The iconic hit of this Indian summer is “La drogue”, a soaring composition by Richard de Bordeaux and Daniel Beretta. The kitschy duo’s psychedelic track smells of patchouli and grandpa’s ganja wrappers.
Paris, 1968. Richard de Bordeaux and Daniel Beretta, two young up-and-coming musicians, meet at Mireille’s Petit Conservatoire. For those of you not yet retired, Le Petit Conservatoire de Mireille is a program during which music lessons were given live on the radio and then on television.
Together, they composed La Drogue, a hymn to artificial paradises that was to accompany a sequence in the film Un été sauvage.
Although Beretta and Bordeaux were cast in Marcel Camus’s feature film, the song was not chosen in the end.
The track will be mixed by Christian Gaubert, a close associate of film composer Francis Lai. On saxophone, American Marion Brown excels, with brass arrangements by Nino Ferrer (who also played in Un été sauvage). The track was released by Barclay as an EP, and was the only hit for Bordeaux and Beretta. The latter will still be heard, since Daniel Beretta has been Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice double since 1978.
The lyrics are unequivocal, at a time when the watchword was“d’interdire d’interdire“.
Half a century later, nothing has changed, since you still can’t legally catch a fart, even though, let’s face it, smoking is pretty damn awesome!
Where’s my opium, my kif?
Come quickly my Proserpine
I’m in a white bubble
I’m like a monkey in the branches
Come quickly my Proserpine
I’m a green submarine
When I pick you up,
I phone you upside down”
