His name belongs to a constellation of composers whose writing has hot stamped sixties and seventies pop music. Variety, television, cinema, ballet and theatre have each imposed Jack Arel’s signature, whilst preserving a certain element of mystery regards his nationality. French? American? English? This ambiguity took root with his first feature film, Les Jeunes loups, for which veteran Marcel Carné demanded creative partnerships of Anglo-Saxon origin. He was proposed a song that he adopted immediately, I’ll never leave you… before going on to discover that Jack Arel was well and truly French, as French as Nicole Croisille, hidden behind the pseudonym “Tuesday Jackson”. I’ll never leave you would be Arel’s original, founding hit, the initial milestone of a career seeing him meet artists going by the names of Eddy Mitchell, Tom Jones and Florent Pagny, put Nadine Trintignant and Fernando Arrabal imagery to music, and clothe television with the most memorable of theme tunes, including the timeless and untainted folk ballad for Trente millions d’amis.
There is a vast territory left to uncover within the works of Jack Arel: that consecrated to musical illustration, the fruit of a long and productive collaboration with Chappell and initiated in the spring of 1966.
At the time, library music remained the protected ground of a generation of composers from the nineteen forties/fifties, still held under the influence of waltzes, slows, fox trots and other silver hued rhythms. With the young Jean-Claude Petit as writing partner, Arel would come and shake things up. He put together an album, Dance and mood music, from an experimental concept: one side of jingles, and a side of instrumentals, influenced by music from across the channel. An instant success, notably in terms of radio. Preparations for a seven inch were quickly put into progress. “Our experiences were like lab tests, remembers Arel. We brought together elements from the universes of pop, jazz and rock. It was very carefully written and prepared… but equally very free. This was the aspect that our soloists appreciated, artists of stature such as Jean-Luc Ponty, Maurice Vander and Georges Arvanitas. With us they would discover a different kind of atmosphere, along long orchestral beaches where they could fully express themselves. It was a real wave of freedom: unleashed from the constraints imposed by an image or text, I wrote tracks that television, advertising and the cinema would appropriate to themselves further down the line. This music was the essence of me, deep down it was what I wanted to write.”
Eleven records ensued, to the rhythm of one 7 inch per year, accompanied along one part of the journey with Petit, the other with Pierre Dutour. The impact of these albums crowned the sound of an era, in France and beyond, reaching the mythical village of Number Six: several titles (including the famous Psychedelic portrait) follow the metaphysical wanderings of Patrick McGoohan, step by step, the space of a number of episodes of The Prisoner. At the turn of the new century, England was to be thanked once again, with an anthology of Arel’s Chappell sessions, a double CD being passed greedily and illico through the hands of DJs from New York to Tokyo and Caracas. ”At the end of the nineteen sixties, I could never have imagined that this music would be remixed forty years later, smiles Jack Arel. Though firmly rooted in their own eras, they must be graced with an element of timelessness to be capable of fascinating new generations to such an extent.” He’s right, and listening to his latest album confirms this loud and clear. With his Dance and mood music albums, Jack Arel has definitively brought musical illustration into a new era, the modern era.
Stéphane Lerouge
As soon as he had completed his studies at a National Music Academy in France (percussion and harmony section), Jack Arel moved into song writing, composing for numerous French and International stars.
Forever inspired by jazz music, his major influences are : Mozart, Bach, Satie, Debussy, Stan Kenton, Gerry Mullingan, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, etc...
Meeting Marcel Carné was a key milestone in his career, marking the debut of his writing for cinema and television.
There is a vast territory left to uncover within the works of Jack Arel: that consecrated to musical illustration, the fruit of a long and productive collaboration with Chappell and initiated in the spring of 1966.
At the time, library music remained the protected ground of a generation of composers from the nineteen forties/fifties, still held under the influence of waltzes, slows, fox trots and other silver hued rhythms. With the young Jean-Claude Petit as writing partner, Arel would come and shake things up. He put together an album, Dance and mood music, from an experimental concept: one side of jingles, and a side of instrumentals, influenced by music from across the channel. An instant success, notably in terms of radio. Preparations for a seven inch were quickly put into progress. “Our experiences were like lab tests, remembers Arel. We brought together elements from the universes of pop, jazz and rock. It was very carefully written and prepared… but equally very free. This was the aspect that our soloists appreciated, artists of stature such as Jean-Luc Ponty, Maurice Vander and Georges Arvanitas. With us they would discover a different kind of atmosphere, along long orchestral beaches where they could fully express themselves. It was a real wave of freedom: unleashed from the constraints imposed by an image or text, I wrote tracks that television, advertising and the cinema would appropriate to themselves further down the line. This music was the essence of me, deep down it was what I wanted to write.”
Eleven records ensued, to the rhythm of one 7 inch per year, accompanied along one part of the journey with Petit, the other with Pierre Dutour. The impact of these albums crowned the sound of an era, in France and beyond, reaching the mythical village of Number Six: several titles (including the famous Psychedelic portrait) follow the metaphysical wanderings of Patrick McGoohan, step by step, the space of a number of episodes of The Prisoner. At the turn of the new century, England was to be thanked once again, with an anthology of Arel’s Chappell sessions, a double CD being passed greedily and illico through the hands of DJs from New York to Tokyo and Caracas. ”At the end of the nineteen sixties, I could never have imagined that this music would be remixed forty years later, smiles Jack Arel. Though firmly rooted in their own eras, they must be graced with an element of timelessness to be capable of fascinating new generations to such an extent.” He’s right, and listening to his latest album confirms this loud and clear. With his Dance and mood music albums, Jack Arel has definitively brought musical illustration into a new era, the modern era.
Stéphane Lerouge
As soon as he had completed his studies at a National Music Academy in France (percussion and harmony section), Jack Arel moved into song writing, composing for numerous French and International stars.
Forever inspired by jazz music, his major influences are : Mozart, Bach, Satie, Debussy, Stan Kenton, Gerry Mullingan, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, etc...
Meeting Marcel Carné was a key milestone in his career, marking the debut of his writing for cinema and television.
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