Eventually he learned out of thirty years’ experience, and bought better equipment – in the end he had a 32-track desk – quite presentable! But I have to say, much as I loved him, I don’t think he had a particularly extraordinary talent as a sound engineer, but he had a lot of love for what he was doing. This is how we recorded the live tape that we used on the Playtime CD by National Health. We’d just set up the gear and play, and he only had two mikes, mixing on the fly. Pip Pyle: In the early days, he only had a couple of Revox tape machines and two microphones. There was a sort of mutual tolerance between him, the musicians and the audience. What money he was able to put aside was used to pay for a bigger mixing desk. The technical side of things was the same… There wasn’t a proper stage, and the PA was made in any old way, the monitors and microphones would never be changed, and weren’t exactly high quality. We accepted this, and we did our best under these conditions, but it’s true that towards the end it was more than a little bit dirty, to be honest! Faton Bloom John Greaves: We always stayed there, but we were always drunk! Not to beat around the bush, by the time we’d drunk the bar dry, we didn’t really notice if there were clean sheets on the bed or not, of if there was anybody else in the bed, of any sex, quantity or quality! That really didn’t matter!ĭidier Malherbe: The rooms upstairs were like the equipment, he didn’t care much about that – he had bought some equipment once and for all in the early days and wouldn’t replace or renew it. This meant substantial savings for his hosts – if they were willing to accept rather spartan accommodation. The most I ever played to was when Didier was in the band – Equip’Out and Short Wave.Īlthough he was rarely able to pay bands substantial fees, Jacky would gladly host the musicians for a few nights if necessary. Hugh Hopper: There was a strong Gong fan base around there. But then again, I played there with Gong, and I think it was the all-time record – apparently it was 340, Jacky said. I think I played a gig there once and there were only five people. Basically, we liked the place and we wanted somewhere to sleep the night, or a few nights, in which case we’d play every night. Normally you only did gigs on Friday or Saturday, but we’d always have gigs somewhere on those nights, so we’d play there on a Monday night and there’d be, literally, 15 people, but we just wanted to go there anyway. To make up for this, Jacky was very accommodating on the choice of dates.
Gong 1992: (back) Keith Bailey, Daevid Allen & Shyamal Maitra (front) Didier Malherbe, Pip Pyle & Graham Clark John Greaves: The amazing thing about his club was, it looked like a complete ruin, and there were about three houses in the village, which was right in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere… And yet, on a Saturday night, all these people would turn up! It was all quite mysterious.įrom the musicians’ viewpoint, the central geographical position of Bresse-sur-Grosne made it an ideal stop on a tour, bearing in mind that it could never be a real money-maker.ĭidier Malherbe: Gigs weren’t always well-attended, and Jacky never had a lot of money, so we never had a guaranteed fee: we would almost always get a percentage of the door. Didier Malherbeĭidier Malherbe: I think that what he liked was to open a place which would be friendly and welcoming, where people would assemble coming from tens or hundreds of miles, and would all converge to this small village. A situation Jacky actively rebelled against, with limited means but infallible persistence. Surely, there is something simplistic about such an idealised image, especially when considering the frequent lack of any significant cultural life outside of large cities.
Jacky Barbier’s insistence on stubbornly existing outside the “system” can be compared to the common distinction between city dwellers obsessed with vain, superficial and materialistic aspirations, and “countrymen” taking time to live and focus on what’s really important, namely life’s simpler pleasures.
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