François Guillemot, the former singer of Bérurier noir, has reflected on the youth and experiences that led him to the heart of France’s punk scene in the 1980s. Nearly four decades later, lyrics from one of the band’s songs, including the line “la jeunesse emmerde le Front national,” are being taken up by a new generation during high-school and university demonstrations.
Guillemot, who performed under the name Fanxoa, is now 63 and works as a historian at France’s CNRS. He spoke with Le Monde at the Villeurbanne media library in the Rhône, where an exhibition titled “Rock’n’roll Guérilla” presents his graphic work and the visual elements associated with Bérurier noir over almost a decade.
Born in July 1963, Guillemot spent his childhood and the beginning of his adolescence mainly in Paris’s 12th arrondissement, in the Michel-Bizot neighbourhood. He grew up between two sisters, born in 1962 and 1964.
His father was a painter and his mother worked as an interior decorator. In the interview, Guillemot looks back on a youth he describes through the perspective of his early adulthood and the path that eventually took him into music, before his later work in history.
Sources: Le Monde Culture.