He was nicknamed the “Belgian Tom Waits”. Singer Arno Hintjens died on Saturday at the age of 72.
It was his manager who revealed the sad news in a press release the same day. Since 2019, the artist from Ostend had been battling pancreatic cancer. After a break, he resumed his series of concerts in July 2020, until he canceled all his lives in July 2021. “On the recommendation of his doctors, he is taking a break of several months to rest and regain form”, then explained a press release from the Trianon, in Paris.
He had ended his cancer treatment earlier this year.
The singer and actor with the gravelly voice and the white mane had been a great success with critics, and had a solid base of faithful, followers of his many covers of standards in the often offbeat style.
It was at the end of the 1980s that he embarked on a solo career, and made himself known to the French public in 1990, with his participation in the soundtrack of the film Merci la vie, by Bertrand Blier (1990).
Singing as well in French as in English or in Flemish, he gave the full measure of his talent on stage, like his albums À la française, in 1997, or Live in Brussels, in 2005, in which we can listen to his most famous title, My Mother’s Eyes.
Surprisingly, in the early 1980s he was also the cook of soul star Marvin Gaye, who spent many months in Ostend.
Emblematic of the city of Brussels, he had become an honorary citizen. In reference to one of his songs, the mayor of the city Philippe Close also reacted with a “Damn damn, we already miss him…”.
Arno, honorary citizen of the @CityBrussels went away. We will no longer see its silhouette in the Sainte-Catherine district. Damn damn we miss him already…
— Philippe Close (@PhilippeClose) April 23, 2022
His manager, relayed by many Belgian media, meanwhile that “we will all miss him, his family, his friends and his musicians. He will always be with us thanks to the music that kept him alive until the end”.