The Return Of A Maverick - Part Two

The Return Of A Maverick

By Ron Jonson.

Part Two - Totalitarian Detour

(Published 2nd April - The Bloxwich Slacker)

When Jacque eventually resurfaced, it was 1984. The world had moved on from The Stru’del Brothers. Michael Jackson was the king of pop, Madonna his Queen. “It had took me a long time to get the addiction out of my system. I had relapsed, and my relapse had relapsed as well. Several times in fact. I had to undo everything I thought I was, take a long hard look at who I was, and eventually rewire and reboot myself.

Jacque Stru’del 2.0 released his first solo record titled simply Jacque, in April 1984 on his newly formed, Stru’del Records. The album contained a 50/50 mix of covers and original material. “I’d written a bunch of post drug abuse songs during therapy. Proper self loathing stuff, But one really captured what I was feeling at the time. I called it My Death. The lyrics contained some of my bleakest imagery.

“My death is like an old tin of emulsion / quietly festering in revulsion / a skin of wrinkled dread/ congealing in a lonely shed / My death waits like that mouldy cheese / you left in the fridge when you went off with Steve / in the laughter of hot air / when I’m high I don’t care.”

The album received lukewarm reception, but that didn’t put Jacque off, in September 1985, prior to his next project, Jacque 2, he had an experience which would have a profound effect on him. He was rummaging through the discounted bins in his local record store when he chanced across an imported album, the artwork of which  jumped out immediately, “there is one of those huge tanks on the cover, I think it’s Pegasus-Tiger tank and sitting right at the end of the large gun, which is pointing toward the camera, a single white dove.  The album,  “Peace, Love & Mechanisation”,  is a compilation album of songs by The North Korean People’s Army Band (NKPAB), released in 1984, handpicked by the gracious leader himself, Kim II Sung, it features the very best propaganda pop.

“I purchased the album on the strength of the cover alone, not to mention the evocative titles of the songs. But I just wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of sound that hit me when I listened. It was like, erm, well it was comparable to being strapped into a chair that has a low voltage electric current running through it, while being force fed an endless tube of Swiss roll, while having your ears blasted with a high pressure water washer. It’s beautifully grotesque, contains huge multilayer slabs of unforgiving patriot voices thrust with blustering fervour. There’s no light or shade, the tonal landscape exclusively consists of a thousand gobs simultaneously shouting righteous victory no matter what.. It’s simply astounding. I listened to that album over and over for three weeks, my ears bled, my eyes wept, my heart raced to almost the point of arrest.”

Punch drunk, with his ears severely bashed, Jacque was resolved to bring those songs out to the wider, unsuspecting public if they liked it or not.. In fact he saw it as his moral duty, his destiny.

With the album Jacque 2, he set to work reinterpreting two NKPAB classics, firstly the stalwart, “We Shall Hold Bayonets More Firmly”, a bouncy military march set to a lyric invoking, “Honorable rifles from Anti-Japanese fighters, shining on millions of shoulders.” Having a full male voice choir like the original was out of the question, because as soon as any choir found out the material they were singing, they steadfastly declined.   

“I was forced to take another approach”, admitted Jacque while holding up a copy of the album to the web cam. “If I couldn’t get an adult male voice choir, the next best thing would be to get a boys choir instead and then slow the recording down. Quite an ingenious solution I thought.”  I asked if he’d encountered similar set backs to the adult choirs? “Well you see, we deliberately approached choirs that were, let’s say, lacking in popularity and notoriety, these were far more open to working with an established multi-million selling recording artist like myself. Anyway, it was a good experience for the kids, and I figured, If Pink Floyd could do it, so could I.”

After the choir was in place, Jacque added in the rest of the band along with a killer horn section and his own multi-tracked voice, “I listened back to the recording but there was still something not quite right. It lacked the gut wrenching threat that I’d experienced on the original. So I got one of my technicians to go and record a military marching  drill to get some proper foot stomping sound fx and added it into the mix as loud as possible, and hey presto, I felt my testicles being slowly and reassuringly squeezed.”  

 

Once Jacque had discovered this musical formulae  he applied it to another socialist toe tapper, “Song of the ten-point programme of the association for the restoration of the fatherland”, a tuneful earworm based on a plan written by Kim Il-sung to re-unite North Korea and South Korea.  

Despite the other songs on Jacque 2 being of no real musical significance, the album left long time fans scratching their heads in disbelief. There were however, a growing number of new fans far away who liked the direction he was taking, and who watched his career very carefully.

The following year, Jacque 3 birthed into the world with two more NKPAB ditties standing out like a warts on beauty queen. Taking the form of two monstrous razor toothed sharks swimming in a tranquil sea of dreamy nostalgic easy listening, “Let's go up the embattled hill quickly, carrying ammunition with us” and “Let us sing the new age of automation” both really giving the album a sharp edge.

“I loved the fact that one moment the listener could be steeped  in a melodic ballad drenched with lashings of sentimentality while in the next, they were having the skin seemingly ripped from their faces by a relentless wall of vein throbbing tyranny.”

What many have called the “tipping point” in Jacque’s career occurred in 1986, Unrestrained by the expectations of a record company,  and self producing, he was free to create the art the public didn’t know they wanted.. His efforts culminated in what many critics agree was as his finest and most baffling work, Jacque 4.

“I was approaching a cross-roads in my caaaaaaa-reeeeeer”, he told me as the digital connection between us stuttered. “I was leaving the past behind and embracing the new musical landscape that was opening up to me.” That landscape took the form of mostly new versions of North Korean classics.. 

On, “The young men are lashed with the bloody whips” Jacque sampled the sound of himself flagellating a young studio assistant with a full on bullwhip, in return he promised that he would offer the chap help in making his dreams come true as a budding songwriter. 

For the video of Jacque’s cover of “We Will Safeguard The Leadership Of The Revolution With Desperate Courage”, he employed the services of visionary French animator, René Laloux. Inspired by his 1973 science fiction film, Fantastic Planet, in which giant blue beings called Draags keep poor ant like human Oms as pets, René created a new world where men had merged with machines to create the ultimate fighting weapons. Giant armoured tanks fuelled by the thoughts of hypnotically trained brains, battalions of buttocks capable of firing deadly poisonous gas and nuclear powered noses housed on wheels that shot grenades of radioactive bogeys.

For the album cover, Jacque sported a typical North Korean short back and sides, wore  a  khaki army jacket and cap, and carried a trusty rifle over his shoulder. He safely cradled a young child in his arms and gazed  longingly into the distance.

The album was released to pin dropping silence. It was as if the whole world collectively furrowed their brows and pulled a dissatisfied expression. Album sales slumped. Concert venues cancelled and Jacque had consoled himself to mass uninterest when suddenly out of the blue he received an invitation from none other than the gracious leader himself, Kim II Sung.

It turned out that despite Jacque’s persona non grata everywhere else, in North Korea his star had been rapidly rising since his reinterpretations. In fact when he arrived in Pyongyang in June 1986 his greeting party was something akin to The Beatles flying into New York in 1964. “There were thousands of Koreans all waving banners and French flags. But they were well behaved, no screams or shouts. I guess they’d never experienced pop mania before.”

Jacque was granted diplomatic status, afforded his own personal tour guide and a whole team of security guards. He stayed at the best hotels while touring the country making appearances on popular state TV shows like, “Sing To The Supreme Leader”, “North Korea’s Got Talent” and “Pyongyang Pop”. For most of the tour he sang live to backing tracks and was met with increasingly wilder audiences.

“As the tour went on the audiences began to lose their inhibitions, whooping, shaking their hips and even blowing kisses at Jacque became a regular occurance, which had never been seen before. Everywhere people went there were giant bill boards of me smiling back at them. “

The tour ended with a gala performance at the Kim II Sung stadium in front of the dear leader and fellow dignitaries of the military.  Beamed live via TV into every North Korean home, Jacque had the honour of being joined by the The North Korean People’s  Army Band,  and ended the show with the power ballad, “My Rifle Will Not Forgive”, there was not a dry eye in the place. The country had literally gone Stu’del crazy.

“I couldn’t believe it, it was like a dream come true. I wanted to spend the rest of my life in that place but the next day I was summoned before the leader. I thought he wanted to bestow some great honour on me, there were rumours that I was going to be awarded the Bullet To The City.”.

I was granted a private audience with his graciousness. He told me he had enjoyed the concert, he asked for me to sign his own personal copy of my album, but then frowned and told me in no uncertain terms to leave his country and never return.”

It seemed Jacque had out stayed his short lived Korean fame, Kim II Sung was worried that he was garnering to much of the limelight, and could not allow any competition to get in the way of his leadership of the state.. It was a choice between leaving or risk vanishing in the middle of the night. He was also told that by removing himself he would be saving France from total destruction.

The next day Jacque was on a plane back to Paris, but his problems were only just beginning. When he arrived at passport control at Charles de Gaulle Airport he was refused entry on the grounds that he had been conspiring with foreign terrorists in North Korea and was now deemed a threat to the security of his homeland.”

“I was an outcast, forbidden from my home. Treated like a traitor. I was told that if I tried to return again I would be arrested and charged with, “The singing and performance of songs known to be associated with a regime of dictatorship”, carrying a custodial prison sentence of 25 years.

In July 1986 following world headlines announcing his betrayal of the French nation, Jacque seemingly dropped off the side of the world stage, a decade later would pass before he would continue his musical career.

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.