Born in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, François Hadji-Lazaro was the product of a mixed cultural background. His father is a Greek Muslim, his mother French and François grew up as the youngest of his parents' many children in a poor working-class neighbourhood. His parents were both cultured, educated people but neither of them were particularly interested in music. François soon bucked that family trend, however, discovering the joys of Bob Dylan and the acoustic guitar and exploring the roots of American folk music via Woodie Guthrie and his mix of blues, country and folk. After mastering the art of "picking" and soaking up the influences of U.S. folk, the young musician branched out in a new direction, investigating other styles of folk music from Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, France and traditional Gypsy culture.

Young François's insatiable musical appetite soon had him trying out a whole new range of instruments such as the violin, the accordion and the transverse flute (a direct result of his Jethro Tull period!) François's musical diversity proved to be a costly hobby, however, and he soon turned to "flogging wine on the side" to pay for his instruments. Avoiding anything that smacked of rock or trendy alternative sounds, François was only interested in traditional music and folk at this time. This musical orientation was almost a question of political conscience in a way – young Monsieur Hadji-Lazaro was not about to get caught up in the vogue for "sons from good homes staging a rock'n'roll rebellion!"

FHL knew no other musicians in these early days so the enterprising young instrumentalist got a bunch of old schoolfriends together and trained them up to accompany him. Meanwhile, François's university studies appeared to be going nowhere so he enrolled on a teacher training course at the "Ecole Normale d’Instituteurs" and scraped together a meagre living through a series of odd jobs. Music remained his main motivation throughout this entire period, however, and he frequently went off to busk the beaches in summer with his mates. By this point each member of the improvised group had mastered three or four instruments each and their sound revolved around a joyous folk mish-mash incorporating everything from traditional Gypsy sounds to the old bourrée from Auvergne.

All was not rosy on the FHL horizon at this stage, however. François was beginning to spend an increasingly large proportion of the band's takings supporting his drink habit. Indeed, at one point he appeared poised at the top of the slippery slope of complete marginality. And then one day a kind old lady in Pigalle offered the band her cellar to rehearse in and his fortunes began to turn around. "While we were rehearsing we were putting our heads together trying to come up with a name," remembers FHL, "And as we were in Pigalle at the time and had ambitions of making it all over the world we felt that with a name like Pigalle – a name that would be as well known in Africa as it is in the Middle East – we'd automatically be seen as an international band!"

While laying the foundations of Pigalle with his old schoolfriends FHL was also busy getting a second outfit together with Eric Blank, a singer who lived next door to him in Paris's Chinatown and Riton, the bass-player from Parabellum. "We decided to call the group Les Garçons Bouchers (the Butcher Boys) because 'garçons' had the connotation of being a bit young and wild and 'butcher' had a rough and violent edge to it. The funny thing is, there were two musicians in the group who'd actually worked as butcher boys – one in Amiens, the other in Troyes."

The combo built up a strong following of fans on the underground scene in Paris thanks to their notoriously loud, aggressive live gigs. Contrary to popular legend, FHL was not actually the Garçons Bouchers's lead singer – it was Eric Blank who howled his distinctive vocals over the top of the group's vibrant accordion and guitars. As their fame spread on the alternative circuit via word-of-mouth, Les Garçons Bouchers went into the studio to record their first single in 1986. La Bière (a raucous ode to the destructive habit of beer-drinking for which Hadji-Lazaro wrote both lyrics and music) became a veritable punk anthem and catapulted the Garçons Bouchers onto the national mainstream overnight. The next step was obviously an album.

"The problem was, we weren't well-known enough to go with a big record company," explains FHL, "There were already a number of alternative labels like Bondage (Beruriers Noirs) around, but the term 'alternative' was a bit ambiguous really because those particular labels were aimed at a very precise public whereas we played this really weird mix which included covers of old chanson classics like Viens voir les musiciens by Les Compagnons de la chanson. We just massacred it in our version – but we actually secretly liked the group at the same time! Anyway, we thought long and hard about things and finally, after a lot of deliberation, we decided the only thing to do was set up our own company. We didn't actually need to invest a lot of cash when we first started out. We just had to list the company officially. As Les Garçons Bouchers had already established a name for themselves we didn't have any trouble finding a studio who were willing to give us the recording sessions on credit and find us a distributor. We put the album out on our own label, "Boucheries Productions" – and as people had already heard of Les Garçons Bouchers it took off immediately!"

Despite their punky image and raucous guitars, Les Garçons Bouchers's musical references were not limited to the Sex Pistols. The group's relentlessly upbeat mix was also powered along by other influences such as UK ska group Madness (c.f. the famous Ska des Garçons Bouchers) and reggae (c.f. the group's hard-hitting anti-apartheid song Noir et blanc). Meanwhile, not content to be the motivating force behind two happening alternative bands, FHL went on to team up with a diverse bunch of musicians (including Manu Chao) and form another underground group, Los Carayos. Los Carayos's albums were released on Boucheries Productions alongside those of other leading lights of the alternative scene such as Les Crab’s (from Lyons), Clarika and Les Chihuahuas.

The French rock scene had stagnated since the early days of Téléphone and Indochine and music fans were more than ready for a breath of fresh air. It was inevitable that the alternative scene should bubble up onto the French mainstream at some point. And in the mid-80s it did just that, shooting up with all the force of an exploding geyser. Pirate radio stations championed the 'alternative' craze while fanzines sprang up across the country and local community associations organised gigs in underground venues. In 1987 Hadji-Lazaro's colourful look (think shaved head, enormous pot belly and braces!) became a regular fixture on cinema screens as French directors including Tavernier, Dayan, Caro & Jeunet, Zidi and Lautner offered him parts in their films. However, despite his growing popularity on the silver screen, FHL was never tempted away from his musical roots.

"Boucheries Productions was going really well and bringing in a fair amount of cash at the time," he recalls, "so that meant that with Les Garçons Bouchers we were able to take a lot longer recording the second album and use a big brass section. We called the album Tome II and used the famous Rembrandt painting, "Le bœuf écorché", on the cover. There was this one track where we played around with a style of music that was absolutely unknown in France at the time. And Le Rap des Garçons Bouchers became a real phenomenon. When I go out to the suburbs these days I still get all these kinds coming up to me and going "Wow! That was you who did that Garçons Bouchers rap thing!"
As the Garçons Bouchers's career took off on the mainstream, FHL put Pigalle on the back burner for a while. But he eventually decided to bring the group out of retirement to record a final swan-song album before wrapping Pigalle up for good. When the album was released on Boucheries Productions, however, it turned out to be an unexpected hit, selling like hotcakes after the chart success of the single Dans la salle du bar-tabac de la rue des Martyrs. After this there was no question of Pigalle retiring from the music scene. On the contrary, boosted by the arrival of several new members, Pigalle set out to conquer the live scene once again, where they immediately attracted their own following of fans (a following quite apart from those who supported the Garçons Boucher).

Meanwhile, Hadji-Lazaro's old friend Manu Chao had been busy rehearsing with his new band, La Mano Negra. Having formed a close connection with Boucheries Productions in his Los Carayos days, Chao chose to record the group's debut album with FHL's label. Within a few weeks the album had exploded onto the French music scene with the force of a Molotov cocktail, catapulting La Mano Negra to overnight fame. "We immediately realised we didn't have anything like the budget to take something like that in hand!"says FHL, "Things snowballed way out of our control. Offers started flooding in from major labels – and we just turned round and told La Mano they had our blessing to go off and sign with a major. That really set a precedent, though, and afterwards a lot of alternative groups went round saying if La Mano did it then so can we. It was at that point that we realised it was going to be tricky for us to hold the fort at Boucheries. We managed to go on and bring out Pigalle's fourth album, Rire et pleurer. And then we did Vacarmélites, a new album by Les Garçons Bouchers that had this cover of a nun with bare breasts illustrated by Roland Topor. But the problem was, the whole alternative movement that Boucheries was part of was in its dying days by then. Les Beruriers Noirs had started wrangling with their own label (Bondage) and other alternative bands were falling like flies. The problem was the major labels stepped in and tried to take over the 'alternative' scene and that immediately killed the market."

As France's alternative scene imploded, Les Garçons Boucher decided to call it a day, releasing their final album Ecoute petit frère (Listen little brother!) in 1995. "That album was basically about explaining to the little brothers and sisters of the fans who'd been following us for years that the time had come to stand back and take stock of things!" says FHL, "It was OK for Pigalle to go on at that point because they reached a much more mixed audience. They didn't have such a strong teenage following, but it was time for Les Garçons Boucher to call it a day! We had no choice in the matter really. I took the whole thing as a bit of a personal defeat really and I started asking myself a lot of questions about where the hell I was going to go from there. I'd already started recording a new album by that point, but I didn't have the strength to go out and set up another company. Besides, by that point, it had become a lot more difficult to do that. By that stage of things companies were swallowing each other up and the only aim was to get bigger and bigger. I mean, take a look around you today, there's an extremely limited choice!"

Hadji-Lazaro went on to record an album with French illustrator Roland Topor, but his career with the Butcher Boys was well and truly over. As for his new solo album, it looked doomed to remain in master-tape form in the studio until a chance meeting with Universal boss Pascal Nègre. "It just so happened that right at that moment we were in discussions with Universal negotiating the rights to Clarika," explains FHL, "and Pascal Nègre turned round and said: 'I don't see any reason why we shouldn't release François Hadji-Lazaro's albums as well. That way what he's done already won't be lost! What was really essential to me right then was being able to go on making records. So we cut a deal and that's why the whole back catalogue of Pigalle and Les Garçons Bouchers is being re-released right now – and Et si que… ?, the album I'd already started work on, has come out to. One of the best things about recording an album on my own this time round was being able to mix in all these different influences. There are bits on the new album which come from my Garçons Bouchers days and other direct influences from Pigalle and Les Carayos - and there's other bits where I indulge myself with jokey but at the same time pretty caustic lyrics. I really let myself go on this album and did exactly what I wanted to! Believe me, there's something for everyone on this album – there's everything from Cajun, Gypsy and Yiddish sounds to traditional music from Cap Verde!"

Infused with colourful eclecticism and Hadji-Lazaro's performance on an impressively wide range of instruments, Et si que… ? still thrills with FHL's Utopian views and wildly corrosive poetry. Like his favourite wines, this is one rock epicurean who just keeps getting better with age!

Gérard Bar-David

Homepage picture Pierre René-Worms

-FRANÇOIS HADJI-LAZARO : Et si que… ? Island France (dist. Universal)