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Legal
Plastic Bertrand admits he didn’t sing hit
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 29 July 2010
Belgian performer Plastic Bertrand, real name Roger Jouret, admitted yesterday that he was not the singer on his 1977 hit ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’. French composer and producer Lou Deprijck has long claimed that his was actually the voice on the track, going so far as to record and release a new version in 2006 in an attempt to prove his claim. And it seems to have worked, albeit thanks to some expert evidence presented to a Belgian court this week.
The court was hearing the latest in a string of legal cases in relation to Deprijck’s claims, this time one brought against the producer by record label AMC (which released the original version) after the release of the aforementioned 2006 new version of the song was marketing as being by the “original singer”. A linguist commissioned by the judge to examine the two versions of the song reported that the person who sang them did so in a specific regional accent of northern France (where Deprijck comes from), an accent that could not, the expert reckoned, be accurately mimicked by the Belgian-born Jouret.
The judgement read: “The way the phrases end on each record show that the song could only have been sung by a Ch’ti – otherwise known as someone from the Picard region of France. It could therefore not have been Plastic Bertrand – who was born in Brussels – and was surely Mr Deprijck”.
Clearly relieved, Deprijck , who claims that he was replaced by Jouret to promote the song because the record company wanted someone with a more ‘punky’ image, told Le Parisien newspaper: “My Ch’ti patois has proved me right. I am relieved. I hope I will finally get my rights”.
It may not be as easy as all that, though. In 2006, the Brussels Court Of Appeal ruled that, although Deprijck may indeed have been the person who sang the vocals, Jouret was the “legal performer” of the song because his face had appeared on the single’s artwork and he signed the original record contract with AMC. It was this ruling which prompted Deprijck to record his 2006 version of the track.
When initially commenting on the new linguistic evaluation, Jouret vowed to sue his rival for defamation, saying: “This expertise carries no weight. It has been set up because ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’ has been taken up by advertising campaigns and Deprijck wants to get all the rights. He’s making me out to be a crook, but I am an artist, not a crook”.
But, in a new turn of events, Jouret yesterday admitted that it was not his voice on the song (or any of the songs on his four albums) after all. Though he somehow blamed Deprijck for his denials up to this point, while implying that the producer was already pocketing most of the royalties from the song anyway.
Speaking to Belgian newspaper Le Soir, he said: “I don’t mind saying it was not my voice. I’m the victim. I wanted to sing, but he [Deprijck] would not let me access the studio. He asked me to keep my mouth shut in exchange for 0.5% of the rights, and promised he would make a new version with my voice, which of course he never did”.
Asked to comment, Deprijck’s lawyer simply said: “It was time he stopped pretending otherwise”.
