Waterloo

Biography     Discography

The origins of the Belgian group Waterloo can be traced back to the meeting and the gathering together in October 1969 of five musicians from two then recently disbanded acts which had achieved national recognition. Bass-player Jean-Paul Janssens, born in 1945 and drummer Jacky Mauer, born 14 May 1946, had been members of the Brussels based blues-rock power-trio Adam’s Recital, fronted by singer-guitarist Adam Hoptman; guitar-player Gus Roan (born 22 January 1948), singer/flautist Dirk Bogaert (born 26 August 1948) and keyboard-player Marc Malyster (born in 1947) had played in the Ghent combo Today’s Version.
During the 1969 Bilzen festival (the most famous open-air rock event in Belgium in the late sixties and seventies), Marc had met Jacky through the festival’s manager Paul Andre. The two became friendly and Marc suggested Jacky and Jean-Paul to set up an organ driven trio with him; Adam’s Recital had just split, having released only one single. After a few try outs in the trio format, Marc decided to enlarge the formula and integrate his former colleagues Gus and Dirk. The five-some subsequently rehearsed in Jacky’s father’s – a dressmaker nicknamed Baba – old workroom, which he had put at their disposal.

The band was officially created on Friday 17 October 1969.

Marc was a classically trained conservatory musician and notably influenced by the fusion of classical music with rock rhythms made famous by Keith Emerson with The Nice.

Jacky discovered jazz and rock at the start of the sixties and was a self-taught drummer. He started his musical career in 1962 by joining the rock’n’roll outfit Les Partisans (with also “Big” Frisma later guitar-player in Jenghiz Khan), winning first prize at a Golf Drouot band contest in Paris, ex-aequo with a then unknown pop singer, Michel Polnareff, who was to become a megastar of French variety. In 1964, Jacky joined the Latin oriented combo Tcha Ka Tchas; then the founded Adam’s Recital in 1966. The trio landed themselves numerous gigs in Holland and Belgium and were regular bill toppers at Louis de Vries’ (the manager of The Pebbles, Mad Curry and later Irish Coffee) night-club. Thanks to the latter’s relations in the music business, Adam’s Recital were one of the few Belgian acts to gig at the Marquee Club in London; they were also featured at Windsor festival, appearing alongside Marmalade, Arthur Brown, Zoot Money, Dantalion’s Chariot and Dizzy Gillespie. Jacky was a jazz cat, yet he also liked English pop groups such as The Small Faces and soon enthused about the more adventurous Deep Purple, Yes and King Crimson. His favourite drummer was Ginger Baker and he was equally influenced by jazz drummers. Despite their increasing reputation, Adam’s Recital split in the summer of 1969. Their only single was released on the French Barclay label.

Dirk started his musical career at only twelve, as the boy soloist in Verdi’s Nabucco, performed at Brussels’ Munt Opera; he had been selected out of his school’s chorus. In 1962, he discovered rock and became a fan of The Beatles and The Animals. He bought a guitar and learned the rudiments by himself. In 1963, now an arts school student, he founded his first band, called The Wrong; he switched to bass guitar before concentrating on lead vocals; The Wrong played mostly cover versions of his aforementioned favourite groups. In 1966, he formed the blues-rock group The Act with guitarist Gus Roan and keyboards-player Marc Malyster; Dirk was in charge of both bass duties and lead vocals. In 1967, The Act developed into Todays’ Version, with another drummer; the music evolved towards early progressive rock, the band performing covers of Nice and Arthur Brown songs whilst also writing their own material. Meanwhile, Dirk had grew and interest in jazz improvisation, learning the flute, under the influence of Roland Kirk and Yusef Lateef. Besides singing and playing bass, he added his flute playing to the band’s instrumental palette.

Gus and Dirk were responsible for the song-writing, the tunes being arranged and fleshed out by the entire band at rehearsals.

The musicians devoted all their time over to the project, although they were not professionals : each of them had learnt a craft. Jacky suggested to call the group Waterloo, referring to the famous Napoleonic battle, which took place around a Brabant village in 1815, nowadays a mere suburban town of Brussels.

Waterloo soon composed and rehearsed six original songs, which they played on 6 November 1969 to Wallace Collection’s producer Jean Martin, whom the Bilzen festival manager Paul Andre had convinced to attend one of their rehearsals. Jean Martin was immediately aware of their potential, technical strength and originality and proposed at once to become their manager. He advised them to write more accessible songs with a view to a single success and radio broadcast. The next day, Martin returned to the rehearsal room, together with the Wallaces’s guitarist Sylvain Van Holme; Sylvain liked what he heard too, and this induced Jean Martin to produce a record by the group. A recording session of four tracks was promptly organized for the 12th of November.

The band recorded their four selections at the tiny “Des-studio” in Brussels. Jean Martin signed a distribution deal with the French Vogue label to release the band’s singles on the Belgian market. Two singles were rush-released with “Meet again” as the potential chartbuster; they were regularly broadcasted on the Belgian national radio and met with rapidly increasing sales.

Thus, Waterloo made their stage debut at the beginning of December 1969, alongside Michel Polnareff, returning soon to the same concert hall, from 17 to 20 December, together with another Belgian group in the vein of Wallace Cellection, Modus Vivendi’s Belgian variety singer Jacques Hustin and Wallace collection themselves. A friend and fan of the band, Jacques Garfinkiel was enrolled as their roadie. These series of gigs earned the group their first laudatory reviews in the local press.

To design the sleeve, a photo session was arranged inside Waterloo’s battlefield museum; a picture of the group next to a genuine gun from the battle heydays was eventually accepted and integrated into a drawing depicting the Emperor Napoleon, the whole project being devised by a specialized English agency.
The album was called “First battle”, referring to both the historical event and the band’s first recording.

Several thousand copies were pressed, yet the album was distributed in Belgium only. The release, in February 1970, was acclaimed by the Belgian papers. To promote the album, the band gave a press conference followed by a concert at the Martini club at the Rogier building in Brussels, and appeared several times on Belgian television.

The new version of “Meet again” was released as a single. Oddly, a Portuguese label called Roda requested a licence from Vogue to release the album on the Portuguese market. Eventually, two EP’s with excerpts from the album were released in Portugal the next year.

Meanwhile, the band had performed the soundtrack for the musical “Zigger Zagger” at Brussels’ Théàtre National in January 1970. Around the same time, Jean Martin went to the Midem fair in Cannes in order to present his latest productions, including Waterloo’s first single, to the French and international record companies. He had equipped himself with a copy of the new version of the band’s hit “Meet again”, which hadn’t been released yet. Unfortunately, he lost the tape, which ended up by a miracle on the desk of a presenter at “Europe 1” radio station. The broadcaster liked the song and played it regularly, explaining to the listeners that he had no idea about the title of the song or the name or origins of the band who performed it. The name Waterloo being written on the tape’s box, it was the only indication at his disposal and so, the song was broadcasted on the French radio as “Waterloo” by an unknown group!

The band started to gig extensively, first in Brussels and Belgium, then in France, performing in the North, the East (Dijon) and at Lyon’s Palais des Sports, where they opened the show for the French variety star Claude Francois.

Jean Martin got them a six week season at the La Jota club in Madrid running from July, yet on the way back, Jean-Paul Janssens announced his decision to leave the group for personal reasons. The band started auditioning for a replacement; the Gent’ bass-player Rick Urmel was retained but he left after only a few rehearsals and was replaced permanently by Jean-Paul Musette, a respected musician from Brussels.

Shortly afterwards, Marc Malyster decided to leave too; he wanted to start a new project with the pop duo Jess & James. To replace him, Jacky thought about Frank Wuyts, an organ player whose talent had impressed him when he heard him perform with a dance band. He proposed him to join Waterloo, but Frank had joined Wallace Collection in the meantime. Eventually, Frank accepted Jacky’s offer and joined Waterloo at the end of August 1970, while still working with Wallace Collection.

The members of Waterloo used to visit an alternative bookshop in Brussels, which was run by a music freak, John Van Rymenant, who also played saxophone with different bands. They made friends and jammed with him; convinced that the addition of his lavish sax playing would enrich the band’s musical formula and sound range, they asked John to join the group which he accepted. Although not a brilliant technician, John proved a very creative musician, contributing with original ideas to the music’s evolution and introducing the band to the modal jazz of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. John used a device fixed with a microphone on the bell of his sax, which enabled him to play an octave higher or lower and produce unusual sounds; the band’s harmonic possibilities were further extended with no less than four solo instruments (flute, guitar, organ and saxophone), Dirk’s flute being sometimes doubled by Gus, who added flute to his guitar playing, while John intervened on the songs’ main theme.

The band issued a single in September 1970. Side A “Plastic Mind” was a new track while side B was taken from the album. The musicians continued to gig intensively in Belgium, performing a show with much visual effects, lasting for more than one hour and including the album’s titles as well as new compositions. On stage, the emphasis lay also on humour and jokes.On 28 November 1970, the band shared the bill of the important Ghent festival with The Greatest Show On Earth, Fynn Mc Cool, Stray, Judas Jump, the Belgian bands Captain Bismarck, Carriage Company, Recreation, Jenghiz Khan and the Americans Van And Gayle.

On that occasion, the musicians took the opportunity to jam with several members of Magma, notably François Cahen and Francis Moze.
Since John had joined the group, the English pop influence had gradually decreased in favour of more jazzy leanings and a more adventurous musical formula, foreshadowing Pazop’s progressive rock. A new single was recorded with the songs “I can’t live with nobody but you” and “Smile”; it was released in March 1971. The band’s last tracks were canned at the beginning of 1972; “Bobo’s dream” and “Bad Time” were issued on a single; “The Youngest Day” remained unreleased.

Curiously, its sleeve showed a photograph of the group with Rick Urmel, who didn’t participate in the session, as he had already left the group; actually, he had appeared in a photo session during his short sty with the band.
The impetus had gone and the musicians decided to disband in a friendly way. Gus joined the more commercial New Inspiration. Jacky, Dirk and Frank decided to pursue their collaboration and formed Pazop with the ex-Arkham bassist Patrick Cogneaux and violinist Kuba Szczepanski, also from Wallace Collection. Their unreleased recordings were eventually published by Musea records on a full length CD in 1996. After Pazop’s dismissal, Jacky and Dirk founded the jazz-rock combo Abraxis, which also featured one time Waterloo bassist Jean-Paul Musette, his colleague from Classroom/Cos Charles Loosand a guitarist. They release one album in 1976.

Since then, Gus has worked as a songwriter for variety artists, Dirk has run music shops, Jacky has managed a recording studio in Brussels, whereas Frank carried on as a sideman with noted performers such as the French singer Jacques Higelin, before returning to work as a solo artist in Belgium and Marc still plays organ with sixties legends The Vipers (looky,looky!).
Waterloo’s recordings represent one of the finest examples of the emergence of a genuine sophisticated rock music in Belgium. Their music, which mixes lyricism with energy, matches up to the best of early Jethro Tull of Blodwyn Pig.

Written by Francis Grosse (translation Dorian Cumps) and reprinted from the liner notes of the Waterloo cd booklet (acknowledgements Gus Roan, Jacky Mauer, Dirk Bogaert, Marc Doutrepont and John Bollenberg) by kind permission of Musea records and Bernard Gueffier.

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