THE BARON OF ESTARDY AND HIS SECRET FORMULA

What an emotionnal moment ! We stand in front of the mythical CBE studio, immortalized on the back cover of La Formule Du Baron. So many years walking by, without knowing, that inside, “The Baron” was recording, creating and producing for the crème de la crème of french variety: Gerard Manset, Johnny Hallyday, Francoise Hardy, Michel Sardou, Claude Francois… the list goes on. All these people asked for the sound engineer talents of Bernard Estardy. But here at french attack, it’s not exactly that side of him we would like to explore. Mr Estardy was the organist on Nino’s Ferrer’s Metronomie and “Le Sud”, he was one of the main men behind the cult library music labels, Telemusic, and creator of La Formule Du Baron, a devastating concept album full of ideas and groove, created in his own sound chemistry’s lair. He’s all of that and a lot more.
When we enter the studio, nothing has changed, well… except maybe the nice nude nymphs that charmed us on the original album gatefold cover! Same layout, same vintage wooden wall and confortable sofa, some added material (sequencers and samplers have appeared, replacing flasks and elixirs)… and Mister Estardy, a collossal quietly sitting on his chair, and always on the edge: “I just thought of an old track, note for note that I would have liked to have written back in the day. It will be ragga!”. The Baron never sleeps. The tape recorder is on play:

First of all, are you really a Baron ?
It’s just for fun. But because I always called myself that way, I began to believe it myself! I’m gonna tell you where it came from: I used to do some boat racing when I was fourteen, on a lake in the french Alps. There was this good ol’ jerk who used to talk silly on a mic to embellish the whole thing… and he said “You see at the top of the hill? That’s the castle of Méouilles, and there are the Mécailles caves blah blah blah …” and about the former barons of Méouilles who were very mean… so I went to see the old papers in the library and discovered that the baron claimed the right to ride his horse in the church. So I claimed I was a baron… and I ride my horse in the church!

Ahhh OK. Because on the Dare-Dare web site (the french label which reissued La Formule Du Baron), they put the record liner’s note where it’s write you’re a real baron
Yes but it’s just a cover, they just coped the text you find on the record. Anyway I practically never saw them.

They dealed directly with the former label for the reissue?
Not at all. I gave them the master tape which still exists, it’s here on the studio – he begin to search for it but unfortunately for the French Attack collector addicts, didn’t find it – and we wrote to Sony CBS (the Baron’s former record label) for the rights but they never answered.

They gave you money for it ?
Not at all. I did it for fun and will grab royalties if we sell any. It’s funny, I like the fact that there are a few hundred people out there, that are still interested in this record.

How did you start the music ?
I began at the age of 13. My mother was a lyrical singer and gave me some classical piano basics. I learnt two Chopin pieces, then I quickly gave up. At 14 there were jazz cats who used to meet in my living room, my parents were pretty rich. We met every sunday to play a thing called jazz. The musicians were; Pierre Alain Dahan (famous drummer on the library music labels IM and Telemusic), Henry Texier (double bass player, famous in the rare groove scene for his superb jazz scat album Varech), Jean Luc Ponty, who didn’t play violin at the time but was a great tenor sax player, and organist Eddie Louis. Then me who played piano like a pig. But everybody liked to play, and I learned from these guys. I was totally autodidact at the time, we played in clubs, most of the time we weren’t even paid.

How did you start your professionnal carreer?
I met Nino Ferrer at college. We ended up playing for Nancy Sinatra and it started like that, even if I still played like a pig. Then at 18 I played for Bill Coleman.

You can’t play for Bill Coleman and play like a pig
I didn’t play well but I swang, I knew the harmonies. I toured a couple of years with him. I learnt the whole jazz repertoire but I still played like a pig… even now (laugh). The main difference is now I can correct. Let me tell you something very pretentious… The greatest pianist of all time is called Arthur Bernstein, he stated in an interview once, that he never knew how to play the piano, he learnt by playing live. He said it was at the end of his life that he began to play well. I hope that in a year or two I will begin to play well!

How did you come to be the most in-demand sound engineer of the french pop stars?
It’s very simple. I built this studio (CBE studio), which wasn’t really a studio, to write my own songs with my partner of the time, Georges Chatelain. He built the business with 60000 Francs (10000$), I didn’t have anything, I payed him back later, with my work in the studio. It was so crap and unlike other studios, that we only had a few customers in the beginning, like Gerard Manset (the mythical Animal On Est Mal…) with the craziness that came with him . At that time I wasn’t doing the sound, I just painted and decorated the place, took care of the all the paperwork. It turned out that I found a sound engineer in Switzerland, Gunther Loof, who was a real genius at building studios. We built our first lamp consol in the cellar… Then we did our first recordings, above all with Johnny Halliday who recorded “Que Je t’aime”, but it was very rudimentary.

So you became a sound engineer only after you had built your own studio?
No, no, at 14 I was already building my own 9.5 tape recorders, which still work today. I dubbed voices… ‘a la Beatles’, I overdubbed voices. I already wanted to multiply the tracks. But I did it horizontally, then as a pro I did it vertically. I always wanted to do that and as it worked straight away I gave up on my carreer as a public works engineer.

You had some strong friendship in the scene ? Who were the musicians you work with most often?
I did 99% of my sessions with Jean Claude Petit, for whom I have total admiration. I learnt everything then: transforming shit into gold.

André Ceccarelli ?
I know him very well. But I didn’t really like doing sessions with him. His game is, how can I put it… too complete. He’s a jazz drummer and people wanted things that were more “aired”, like poum tchac, very simple. He was always “filled up”. But watch out! I’m only talking about his work on my sessions.

Coming back to Nino Ferrer, one of our favorite french album is Metronomie
Ahhh yeahhh, that’s great. A sublime album. Like I said before I met him in school, he was still an archeologist. He played the bass very well, and we both ended up playing with Nancy Sinatra, him on bass and me on piano. He told me he had a record project and we recorded it on a 4-track. From there he signed with Barclay. We toured France and things started to work really well. It was at that time he wrote “Mirza”, which was a shameless remake from a standard of the time . On that record I played an excellent organ solo, without really meaning to, I would be incapable of playing it again. Listen carefully to the chorus after: I’m so happy that at one moment that I bark! It’s a crazy shit. If you did that now, you would be fired.

It’s the same thing on « La Gigouille » in «La Formule Du Baron » ? In the rhythm there is a kind of shout.
Yes that was me. I was alone. It is my secretary that did the backing on the last track! But everything came from the guts, if you listen again in detail, it’s not very professional. But it kind of feeds happiness, a lot more than the light and sophisticated stuff we do now. When I listen to the brass of Pierre Dutour, it sounds great, even now – Fisherman Price and Bernard Estardy start to imitate the brass section, to their immense pleasure – I shout yeahhhh on the record, I shout on the piano!

That’s exactly what gives it its charm, the artisanal side of it…
Yeah that’s right. But I already had the studio experience to cope with that. Cause I’ve heard a lot of bad players in my carreer… Coming back to Nino Ferrer, I have to say this guy was very moody. Rest in peace Nino, but this guy was impossible, I practicaly made “Le Sud” in spite of him. When we recorded “La Maison Près De La Fontaine”, he was at the other side of the studio, we had a row. I was on the organ and we definitly did not want to hear each other! If you listen carefully you can hear the hatred and tension between us (laugh). But that’s the way we made good tracks together. I don’t know any hits were everything went well, there’s always a technical problem or a guy that plays bad. You just have to cope with it, like The Beatles. It’s accidents which make hits. But now, people don’t take risks. Take René Joly’s “Chimène”: when we listened to the master tape for the first time with Gerard Manset, we found it so dull. So we phased everything, we invented phasing with two tape recorders.

For the uneducated like me, how does a phasing work (phasing is the echo effect or reverberation on the drums, very fashionable during the 70s)?
Well.. you do a mix which you record on two tape recorders, and with a pencil you press on the tape to shift the phase, then you add the two together, and the result is that sound effect. We invented it. It didn’t exist before. You had to do it by hand.

There is also Pierre Dutour in Metronomie, to whom you pay hommage in one of the track from your album (the track called “Monsieur Dutour”)?
Yes, but I would prefer not to talk about him. He was one of my best friends, I let him play on almost all of my recordings. Then one day he played the trumpet on what has became a hit (“Mademoiselle Chante Le Blues” by Patricia Kass, a french variety hit from the 80/90s) and then he prosecutes me and my record company claiming royalties. He never ask for anything and the day that things work he sues me! He won and I lost 200 000 francs (about 30 000$). So let’s not talk about Pierre Dutour. But you can write about him! That’s what I hate about the industry today, the commercial side of it. Nobody does anything for free.

Are there any artists who inspired you, or did your secret formula stand on its own ?
La Formule Du Baron, it’s a mix of all the rhythmics I wanted to hear, those that were always on the B-side or hidden on the albums. The only one who really inspired me was Mort Schuman. With the melody… the whole jewish folkloric sound, it brought me a lot. People have to understand that my album -La Formule Du Baron-, was really just for fun, to fill the lunch hour. The second I had an idea I made it work. Well of course there are arrangements, Herve Roy’s guitar… but it’s not that aspect I love the most.

The surprising thing is that you never made a soundtrack
No, it was my dream but I never had the opportunity. Jean Claude Petit did it because, at that time, the industry no longer wanted him for different reasons. So he recycled himself into that. You also need a lot of contacts to lauch yourself into that area. I would have had to stop everything I was doing at the time. Also I’m not really a musician, you need to know how to write music. Then you need a big studio to do a soundtrack, here it’s good but only for songs. If you do synthetic strings for a soundtracks, it sounds really bad, like a cheap TV show, especially on dolby stereo. You need real strings.

Tell us about your use of electronics and your CBE studio, innovative for the time ?
I’ve always used electronics. When the synthetisers arrived I bought that thing – he points to a keyboard – a Korg 3003, that has no memory but which is a great keyboard. So I used that, with a few very simple machines, and I worked like that during 15 years. The only difference was for La Formule Du Baron, for that the arrangements were done by someone else. They are real strings. Beside that everything come from in there, the bass, the strings… I didn’t use samplers, but I managed to reproduce the cello. That was natural, I had people everyday playing in the studio. I knew the sound of a cello and what a strings section sounded like. That allowed me to synthesise those sounds, just about, but it was often a success. When the guys came to record I always added my touch. Claude Francois always wanted organs and marracas. It was his thing. I hold a deep friendship for him, one of the only ones. He was the only one, along with Dalida and Julien Clerc, to need only one take. But even in those situations, I always needed more than one take. I’ve always been a terrorist on the vocals. Vocals are my speciality. When I hear my stuff on the radio, I know that I didn’t get it wrong.
I did a record with Lee Hazelwood, Nancy Sinatra’s album. He told me that there was a multi tracks Melotron in LA, in a studio called Recorder A-Tracks, at the foot of Capitol Tower, and that needed to get myself one.

Because at that time you didn’t know the Melotron ?
Yes I did, but not the multi track virsion. So I went to LA and the guy from the studio explained that it had a natural echo chamber, an amazing thing. So I took my new swing tape, took all the measures. It was made of concrete, and I recreated exactly the same room in the building next to the studio, one block from here. It’s wired through the cellers. So that’s it, as far as I’m concerned, there is only one voice that works, the natural voice, and it allowed me to overtake a lot of things on voice, things that I couldn’t do just with this studio.

So we can say that your studio was cutting edge?
Not cutting edge, but when others were using 2 tracks I was on 3. When they were on 4 I was on 8 and so on up to 32 tracks, because above that I believe there’s not much use. If you can’t succeed with a 32 track, there must be a problem. Technology just makes things more perfect, but I don’t like it like that.

However a lot of the most creative artists of the moment are returning to vintage instruments…
Of course, we’ve getting back to the basics. What can you do with something digital… you give it soul and it gives you nothing back! It gives you back a sterilized, clinical thing. At 14, I had my 9.5 tape recorder, I bought a cristal microphone for 20 francs (3$), a great sound, my piano’s got a massive sound. Then one day I said to myself it’s about time I buy something “better”. I bought a micro dynamic tape melodium… and I had no more sound at all! But I never went back to the cristal microphone. So the day you use digital you will never go back to analogue. Morality of the story? I will never go digital!
I work with a young fellow that does everything by computer. He asked me one day how I could cut bars? I told him that I cut the tape with scissors! It’s another culture. He wouldn’t dare do it. With computers nothing is final. There is always the “Undo” key. You can always mess about. I’m not allowed to do that, if I cut it has to be the good one. I’ve always taken risks.

When did you start using samples ?
When I started to get bored of musicians (laugh) It was during the Bermard Menez record “Jolie Poupée”. I booked the rhythm section for two sessions, from 9 to 4. At 12 they told me they had a radio advert to do that the afternoon and that they couldn’t come . So I told them to go f*** themselves. I had bought some gear, I plugged it in and I didn’t even know how it worked…After that I never looked back. It was then that I started buying samplers.

Tell us about your sound libraries sessions, especially Telemusic, with guys like Guy Pedersen, Raymond Guiot, Pierre Alain Dahan… We feel so much creativity and craziness getting free from these sessions….
Absolutly. Roger Tokarz, who ran Telemusic, took me on, one day per month. During that day I would put a reel on and let it turn, I didn’t even engineer the sound, I just sat at the piano with the others and that’s it. That’s what enabled me to live at the time. Between sessions I made jingles, some of which still pay today (“Choisissez bien! Choisissez But!” it’s him. The french readers will understand).

Did you feel that you make music that’s "ahead of its time"?
Not at all. It just came naturally. I’ve always tried to aim at the public and not the media. The difference today is that you have to turn toward the media. The only goal was to make something that would touch the hearts of people. It wasn’t fashion, no tempo or hat that had to be done like that… it was for the people. I never gave into the fashion police, or every time I did, I got it wrong. It wasn’t natural. The only time I did something for me was La Formule Du Baron.

What do you think of the today samples-based, electronic music of today?
I’m a huge fan of techno and rap music. Above all because I don’t know how to do it. I find it extraordinary that we make something out of nothing, just a simple loop. In the street when you hear the “poum tchac” coming from cars, it takes you…

How do you fell about being sampled (Chemical Brothers sampled Estardy on one of their album)?
It’s funny to be sampled. I even got paid once, even though I would have never found it. Personnaly I used a Count Basie sample one time, just a drum part. It’s not reconizable at all but it makes all the difference. It’s a sound that no longer exists. If you put it on a track you hear nothing but that.

ITW led by Bobwall and Fisherman Price
Photos by Fisherman Price

Thanks to DJ Peeer for the connection