Thanks so much to Jean-François Champollion for the interview! I wrote about The Border Boys, the band he started in the 80s with Louis Philippe and who released one wonderful 12″ titled “Tribute” and then another CD under the name The Arcadians. I was always thrilled by their music and hoped to get more details about the band and their releases. Happily Jean-François got in touch and was keen in answering my questions! Hope you all enjoy this interview!
++ Hi Jean-François! Thanks so much for being up for this interview! How are you? Are you still involved with music?
Thanks for having me! I’m just great, thanks! Yes, I’m very much involved with music! I have 5 gigs lined up as we speak, all on the French Riviera!
++ I am hoping to chat about the first period of The Border Boys, maybe afterwards we could do an interview about The Arcadians, which I understand is essentially the same band with an expanded lineup, is that right?
Well I guess we will chat about the Border Boys mostly, since the Arcadians were an artificial creation for the Let’s Pretend album. I discovered that band’s name when I saw the CD!
++ Let’s go back in time. What are your first music memories? Do you remember what your first instrument was? How did you learn to play it? What sort of music did you listen to at home while growing up?
Hmmm, first music memories, let’s see, let’s go back in time. I guess it was thanks to the radio. There was a programme on France Inter, the state-owned radio, from 8 to 10pm, can’t remember the name. The great thing was that they played a lot of rock from the 60s and 70s, Allman Brothers, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed… The intro to “Sweet Jane”, you know. I could not believe rock music could be so good!
At age 14, my first instrument was a cheap guitar that one of my older brothers got for Christmas. He tried to play it and quit after a couple of days, so I picked it up and did not have a clue as how to play it. Luckily, another brother showed me the basic chords and I picked it up from there. I’m self-taught, really. I tried to copy Chuck Berry, the Stones, Lou Reed… The big break came when I teamed up with another guy who was much more advanced than me. He could play a lot of those great songs and even wrote songs! A wizard! So we played together and that’s when I learnt the “drum-bass-guitar style”, that is, emulate basic bass drum+snare+bass+rhythm guitar!
++ Had you been in other bands before The Border Boys? What about the other band members? Are there any songs recorded by these bands?
Yeah well I followed the standard path, I guess: a band in high school butchering Status Quo, Beatles and Stones numbers. We played the school dance in my final year. I was in a Catholic school and that priest was watching us, he said : “no more than 2 slow numbers”, so we did “Angie” and “Let it be”. I sang because nobody would. No recordings. The band name was “Ball Bearings”.
I then spent a full year in the US as an exchange student in Wisconsin. I bought a red Gibson ES-335 to emulate the great Chuck Berry and played around with high school bands.
Later, I formed another band called “Pôle Sud” (South Pole). We played the famous first unofficial edition of what would become the “Transmusicales” festival in Rennes, one night in a venue packed with 600 drunken Bretons. My first real stage experience! That when I realized I really loved the stage!
The bass player with Marquis de Sade (“Kris Kardiac”) joined us for an encore.
Later, I reunited with my former guitar mentor and we formed a proto new wave band. We played one gig at a Boys Scout event and then I left Rennes to move (back) to Paris.
I spent another full summer in the US, traveling along with my guitar on Greyhound buses, from Boston to Dallas and San Francisco, to Milwaukee and New-York. Fascinating experience and a source for good songs!
I then moved to Plymouth, England. I was miserable at first, so I wrote excellent songs😊. I met a guy who had a “home studio” with a reel-to-reel Akai machine and that is where I learned rudimentary multi-tracking.
Then I was drafted in the army. Conscription, you know. In the end it was great because that’s how I met Philippe Auclair (aka Louis-Philippe – more below).
++ Where were you from originally?
I was born in Paris but the family moved to Britanny (that’s the Western part of France) when I was 4 so I guess I really grew up there, in the city of Rennes, which became a hub for new wave bands in the late 70s (such as “Marquis de Sade”).
++ How was Paris at the time of The Border Boys? Were there any bands that you liked? Were there any good record stores? Or what about the pubs or venues to go check out up and coming bands?
Ah well, we are talking early 80s. Social unrest, punks, skinheads, new-wave posers, post-hippies, reggae, urban violence, high unemployment, great record stores (“Nuggets”, “FNAC”), great music stores in Pigalle where I would spend whole afternoons trying guitars I could not afford. As to venues, the place to be was le “Gibus” where all new bands (local and foreign, mostly from the UK) would perform. No music in pubs, actually no pubs but cafés, you know. We had some squatted houses and warehouses where there would be wild parties, à la Factory.
++ Were there any other good bands in your area?
Oh, yeah, French punk and new wave bands, quite a few, copying music from England mostly, but with a local flair (Bérurier Noir, Pigalle, La Mano Negra, Warum Joe, Lily Drop…).
++ How was the band put together? How did you and Louis Philippe know each other?
Ah well as I was saying, in the army I met those bright kids from the best state universities and they told me they knew that bloke Philippe who wrote songs. So, when I was discharged in 1982 I met Philippe and we started working together on his songs, and ultimately formed The Border Boys when we got signed.
To make a long story short I had purchased a Tascam 4-track cassette multitrack machine. A true revolution! At last you could record a proper demo and not spend a fortune in a real studio!
++ What instruments did each of you play in the band?
Philippe kind of played bass and I played the guitar for the first demos, and programmed a very basic drum machine. After our first EP came out, we decided we needed a rhythm section to play live. That’s when Jacques Delorenzi joined on bass. Then Philippe David on drums.
++ How was the creative process for you? Where did you usually practice?
Creative process? Very simple: Philippe wrote the songs, then we would do demos on the 4-track machine, so I suppose I gave some input for the arrangements, but Philippe pretty much knew what he wanted from the start. We rehearsed very rarely.
++ What was the inspiration for your songs?
You’ll need to ask Philippe.
++ What’s the story behind the band’s name?
2 French guys signed by a Belgium label and singing on English = Border (Boys).
++ As The Border Boys you released one record and it was called “Tribute”. This name has always been an enigma for me. Was it actually a tribute in some sort? Or what’s the reason behind that name?
That’s a great question and to be honest I don’t remember clearly. I’m not sure who decided on the name, Philippe, the label, was I even involved? But yeah, a tribute to the great songwriters who inspired Philippe, I guess.
++ The record came out on the Belgian label Les Disques Du Crépuscule, a legendary label now. How did this relationship happen? Did you send a demo to them? They reached out? And how was working with them?
When we finished the first demos with about 5-6 songs, Philippe gave it to an aspiring journalist (and friend of his) who worked for the biggest rock magazine in France (“Rock n’ Folk”), who in turn gave it to Michel Duval, the head of Les Disques du Crépuscule. Legend has it that he listened to it on his car radio, was not impressed, but his wife told him that he should sign us instead of those dark esoteric English bands! So maybe the Border Boys own a huge debt to the wife!
One day Philippe comes to my place, very excited, and says: “We are signed! We are going to record in Brussels!” And I say: “Who’s “we”? He replied: “You and me”. Wow. It was a dream.
However, we never signed a proper contract (well at least I did not). But true enough, 2 months later we were booked in a big studio in Brussels to record the 4 songs for “Tribute”.
++ Them being in Belgium, you being in France, quite close, did you meet with them in person? Maybe ended up traveling to Belgium?
Not very much. I remember seeing Michel Duval a couple times, and then a young woman doing PR. We exchanged a couple letters.
++ The record has a sleeve that for me is quite iconic, a Mickey Mouse who looks surprised listening to an old radio. An illustration by A. Pepermans. Did you request this illustration? Did you art direct it? Or was it all done on the label side? And how do you like it?
The label did it all, we had no say in the matter (unless Philippe did, but never mentioned it to me). I quite like it, actually!
++ The 12″ record had four songs, all of them produced by Andy Paley who had previously produced The Ramones and The Modern Lovers. How was that experience working with him? What did he bring to the songs?
Fantastic! I learned more during those 2 sessions than for years before (and after). We had limited time booked in the studio (2 days to record and 1 to mix). Andy was working during the day on a Plastic Bertrand single (for which he borrowed my guitar to overdub a solo) and would come in the evening, say 7 pm and we worked until 2 am approx.
Now listen to this, that’s what you call great production: The label had hired a session drummer, who was technically very good was not suited to our style. We ran through the songs with him a couple of hours, with Andy watching. At one point he told the drummer: “Hey man you’re great, but you see those 2 guys from France, they’re really punks (i.e. they can’t play) and you’re far too good for them. So let’s not waste precious time, this is your money, thanks and have a nice day”.
Andy sat behind the drums and started pounding away. We did approx. 3 takes for the 2 poppy songs (“Sorry”, “This picture is nailed in my heart”), another did not really have drums (“When will you be back”) and the last (”When the party is over”) was recorded live, Andy on bass and bass drum, me on Spanish guitar and Philippe on vocals, sometime around 2 am.
Andy taught me pragmatism; get the job done with the time/budget you have, do not hesitate to disrupt your habits.
++ One thing that I am curious about is that I read that you engineered and played on The Border Boys’ first demos. Are these demos the same songs that appeared on the record? Are they other songs? Were they released in any form, maybe as cassette tapes to be sent to radio, labels, etc? Is the song “My Kind of Girl” from this period?
I engineered all the demos that eventually were featured on “Tribute” and “Let’s Pretend”. I engineered others, and Philippe did some more on his own after we split. I lost track of what he published. I understand he published an album with a lot of the I engineered demos like “Mad, mad world”, “Let’s fall in love again”, the sound was not too good since it was done on a 4-track cassette with Dolby-B. You can hear my guitar on those demos.
The song “My Kind of Girl” is the only song we recorded as an extended band (same studio in Brussels) that made it to the “Let’s Pretend” album under the name The Arcadians. You can hear a clear difference in sound quality, it was recorded on a 16-track Tascam recorder by Marc François. The guitar solo is me on a Gibson ES175. I remember the piano player telling me some of my notes were “wrong” (i.e. out of scale) but I stood my ground, of course they were “wrong” that was on purpose!
++ Care telling me a little bit about these demos, where were they recorded, did you produce the songs? Do you remember the names of all these songs? Any favourites that you think should have been released in some form?
Oh well, the first demos were recorded in my room in Paris. Then we spent a week at Philippe’s family property in Normandy (his father was a gentleman-farmer producing… apples) and we recorded in a cold storage space for apples.
We also went to les Vosges (eastern France) together with Jacques Delorenzi (bass) to record some of the songs that came out on some Japanese labels (see links below). It was very productive, just the 3 of us recording as friends, drinking excellent wines.
Later, I bought a 4-track reel-to-reel Tascam machine and a nice desk and we recorded more demos in an abbey in Saint Germain near Paris. We were drifting towards a more pop-rock style and I guess that’s when Philippe (or the label) decided to stop our collaboration. I suppose I have cassettes somewhere, I’m not sure…
You can check this:
https://www.discogs.com/ja/release/2847308-Louis-Philippe-I-Still-Believe-In-You
https://www.discogs.com/master/438910-The-Arcadians-Mad-Mad-World
… although it does not give much information.
++ Your songs also traveled, appearing in a few compilations, most interestingly in Japan. I suppose this was the label’s work, but I do wonder, as many 80s bands got quite a following in that country, what’s your take on it? Maybe that’s where your biggest or one of your biggest fanbase is?
Ah, Japan. Well it happened after the band split, and the label kind of folded and sold/licensed the masters to whoever in Japan. I did not even know that was happening, did not know we were part of a Japanese craze about “poetic” pop from Europe, did not get any money or credits or whatever. I did not really care, to be honest. This is corporate stuff you know, licensing abroad…
++ Aside from the early demos that I asked about, and the 12″ are there more songs recorded by this first period of The Border Boys?
No, not really. Philippe completed some demos we recorded in the abbey and maybe some ended up on some record, I don’t really know anything about that.
++ My favourite song of yours is “This Picture is Nailed on My Heart”, wondering if you could tell me what inspired this song? What’s the story behind it?
You have to ask Philippe.
++ If you were to choose your favorite The Border Boys song, which one would that be and why?
I loved them all, and particularly all those we recorded as a full band during the second session in Brussels. I really thought we had something there. But it wasn’t to be, Philippe did not feel comfortable as the leader of a pop band.
++ What about gigs? Did you play many?
Oh no… we played a gig in Paris to promote “Tribute” and it was a bit of a disaster, and another in Brussels in a restaurant. Like I said, Philippe was not comfortable on stage.
++ And what were the best gigs that you remember? Any anecdotes you can share?
I can’t, since we were not a live band at all!
++ When and why did The Border Boys stop making music? Were any of you involved in any other projects afterwards?
Not sure about the timing. Must have been summer of 85. There was no real split, we just drifted apart… Philippe was lured by El Records to become a solo artist in England, did not tell anyone, last thing I know he was recording his songs in the UK. There was no discussion, no reasons given, no parting of ways… a bit sad, really.
I suppose the real reason was our musical differences. Philippe loved pop with harmonies (Beach Boys…) and I was (and still am) more into rock. My true influences besides classic rock are The Kinks, The Clash from “London Calling” onwards, Elvis Costello, The Undertones… and I love performing live.
Since then, Jacques Delorenzi has been playing with various bands, such as The Carts, they very close to signing with Virgin, but they wanted them to sing in French, however the singer only sang in English.
A bit disgusted, in the 90s I formed a rock n’ roll band to play live, something I missed during the Border Boys. We recorded a couple albums that we sold at gigs, you know. Fast forward to 2005 when I decided at last to be a front man/singer and started recording and performing my songs, which I still do to this day, under my name (“champollion”, see below).
Since 2009 I decided to go the extra mile , and created an indie label (“Routes Productions”). I have been organizing festivals, I have produced numerous artists and albums and I regularly work with different bands etc.
My latest project is the setting up of a new label (“La Vida Music”) together with my partner Anabel.
++ Was there any interest from the radio? TV?
Nope as far as I know.
++ What about the press? Did they give you any attention?
“Tribute” was reviewed in Rock n’ Folk, only because we had that friend in the magazine. That’s all I know! Japan, maybe?
++ What about fanzines?
Probably in Japan, I wouldn’t know.
++ Looking back in retrospect, what would you say was the biggest highlight for the band?
Recording in a professional studio and seeing your record in a record store!
++ Aside from music, what other hobbies do you have?
Football (soccer, particularly the English Premier League), cooking, reading, traveling, meeting new people…
++ I’ve been to Paris a couple of times, but I still would love to ask a local. What do you suggest checking out in your town, like what are the sights one shouldn’t miss? Or the traditional food or drinks that you love that I should try?
I am a true Parisian and the only advice I can give you is to walk, walk and walk. There are 20 districts in Paris, walk one district per day and just keep your head high and your eyes wide open. So many things to see!
++ Anything else you’d like to add?
Well if you want to listen to my songs, here are a few useful links:
YouTube:
“Dream” (English)
“Gray-blue-eyes” (English)
“L’égyptien” (French)
“Seul” (French)
“My house” (English)
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