A Bite of Lizzy Mercier Descloux 🍪
The best musician you've never heard of
Monday Bites are bite-sized musician spotlights & playlists by Grace Lilly.
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Lizzy who?
If you’ve never heard of French music pioneer Lizzy Mercier Descloux, you’re not alone. She’s strangely unknown for how important she was to music history.
Some people think of her as the French Patti Smith, some remember her running the punk institution Harry Cover in Paris, and some exalt her for her role in starting the worldbeat music movement (fans of Paul Simon’s Graceland will note that her 1984 album Zulu Rock came two years before his and they sound uncannily similar…).
Of all the fascinating things about Lizzy, my favorite is that she loved to write and used to run an independent music publication. It was in black and white and without ads. Sound familiar? 🥰
She explained, “At the time, there were a lot of things in France that people weren’t talking a lot about, so I said to myself, ‘Well I for one have had enough of reading about the same things.’ I wanted to write about what I liked myself, so I wrote about them.”
Here at This Song Changed My Life, that’s what I’m trying to do too. To share a more personal, intimate perspective on music-loving, to write about people and things that make my heart swoon — like Lizzy. I like to think that if she were still with us, she would dig what we’re doing here together.
Lizzy Mercier Descloux
The basics
🤝 French musician, singer-songwriter & composer
🤝 b. 1956 (Paris, France) - 2004 (Saint-Florent, France)
🤝 One of the first musical artists to play with the concept of “World Music,” fused African rhythms with R&B and pop
Why you should know her: Considered the ultimate muse of the New York rock scene in the late ‘70s, a visionary who broke boundaries as a pioneer of No wave music
If you like
✨ Paul Simon
✨ Patti Smith
✨ Vampire Weekend
Known for
🏆 Funky dance grooves, unconventional harmonies, joyous and spirited sounds
🏆 Gravitating towards multiple genres from all around the world
🏆 Her unique voice, powerful and ever-changing androgynous image, her exuberant live performances
🏆 Collaborating with icons like Patti Smith and Chet Baker
🏆 Recording at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas while Grace Jones made Nightclubbing next door
🏆 A key figure in the No wave movement
Bite-sized facts
🍪 Grew up in Lyon, France but spent her teens in Paris going art school
🍪 Ran the famous store Harry Cover and the magazine Rock News with her partner Michel Esteban
Harry Cover
💥 Legendary Parisian shop, opened in 1972, name is a pun on “haricots verts”
💥 Specialized in rock merch from the US and UK; local bands rehearsed in the basement
💥 Became a temple of the punk movement in France
💥 18-year-old Lizzy lived across the street, store-owner Michel Esteban spotted her on the balcony, left a note tied to her bike, and she came into his shop
💥 Lizzy and Esteban fell in love and she dropped out of L’Ecole des Beaux Arts after feeling disillusioned with art school
Rock News
🎸 In 1976, Lizzy and Esteban founded Rock News
🎸 Monthly publication that covered the birth of the punk rock movement in London, New York, and Paris
🎸 Lizzy decides to move to New York and make her own music after visiting the city on assignment
🎸 Shared a Soho loft with Patti Smith, taught herself guitar, embraced her amateur aesthetic
🍪 Formed a performance art duo called Rosa Yemen, released a self-titled mini-album in 1978
🍪 Published a book of poetry with Patti Smith and Richard Hell called Desiderata
🍪 Played “all the clubs in New York” after releasing her first solo album
🍪 A passionate fan of traditional African music, collaborated with South Africa’s Soweto musicians for her album Zulu Rock
🍪 Started painting towards the end of her life, spent her last days on the island of Corsica after being diagnosed with cancer at 46, determined not to die in a hospital
🍪 Her wake took place in CBGBs, organized by Richard Hell
Songs & dates
♫ 1979 Releases “Fire” as the lead single off her 1st solo album, Press Color, receives some critical acclaim, called “the real thing” by Uncut magazine
♫ 1981 Releases Mambo Nassau, considered her greatest record, an “uncontainable masterpiece”
♫ 1984 Her single “Mais où Sont Passées les Gazelles?” becomes a hit in France, influenced by the music of Soweto
♫ 1986 Makes One for the Soul in Brazil with the jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, regarded as one of her strongest works
She said
⭐ “Once I found myself with a guitar in my hands it was inevitable—I was committed to singing [...] It’s easier for me to convey something in song than in writing.”
On songwriting:
⭐ “Right now I’m not at all a writer of words. I’m using the words completely for what they sound like, how they fit with the rhythms. I’m not interested in writing a love song, or a political statement about what’s happening with Ireland, like people are gonna listen to my lyrics and it’s gonna change the youth of the world… What’s beautiful is that I don’t speak perfect English but I can get lost in the dictionary and just discover the words.”
We love Lizzy
💗 Patti Smith projected Lizzy’s name and dates of her life “1956-2004” during her concert on July 8, 2004 in Paris and dedicated her song “Easter” to Lizzy
💗 She was a “one-of-a-kind catalyst, enabling creative forces to blossom without any preconceived ideas.” -French synthesizer giant Wally Badarou
💗 “Lizzy never thought she had something to prove. I don’t think she was ambitious in the pejorative sense. She didn’t have that big ego to become a superstar.” -Michel Esteban
My Lizzy Mercier Descloux Playlist
I gathered my fav Lizzy songs, from me to you with love. Like & save on Spotify and listen all week 💗
Where to start
On French TV
Lizzy performing her single “Fire” in 1979
〰️
A rare video
One of the only videos of her playing live with a band
〰️
Down the rabbit hole
If you wanna dive even deeper:
The Blank Generation (1976)
See Lizzy in what is considered to be one of the most important cinematic documents of the 1970s New York punk/new wave movement. Filmed live at CBGB’s, featuring performances by Patti Smith, Blondie, the Ramones, Talking Heads, and more. Watch on Youtube.
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Fanastic summary of Lizzy! Never heard of the Blank Generation, will be digging into that :)
You just taught me something new today!!