Belgian singer and musician Arno died on April 23 from pancreatic cancer, his agent told the Belgian press on Saturday.
Diagnosed in November 2019, he had stopped being treated at the start of the year.
"He will be missed by all of us, his family, his friends and his musicians,
" said his agent Filip De Groote.
He will always be with us thanks to the music that kept him alive until the end”.
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Read alsoArno, the singer from Ostend
Arno had been forced to cancel all his concerts in the summer of 2021, following the intensive medical treatment he was undergoing in order to fight against his cancer.
Treated at his home in Brussels, the artist from Ostend was known for his broken voice à la Tom Waits mixed with a Flemish accent, his exuberance and his excesses, had announced in February 2020 to suffer from pancreatic cancer.
"At the beginning of November, my girlfriend told me that I had a yellow complexion,"
he said at the time
.
“I went to my GP and he did a blood test.
Shortly after, I received a phone call.
I had to go to the hospital urgently.
On the spot, they diagnosed me with pancreatic cancer at an early stage”.
In his youth, Arno had been part of TC Matic, the flagship group of Belgian rock of the 1970s and 1980s.
"We were among the first to try to give a European sound to rock"
, he remembered for Le Figaro, in 2011. His last album,
Santeboutique
, was released in September 2019. He had wanted to perform on stage the following months, despite the start of his chemotherapy.