Lizzy Mercier Descloux

Martine-Elisabeth Mercier Descloux (16 December 1956 – 20 April 2004) was a French musician, singer-songwriter, and composer associated with New York City's late 1970s no wave music scene. She recorded several albums on ZE Records beginning with her 1979 debut Press Color.

Early life Mercier Descloux grew up in Lyon, France, but returned to her native Paris in her teens to attend art school. With her partner Michel Esteban, she helped establish the store Harry Cover, temple of the punk movement in France, and the new wave magazine Rock News. She struck up friendships with Patti Smith and Richard Hell when visiting New York in 1975, and both contributed material to her first book, Desiderata. She and Esteban moved to New York in 1977, meeting Michael Zilkha, with whom Esteban formed ZE Records.

Musical career

Early life and Paris years (1956–1975)

Mercier Descloux was born Martine-Élisabeth Mercier on 16 December 1956 in Paris, and was raised in Lyon by an aunt who worked at the Renault factory before returning to Paris in her teens. She briefly attended the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and lived at 11 rue des Halles in the 1st arrondissement, opposite the boutique Harry Cover, which the journalist and impresario Michel Esteban had opened at number 12 in 1973. She and Esteban became partners; she adopted her father's surname Descloux, in addition to her mother's name Mercier, as her professional surname. During this and subsequent visits she attended performances at CBGB by the Ramones, Television, the Patti Smith Group and the Hell-era Heartbreakers. Mercier Descloux had taken the photograph of Smith printed in the inner sleeve of Smith's 1976 album Radio Ethiopia, and Hell would write the song "Another World" on his 1977 debut album Blank Generation for her.

Rosa Yemen and Press Color (1977–1980)

Later in 1977, Mercier Descloux moved permanently to New York with Esteban, initially staying with Patti Smith on Lafayette Street. The following year, ZE released her solo debut LP Press Color. Her debut studio album, Press Color, was recorded at Blank Tapes Studios in New York in February 1979 and produced by Banes, Erik Eliasson and Mercier Descloux; it included reworkings of Arthur Brown's "Fire", Lalo Schifrin's Mission Impossible and "Jim on the Move", and a version of Peggy Lee's "Fever" retitled "Tumor". She performed at the Mudd Club, Tier 3 and CBGB during this period. Mambo Nassau marked a stylistic pivot away from the dissonant rock textures of Press Color toward Caribbean and African rhythms; it was released on ZE in 1981.

Island Records boss Chris Blackwell bankrolled the sessions in Nassau, Bahamas for her second album Mambo Nassau, with Compass Point All Stars engineer Steven Stanley and keyboardist Wally Badarou co-writing and producing. The album was influenced by African music as well as art rock, funk and soul. While the record was unsuccessful in the U.S., it won her a contract with CBS Records in France.

Lizzy Mercier Descloux and African travels (1983–1984)

In 1983, with backing from Alain Levy, head of CBS France, Mercier Descloux undertook a long journey through Africa that retraced Arthur Rimbaud's southward route from Ethiopia, eventually reaching apartheid-era South Africa. The album's single "Mais où sont passées les gazelles ?", a French reworking of a song associated with the South African vocalist Mahlathini, became an unexpected hit in France during the summer of 1984. During his appearance at the inaugural Free Jazz Festival in August 1985, the American trumpeter Chet Baker recorded several tracks for the album, including "Fog Horn Blues" and "Off Off Pleasure". Following the recording, Mercier Descloux spent the latter part of 1985 in Sri Lanka, where she began work on an unpublished novel titled Buenaventura. The album was produced principally by John Brand, with Mercier Descloux and the former Mars member Mark Cunningham credited as co-producers; Cunningham and the Australian songwriter James Reyne supplied additional lyrics. After the lead single, "Gueule d'Amour / Cry of Love", failed commercially, EMI buried the album, and Mercier Descloux retreated from recording. prompting profile features in The Quietus, The Pitchfork Review and The Arts Desk.

In April 2023, the Paris small press Isti Mirant Stella published Don't Take Care of Yourself. Lettres à Christine. 1974–1983, an edition of 78 letters Mercier Descloux wrote to her childhood friend Christine de Lustrac between 1974 and 1983, accompanied by collages, photographs and drawings from her personal archive. The volume was edited by Christine's daughter Chloé de Lustrac and concentrates on Mercier Descloux's teenage years in Paris, her early trips to New York, and the formation of ZE Records.

Death In 2003, she was diagnosed with ovarian and colon cancers, from which she died the following year. Fellow no wave musician and ZE labelmate Cristina dedicated a song on the 2004 re-release of her album Sleep It Off to Mercier Descloux, "chère copine in adversity...In loving memory of her talent, her courage, and her kindness."

After her death, Esteban worked with Light in the Attic Records to reissue some of her recordings.

Albums

Rosa Yemen – Live in N.Y.C July 1978 (1978) Press Color (1979) Mambo Nassau (1981) Lizzy Mercier Descloux (1984) (rereleased as Zulu Rock in 2006, with English recordings of most of the tracks) One for the Soul (1986) Suspense (1988)