We would say today that Bernard Lenoir has been the most important influencer in France, if not in Europe, for indie rock music in the 90’s. He is known as the “French John Peel”. But for us he was just Bernard Lenoir.
Bernard Lenoir was the lead presenter and radio host for both a fantastic show on France Inter, one of the most important radio stations, and the “Black Sessions”, live sessions that were a competitor to the Peel Sessions. See https://blacksession.fr/pres.php for a full list of these fantastic concerts.
Pale Saints, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride, Catherine Wheel, these are the first songs played in a 1992 show I just picked up by chance and am listening to now. Wow. See https://www.lerocklesoir.com/jeudi-26-mars-1992-bernard-lenoir-pas-dinvite
To put this in context: except The Cure, we did not have access to most indie rock albums in the 80’s, not even mentioning the EPs. Even The Jesus & Mary Chain “Psychocandy” was an import from the UK, costing literally three times more than a normal CD. Vinyl was dying, so finding indie rock vinyl records was even more difficult, almost impossible. And if you didn’t live in Paris, it was worse.
So I was flying to the UK to visit my parents’ friends and do CD shopping there, a nirvana. Limited edition EPs, affordable second-hand indie rock albums… record stores were flooded when it was a dry season in France. Fnac, a major French record store chain, did improve things a bit from the end of the 80’s, and then more in the early 90’s. But Bernard Lenoir always had first access to new EPs and albums that still had little or no distribution. So we were… recording the radio show on cassette tapes to build our own indie rock compilations. Crazy scarce times.
Another thing was the lack of access to video clips and magazines. Only Les Inrockuptibles provided great visuals of our favorite bands. So when we were lucky enough to get tickets to the concerts of Ride, The House of Love, Moose, The Boo Radleys or even Blur (400 people crowd on the first album tour), it was a full discovery, the music, the clothes, the style, the speech, the feeling.
Bernard Lenoir gave us access to the intimacy of the record world, the behind-the-scenes we couldn’t reach, with guests we couldn’t dream of hearing, bands we deeply cherished.
Without this window into indie rock, we would have been, and remained, 95% blind and deaf. That’s how important Bernard Lenoir has been.
Bernard Lenoir is now enjoying a happy retirement in Biarritz, fully deserved. There is a recent documentary, still very confidential in its distribution, but hopefully it will reach a wider audience soon. Can’t wait to hear news again from this major figure of rock.
