Arno is no more. Singer Arno, a Belgian figure on the rock scene, known for his broken voice mixed with a Flemish accent, his messy hair and his excesses, died on Saturday of complications from cancer, his agent announced. The 72-year-old artist, sometimes compared to Alain Bashung or Tom Waits, of the same generation as him, announced in February 2020 that he was suffering from pancreatic cancer.
Damn, damn, that was really good. Arno left us on April 23. He will be missed by all of us, his family, his friends and his musicians. He will always be with us thanks to the music, which kept him alive until the end,” wrote his Belgian agent Filip De Groote in a press release.
Born on May 21, 1949 in Ostend, a Flemish coastal town to which he remained very attached and which he evokes in his songs, Arno Hintjens began his career with the rock group TC Matic in the 1980s, notably with the song ” Putain, putain” (“Damn, damn, it’s really good, we are still all Europeans”) a title recently taken up in duet with another Belgian, Stromae. It was solo that he then revealed himself to a wider audience, thanks to songs like “Les Yeux de ma mère” or his cover of “Filles du bord de mer” by another Belgian, Adamo.