Michel Notko

Michel Notko, born Michel Chenard, first saw daylight in Monaco, on the 20th of December 1934. At the age of two he would go to see the Monaco Grand Prix with his father, a harbour manager. The favourite driver of his childhood years, Louis Chiron, didn’t win that year, even though he had claimed the pole position. Formula would be one of Michel’s passions, and when the Formula 1 started in 1950, he would become a Ferrari supporter for life. When Michel's father bought Michel a guitar, when he was five, he didn't get as enthusiastic. The guitar remained untouched for almost fifteen years.

Michel had a safe childhood, and it seemed decided that he would be a successor to his father. However, Michel was also attracted by the the freedom he admired in sailors (he often waited for his father at the harbour and was really fond of the sea). When he began his studies at the University of Bordeux, he quickly became an adult, and began to explore his identity. Michel was a social type and came along with all sorts of people. He never really was an intellectual, but in university he also made contacts with art people. Maybe it was one of the university’s parties in which Michel took a guitar he had secretly been practising, and eventually gained a reputation as a vivid singer.

Always a guy of the streets, Michel’s songs were about ordinary people, harbours, the sea - and of course, women. His first record had even naïvely joyous and light-hearted themes. Surely he was interested in poetry and politics, but he was always restless, tended to get into fights and had short-term relationships with women.

One of Michel’s girlfriends, the now forgotten singer Paulette Vadeboncoeur (who had a small hit “Je m'ennuie de vous” in 1958), played a secretly recorded tape of Michel fumbling his tunes to her record company’s boss Alphonse Perreault (the elder brother of Michel’s future guitarist and best friend Claude Perreault).

Alphonse loved what he heard and wanted to make a record immediately. Michel was called to the studio where he quickly recorded his first album. It included the song “Dans le port”, which gained some publicity, but didn’t really make it for Michel, who had chosen his mother’s maiden name as his surname. He assumably didn’t want to perform with his own name, but of course Notko sounded exotic too, and would catch people’s attention. Michel also didn’t really like to see his face in photographs and he gained some negative attention by insisting on using a picture of people from the streets as his first record’s cover.

However, Michel was already working on songs for his second album. He was a bit more ambitious now and had more time to write and record the songs. One of Monaco’s finest old bands, “Les Voyageurs”, was called to back up the new material. It gave the whole album a sound that was close to Michel’s heart. The album included two of Michel’s most widely recognized songs, “Camille, Camille” and “Viens ici, mon amour” the first being a big hit for some time.

After the second album Michel had a need to deepen his expression. He got excited by the poetry of Jacques Dupin and the collage technique of William S. Burroughs (he also recorded a song that had only random words as its lyrics). He had difficulties working on his new songs: he felt he didn’t make good enough compositions and lyrics. There was a four-year brake with no releases, and many thought Michel was just a shooting star. Michel and Claude Perreault, who was finally introduced to Michel, was now Michel's only band member. They had an immediate connection, and they would play at nights composing material for the album.

In 1966, “Une valse pour l’océan” was released. It didn’t quite have what it needed. There were some nice compositions but something was missing. If the earlier records were more like music from the streets, this one reminded of musicians like Joan Baez or Bob Dylan. The critics took the record quite well, but without exuberant cheering. The first single, “Lune agitée”, flopped. “Mémoires, rêves et réflexions” was tried second, and it got some radio time, but didn’t make it either. It seemed that this could be the end for Michel, and for some time it really was. Notable is the use of at least three guitars in almost every song.

Michel played some gigs after the release of the new album, but, refusing to play his old big hits, the crowd lost its interest and just didn't show up any more. In the end of 1967 Michel packed up his stuff and spent some time in Monaco, working as an employee to his father. Soon it became obvious that that sort of life just wasn’t for him. In 1969 he packed up again and moved to Paris with his then girlfriend Aimée Paquin.

Many rumours from that time have been circling persistently. Michel was involved with all sorts of people, mainly via his girlfriend, who knew a lot of artists and bohemians of the time. It is well known that Michel got into drugs. No reliable information is available to affirm the alledged heroine and cocaine use, but he did do acid, and had already been smoking pot for years.

It is said that the Dutch painter Jan-Andries Barhydt took the name of his painting “De God zal mijn doodgeboren problemen oplossen” from Michel’s stoned mumbling on an early morning bar trip, where he talked about selling his soul to God and of his steady intentions to start to listen to the birds that were keeping him awake every night. It is said that Michel was at Marianne Faithfull and Jean DeBreteuil’s apartment when they received a call about Jim Morrison’s death, and it is even claimed that Michel was involved in the early activity of The Residents!

In 1972 Aimée woke up in the middle of the night to the smell of something burning in her and Michel’s Paris apartment. Michel had passed out on the living room couch, and the smell seemed to come from Michel’s study. Nothing was burning anymore, but she found a pile of ash and burned papers all over the room. Michel had been working feverishly on poems for two years, and had just had a meeting with a publisher to show a collection which had finally been finished.

It turned out that the publisher had said the poems were mediocre, and that Michel would have to work on them quite a bit if he wanted them to be published. Michel wasn’t really open to critique, which was already shown when his album “Une valse pour l’océan” received some tame reviews: he broke almost everything in his living room, including the painting by his dear friend Bernard Bonnet. Michel now got drunk very often, and got in to fights with many of his friends, even with the nearest ones, like Claude Perreault, who now didn't want anything to do with Michel, who had presumably slept with his girlfriend.

Michel hadn't touched his guitar almost at all while writing the poems. At the beginning of 1973 he was almost totally forgotten in the music world, and when he did gigs in his local bar, nobody showed, and the regulars just kept talking while he was playing. He decided to go on holiday to Africa for an undetermined time and start writing material for a new album. His father had sent him some money, as a sort of advance of his testament. It was enough for weeks, maybe for months.

Not much is known about Michel's time in Africa. He told his closest friends that most of the time he used khat and tried to get in the right mood for composing. He visited Arthur Rimbaud's house and worked in several places, building wells and schools, and he fished. He made many friends and had small romances with local girls.

When Michel came back, he was somehow changed. He was quiet and calm, and didn't use alcohol anymore. Almost immediately after arriving in France, he went to see Claude in order to reconcile with him, and to play him the tapes he had recorded in Africa. Claude loved the songs, and was willing to make a truce if Michel promised he would not harm their friendship by fooling around anymore.

Michel and Claude started to make demotapes, but just didn't seem to find the right tone for the songs. Michel had decided to use Apollinaire's poems as lyrics, and visited Apollinaire's grave in order to get to the mood. He had a vision, "an epiphany", as he told in an interview, not willing to explain it more articulately, and soon Michel and Claude had eight songs ready to be recorded. Alphonse Perreault had believed in Michel through the years, and was eager to publish a new record.

Michel, however, was not ok. He was struggling with his psyche and didn't seem to find pleasure in anything. The songs were ready but Michel was not. He needed to go to a psychiatric hospital for undefined time. He ended up resting for year and a half, and when he came back, he was finally ready to record. Claude had smuggled some marihuana into the sanitarium now and then, and when Michel got out, he got deep into using different sort of drugs. It wasn't good for his mental health, and the recording sessions were steamy and turbid. A cover version of Leonard Cohen's ”Famous Blue Raincoat” was suggested by Alphonse, and it ended up being the most succesful song of the record. However, none of the songs became a big hit like Michel and Claude had hoped, but Michel did a relatively large tour, the highlight perhaps being a surprise gig with Serge Gainsbourg in a small club in Nantes.

But it turned out the tour was too much for Michel. His mind simply collapsed. Possibly all the stress combined to the drug use lead to a serious nervous breakdown. His friend Thierry Lebeau found him lying in his apartment filled with food leftovers and garbage and disturbed poems written in shaky handwriting.

Not much is known of Michel's life in the subsequent ten years. Some say he recovered and worked for his father. Some say he made experimental short films under the pseudonym Vengeur. Some have suggested he played as a session guitarist in pub rock bands, and some say he moved to America to become a farmer, as he had several times blustered in early morning bartrips.

In 1986 Claude met Michel in Cannes, and told him he had just purchased a drum machine and wanted to make some music again. Michel was wearing a suit and acted obscene, but he had a vision for a record too. This time it should be rough and intense, no more poems or acoustic guitar. They booked a studio in Bordeaux, and recorded an album in ten days. It received mixed reviews. Some liked the hoarse-sounding outcome, some said it was vulgar and empty. Michel did a few gigs, but soon he realised he had had it with music. It was time to do something else. La chaleur would remain the last recorded album by Michel.

In 2009 Michel visited the French experimental act Rituel impensable's record, reciting some of his poetry. He wrote thousands of poems, but didnät want to publish anything, as he believed books destroy poetry. He gained a cult reputation for his poetry nights that he hosted in England, Germany and The Netherlands, along with France. He finally met his hero William S. Burroughs in one of these evenings in 1991, and together they recited bits of Naked Lunch to an ecstatic audience of 300 people, packed in a small club in Monaco. Michel was finally back home, and had found peace.

Michel lived his last years in a small house in Monaco with his wife Béatrice Paquet, whom he met when he was recovering from his nervous breakdown. He had no children, but taught guitar to Béatrice's son Auguste, who has performed some of Michel's songs on his first gigs. Michel's music is still not published in CD format, by his own wish. His records are collector's items, and rarely found anywhere.

Michel passed away in his sleep on 19th of December 2024, a day before he would have reached the respectable age of 90. This page is dedicated to Michel's memory and was approved by Michel himself. The administrators of this page hope everyone could find meaning and comfort from the life work of the master himself.