Plastic Bertrand is the alter ego of Belgian recording artist and television presenter Roger Jouret. He sprang to prominence with the track Ça plane pour moi, which was an international hit single in 1977.
The song fit in well with the punk/new wave movement of the time. It is a spastic, direct, three-chord rock song with a very catchy rhythm and vocal part. It features nonsensical French lyrics with occasional lines in English.
Jouret already had many years of experience as an artist by the time the song hit. He had been a musician since the age of nine, when he sang and drummed in the Rolling Stones cover band The Buffalo Scouts. As he got older and could dedicate himself to music full-time, he would be part of several bands that performed at parties, and eventually in bars, clubs, and festivals along the Dutch and Belgian coast.
He did this while studying music theory and percussion at the Music Academy. For a period he was also hired by the pirate radio station Radio Veronica, and worked as a stage manager at the Theatre des Galeries.
In 1974 he was inspired by the rising punk movement to start the punk trio Hubble Bubble, who released an eponymous album in early 1977. Jouret is credited as the songwriter, singer, and drummer under the name Roger Junior. Unfortunately, the group’s bass player was killed in an accident returning from a rehearsal, and the group disbanded.
Shortly after, Hubble Bubble’s manager Bernard Schol introduced Jouret to the record producer Lou Deprijck. Deprijck was an all-encompassing (some would say all-controlling) producer, who wrote the songs, picked session musicians to perform the backing tracks, and produced them. He was basically just in need of a face on the package – someone to sing/front the songs; who could go out and sell them by performing them live. Jouret was happy to give it a go, and this was the start of several years of collaboration where Jouret performed Deprijck’s music under the Plastic Bertrand persona.
It did not take long for them to be successful. Ça plane pour moi was their first attempt, and it became a huge international hit.
The phrase “Ca plane pour moi” is a French idiomatic expression that roughly translates as “This life’s for me.” The meaning of the phrase is more in the vein of “Everything’s going well for me,” with a more literal translation being “It is gliding for me.” The lyrics don’t really have any particular meaning and are even somewhat nonsensical – their job was to sound cool and ‘rock’n’roll.’
Wam bam
Mon chat Splash gît sur mon lit
A bouffé sa langue en buvant dans mon whisky
Quant à moi, peu dormi, vidé, brimé
J’ai dû dormir dans la gouttière
Où j’ai eu un flash
Ouh-ouh-ouh-ouh
En quatre couleurs
The song was conceived as a pastiche, or a caricature, of the punk movement. “Everything started from the text of Pipou [nickname of Yvan Lacomblez] which required a very staccato singing,” Deprijck explained in a 2006 interview, “as did, in the United Kingdom, the then fashionable punk singers. I only brought to the text the title, by reference to a song by Michel Delpech, Tu me fais planer. What we wanted to do was pogo-pogoing, the punk dance. A kind of pastiche. I had three simple chords, A E and D, and musicians that I had chosen to fit the bill. I did not want virtuosos but guys a little bit wild. Once in the studio, with this text and my three chords, I told them “Get by yourselves” and we did it.”
In a YouTube video from 2018, Lou Deprijck claims that “The lyrics are a succession of incoherent things that a guy who is stoned seems to see. “My cat lies wrecked on my bed / She swallowed her tongue drinking my whisky” – it means nothing. It is like if you take LSD. That is exactly the thing you see.”
The music was recorded by session men Mike Butcher (guitar), John Valcke (bass) and Bob Dartsch (drums). The plan was to record two songs for a single. Ça plane pour moi and Pogo-Pogo were the ones, and it was quick work, done in just two hours.
Initially, Pogo-Pogo was chosen as the A-side of the single. As pogoing to punk music had taken off in a big way, it was hoped that the song would tie in with that and become popular. Also, Ça plane pour moi was seen as a bit throwaway due to the nonsensical nature of the lyrics and the pastiche feel of the music. It was seen as a perfect fit for B-side.
In reality, the song turned out to be a perfect fit for the A-side. It was significantly more popular for the exact reasons that people held it back on the B-side to begin with. The songs were quickly switched around for further re-pressings of the single – of which there would be a few.
The fact that the song was initially thought of as a bit of a throwaway title may have been why Deprijck thought it wouldn’t do any harm to use its backing track twice.
The English punk rock/new wave band Elton Motello had been signed to the Belgian label Pinball. They were scheduled to release their debut single Jet Boy, Jet Girl, with Deprijk as their producer. For this single, he would in true form appoint himself to be their songwriter as well. He ended up using the recently recorded backing track that was used on Ça plane pour moi on their song as well.
He might have reconsidered this had he known how popular Ça plane pour moi would become. He would probably have gotten away with it otherwise, as there wasn’t usually much overlap between French and English language songs in their respective markets.
In any case, when Plastic Bertrand’s single became an international hit it seemed to backfire on Elton Motello. Their single was seen as a bleak copy and made little impact, except – for some reason – in Australia, where it reached #33. (It was still dwarfed by the Plastic Bertrand song, which reached #2.)
For Elton Motello, this meant that not only did they have to endure being sidelined by session men for their first single, which they didn’t even write, but their single was also widely thought to be a cover of Ça plane pour moi with new lyrics over the same backing track. In truth, it is much more correct to see the two songs as simultaneous adaptions of the same backing track.
The collaboration between Jouret/Plastic Bertrand and producer Lou Deprijck lasted for four studio albums, until the end of 1981, after which Plastic Bertrand started making his own music as well as branching out into other fields.
The real drama was however still waiting in the wings. Not content with being seen as the songwriter/arranger/producer, Deprijck took Jouret to court in 2006 as he wanted to be recognized as the singer of the hit song as well. He further claimed to be the vocalist on all four Plastic Bernard albums they made during their collaboration.
Deprijck’s story was that it all started when he performed the vocals on the hit because Jouret didn’t make it to the studio the day they were recording it. However, Deprijck had little evidence in support of his claim, and make no mistake: the court case was really about Deprijck wanting the performance money. Jouret simply showed up with a signed contract and proof of his deal with the record-label. His rights and the deals made were clear. The judge fined Deprijck for what he described as a “groundless and vexatious” suit.
The situation was highly frustrating for Jouret, who felt the producer had taken advantage of him initially and was trying to do so again. The initial contract between them had been heavily weighed in the producer’s favour, who also had complete creative control.
On top of that, Jouret also carried a heavy secret of a further injustice stemming from 1977. As it turns out, Deprijck’s claim that his vocals are featured on Ça plane pour moi was not unsubstantiated, although there might be an alternate reason why. Rather than Jouret not showing up on the day of recording, Deprijck had simply made the decision that he wanted to sing it himself in any case. It was after all thought to be a throwaway b-side, so why not have some fun with it? It would be cool to have a record with his own voice on it. What was the harm? Nobody would surely ever remember this throwaway track anyway.
Meanwhile, Jouret arrived at the recording studio for the planned session, but found the doors locked and was told that his services were not required that day. He was not allowed to come in. Imagine his frustration when the song went on to become the A-side and a huge hit. What to do? At least he had a contract which meant he was due his royalties no matter who sang, and defending this in court was no doubt the right thing to do even if he did not sing on the song – perhaps especially so given the circumstances in which things had unfolded.
Jouret finally told the full story in public in a 2010 interview with the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, detailing how Lou Deprijck had ended up hijacking the song’s vocals. “I don’t mind saying it wasn’t my voice,” he said. “I wanted to sing but he wouldn’t let me into the studio.”
Jouret/Bertrand added that Deprijck had asked him to “keep my mouth shut in exchange for 0.5% of the royalties, promising that he’d let me use my voice on another version, which, of course, he never did.”
He went on to say: “I’m the victim. I wanted to sing but he wouldn’t let me into the studio. This is going to dog me till my dying days. I’m really fed up [with the situation].”
Jouret’s admission came a day after a linguist commissioned by a judge during a long-standing legal saga concerning whose vocals appear on the track, concluded that the Brussels-born Jouret’s accent did not match the distinctive twang on the record. Jouret realized that this story was never going to go away, and rather than keep the speculation going he decided to tell the story on his own terms.
These admissions led Deprijck to raise his legal case again, and the 2006 dismissal of the case was overturned in 2010. Nobody knows the final result of the legal wranglings as the case was apparently settled out of court.
No matter what happened and who sang what, this is the song that Roger Jouret aka Plastic Bertrand will be known for and associated with until his dying day – a song that to him no doubt represents many levels of betrayal and backstabbing. The song has never left his life, and so the circumstances around it hasn’t either. Who knows if he would have continued to work with Deprijck for four more years if the song hadn’t become such a big hit, but whatever else happened, it did set him up for a long career. He went out and performed the song and over the years hopefully made it his own. He is the face of the song, achieved great fame, and has performed the song live to millions.
The song has taken on a life of its own, as songs of a certain popularity will do. It represents a certain time and style, and has inspired and been covered by many artists over the years, including Leila K, Telex, Sonic Youth, The Presidents of the United States of America, Richard Thompson, Pigloo, Nouvelle Vague, and even Metallica, who played it live at a concert in King Baudouin in Brussels in 2019.
Scotland’s own Craig Ferguson (former host of the American talkshow “Late late night” on CBS) might have the most memorable “performance” of the song. He brought the show to Paris in 2011 to film a week’s worth of shows there. The French-themed week opened with a mimed spectacle of a performance set to that song, which introduced the song to millions of Americans in the process.
Plastic Bertrand’s original recording remains the most successful version, which was a huge hit across Europe and beyond in 1977 and 1978. It peaked at #19 in Austria, #12 in Sweden, #11 in Bertrand’s native Belgium, #8 in the UK, #6 in West Germany, #4 in Ireland, #2 in the Netherlands, #7 in New Zealand and #2 in Australia. It went all the way to #1 in Switzerland and France.
In the US, the single peaked at #47 on the Billboard Hot 100, which is quite a feat for a French-language song. Only Dominique by The Singing Nun and Je t’aime… moi non plus by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin had achieved that level. In Canada, it peaked at #58.
The actual release date of the single is lost in the mists of time. Digging into its chart history is no more conclusive, showing that its first appearance in the Belgian charts was 28 Jan 1978. In the Nordics, it seems to have been released in the latter half of April. This is a possible release period also for Germany, where it started its three-month chart run on 1 May 1978. This also matches when it showed up on the sales charts of Cashbox Magazine (American music industry trade magazine, and for a long time the most prominent competitor of Billboard). Meanwhile, to make things difficult again, the French charts authorities has registered a sale upwards of 900 000 copies of the single just 1977….
In sum, release dates seem to vary between countries/territories, but it may make sense that France got the French language song released as early as late 1977, and that Plastic Bertrand’s native Belgium also got an release in early 1978. But, it does seem like most of the rest of the world saw it released by late April 1978 in time for it enter most charts in May of that year.
While mainly regarded it as a punk song, Ça plane pour moi has also been described as parody punk and as new wave. In spite of this, it drew high praise from a genuine punk. Joe Strummer said: “Plastic Bertrand compressed into that three minutes a bloody good record that will get any comatose person toe-tapping, you know what I mean? By purist rules, it’s not allowed to even mention Plastic Bertrand. Yet, this record was probably a lot better than a lot of so-called punk records.”
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