both retain any fans, and make any money what-so-ever, they would have to compromise on their art, play in 4/4 time, use standard western tunings, and lay off the augment flattened fifths.

“It wasn’t easy denying what came naturally”, Jacque told me across the jittering Skype screen, “but I sat down one afternoon with a guitar and wrote several songs that fitted my own take on pop music.”

One of those songs was, “C'est facile“ (Easy Does It) which would become the Brothers first top ten hit in France and later a worldwide phenomenon.

“It took minutes to write that”, Jacque seemed to brag, “And when i re-read the words back I knew I was onto something because I literally loathed them. There was nothing challenging about the music too, it plodded along like a wounded animal. When we came to record it, our producer Valéry Langlois decided to get in a small string quartet ensemble to add some atmospheric strings. I said to hell with that, I want the whole orchestra, including the triangle player!”

The result was described by one French critic as, “the birth of a new type of music, one that entrances listeners in a womb like blanket of security, lulling them into a state of inescapable nostalgia whilst seemingly wrapping them in a cocoon of simplistic reflection.”

“Easy Does It” was uncompromisingly unchallenging, with lines such as,

“I took a walk in the park / where the grass doesn’t grow / where the swings swing / and the lonely people go / I thought I saw you perched, atop the climbing frame / but it was just a reflection / cause I know I’m only to blame / don’t worry about me baby now / I’ll be alright you’ll see / I’ll drive down to the coast / and watch junkies on the beach / easy does it, easy does it, 

one day at a time /  easy does it, easy does it / your dead in my head / and that sure ain’t a crime.”

The Stru’del’s three part harmonies soared in a sea of orchestral waves that transported the listener to a faraway island where nothing and no one could harm them. Safety was guaranteed. Several other songs on their debut album, “Easy Does It With The Stu’del Brothers”, had chart success including The Girl I Lost On The Train and Everything Will Be OK When You’ve Gone.

Shortly after the release of the album, the Brothers embarked on a tour of Europe, “Yeah that was an interesting experience, attended mostly by young impressionable girls whose hormones were already in overdrive, not to mention seeing us, their poster idols in the flesh, they basically erupted into a feeding frenzy. It was, well, let’s just say it was very messy.”

Between 1964 and 1978 The Stru’del Brothers averaged an incredible three albums per year, making a total output of 54, containing a staggering 540 songs , of which one hundred and eight were top ten hits in a variety of countries. 

“We found a winning formula and we exploited it for all we could”, explained Jacque, “it did wonders for our egos but turned us into fat headed idiots. For instance, for our third album of 1969, Fireside Jam With The Stru’del Brothers”, I had written one song called, Jump Into The Fire With Me, an intimate yet intense portrait of first love. Well I got this idea that it would make the song more atmospheric and authentic if we were actually sitting around a real fire as we recorded it. I suggested it to our latest producer, Leon Harlequin, and he said oh I’ll dig out a field recording for you.  No I explained we need the fire live as we record the song here in the studio. I need to work with the fire, to let it’s flames engulf the songs heart like the protagonist of the song is being besotted by this beautiful girl who will eventually burn out his soul and leave an empty shell. Leon stared back at me as if I’d just asked him to eat his own spleen, called me a fucking imbecile and said adamantly, I’ll get the field recording.”

What happened next would enter into the annals of rock history. One night, Jacque, who’d gotten Rene, Louis and himself high on whiskey nutmeg shots, managed to persuade his band mates to join him breaking into the studio armed with enough firewood to reduce Notre Dam De Paris to ashes. The hair brain plan had them construct a makeshift campfire, this was bad enough, but twin it with the fact that they were all experiencing psychoactive hallucinations and matters become desperate. Sure enough catastrophe followed, with their ability to think clearly removed, and proportions skewed, the proposed campfire turned into a fully fledged bonfire that Guy Falkes would have been proud of.

“It was lucky for us that the track was only 3 mins long because that fire soon whipped up six foot flames”, continued Jacque, “and we would have been burned to a crisp otherwise.”  As it was, it was a close call, the boys barely managed to drag themselves out before the whole place was raised to the ground.

“Yeah it was hairy alright, good job I managed to grab the reel to reel on the way out though, because what we’d captured in those three minutes, when our lives were in the balance, was something really special. It had a real edge to it, encapsulating the thrill and fear of being in love. The sound of the fire crackling and popping, and flames rapidly leaping towards us just added to the whole thing.”

The album was one of the Brothers most successful with Jump Into The Fire With Me, making number 1 in 57 countries. Any other artist would have been dropped or severely reprimanded by the record company, but the Stru’del’s were actively encouraged to continue with their unconventional recording demands in order to fuel myths that would create a frenzy of curiosity, boosting record sales.

“It was then that I realised that things had turned a corner”, said Jacque sucking on a frog leg that he’d just pulled from the fridge. It was a corner that would eventually lead down a  creative cul-de-sac and to the Brothers eventual demise. 

It was a slow death however and the albums kept coming, though sales started to decline. “I tried to hold the band together as long as I could but honestly the passion was no longer there. I was under an immense amount of pressure as the songwriter. Everyone expected me to keep following the same recipe for those musical vignettes. Rene and Louis, the record company and the fans all craved more. I was a slave to all of them and the responsibility was taking its toll. I was at friends birthday party one night, I’d had to much to drink, things got out of hand and a group of us started to inhale helium from the party balloons. It was just innocent fun,we laughed so much listening to each other’s high pitched squeaks that I lost control over my bladder.”

What started out as a childish joke soon turned into an disruptive and ultimately unhealthy obsession.  “All I wanted to do was have some fun and release some stress, but I ended up causing havoc.”  What would become the boys final album took an uncharacteristic 6 long months to record due to Jacques symbiotic relationship with helium. “It must have been infuriating, every time they wanted me to lay down a vocal, because I’d inhale a bit of 2HE just before, and instead of my trademark deep velvety tones, they’d get a pint sized munchkin trying to sing through fits of hysterics. I’d literally lose control of my bodily fluids.”

Luc Tutti, producer of the aptly titled final album, “Up Up And Away With The Stru’del Brothers”, was by its release, a nervous wreck. “I was in a bad way,  what with the helium canisters littering the studio, having fights and falling out with the band constantly. I was a lunatic, totally out of control, I think I was making up for not having a proper childhood though, you know?  I just couldn’t help myself. In the end Luc was taking valium everyday, drinking and smoking heavily just to get through the project.”

Luc Tutti would never work again. Shortly after the release of the album his car was found abandoned near the Place de la Concorde bridge, Paris, his body was never recovered.

“Typically, when I got the call from Tutti’s wife that he was missing,presumed dead, I was high on helium yet again, “Shit, I’m really sorry, I squeaked like a demented chipmunk, trying to sound as sincere as I could.”

“Not in a million years did I think that an addiction to helium could have such a devastating effect. I hit rock bottom. Spiralling into even more abuse. Things got so bad with my craving, that I took to swiping party balloons from the tiny hands of kids whose parents had treated them while out in town. I’d scuttle off down a nearby alley and saviour the short but sweet high pitched high it afforded me.”

Eventually, in July 1978,  the inevitable happened, just three days after the release of what would be the final LP, Jacque was rushed to hospital with a collapsed lung, punctured by a blast of helium from a faulty canister. He spent the next two months, in hospital recovering, after which he booked himself into a private clinic for substance abuse. He effectively disappeared from public life and the brothers from other mothers would never record again.

Ron Jonson is a writer and journalist living somewhere in the Midlands. He is the author of Double Decker,, the unofficial biography of Carol Decker, and several unfinished novels, producer of several radio documentaries including The Life And Death Of Nic Treadwell.