Casually, we lose everything.
There are the monuments, and also these little stones which lead to the booming French rock scene of the 1980s. For some of us, the death of Frank Darcel, the guitarist of Marquis de Sade, at the age of 65, hits home their adolescence like a high-speed train.
January 1980, we believe it.
What will the eighties look like after the rock'n'roll sixties and the peace & love seventies?
Nobody knows anything about it but everyone has put away their purple sweatshirts and white Stan Smiths which will go out of fashion before coming back stronger.
The weather is cloudy, less cool, harder.
The crisis is corroding.
Punk has arrived in England and Telephone is taking over the lead in French rock.
And Marquis de Sade arrives, with this concert in January 1980 at the Palace, the hall where everything happened at the time.
No hits already ready for the stadiums like the group of Jean-Louis Aubert and Louis Bertignac, but a new wave guitar sound like the tormented atmosphere which plays with German expressionism but gives us the exhilaration of underground London, the angst and this sound already almost a little grunge.
On stage, they are dressed to the nines, with ties, Franck Darcel in the foreground with his angry, clear, peremptory guitar, this hot sound like the high voltage line which allows Philippe Pascal, haunted singer, to launch into his arabesques .
These Bretons have an air of England and the fans are proud of this first class garage rock in suits.
A flash in the pan that lasted two years, two albums beloved by fans, “Dantzig Twist” in 1979 and “Rue de Siam” which opened the 1980s but closed the door to the quickly dissolved group.
They were twenty years old and counting.
Everything has an end but thirty years later it is tragic.
Philippe Pascal committed suicide in 2019. Frank Darcel, found dead at the age of 65 in a square in Galicia, in the northwest of Spain, was discovered by walkers on these rocky shores.
The causes of its disappearance in an easily accessible place near the stairs leading to the beach are not yet known.
Marquis de Sade reformed in 2017, aware and grateful of a heritage that has spread into French rock song.
It was Pascal Obispo who revealed the disappearance of the guitarist on Instagram, with whom he had collaborated several times.
“And now Frank… Infinite sadness.
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A post shared by Pascal Obispo (@pascalobispo)
Sadness to see an underground but vital generation leave: Jacno died of cancer in 2009, and Daniel Darc, the singer of Taxi Girl in 2013, these elegant young people who were with Marquis de Sade on the cover of Actuel magazine, the thermometer of trends of the time.
“Look for the boy.”
They disappear.
A star was born, Étienne Daho, whose beginnings Frank Darcel accompanied, which were also those of the Rennes rock scene.
Darcel played on “Mythomane” in 1981, produced the hits “Le grandsom” and “Tombé pour la France” and signed Daho’s successful album, “La notte, la notte”.
“My dear Frank, my friend, reacted, also on Instagram, the singer.
Thousands of memories flood in and the words cannot come to me to express this emptiness.
Thank you for being in my life and changing it forever.”
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A post shared by Etienne Daho Officiel (@etienne.daho)
Born in Côtes-d'Armor in 1958, Frank Darcel will put down roots in Breton culture and perhaps surprise his first audience by working with Alan Stivell, the icon of the previous, more folk-oriented generation.
But the same search for a heavy, raw sound, that of trance ultimately.
This son of a doctor wrote novels, including “Vilaine wound”, “The Army of Free Men” and “The Drifter”, and became involved in politics.
He joined the Breton party in 2002 and was one of the founders of Breizh Europa in 2013, which advocates the autonomy of Brittany in a federal Europe.
In 2020, he was a candidate for the municipal elections in Rennes for the small party Rennes Bretagne Europe (RBE), collecting less than 2% of the votes.
The main thing remains these recent images from the 2020s on the Internet where we see him in the middle of a session, salt and pepper hair but guitar as nervous as ever for a jam.
The song “1980” by Pascal Obispo, “this generation from which I come” can be listened to this Saturday as a direct tribute to Marquis de Sade and Frank Darcel.
The song of a generation which loses one of its own.