Le Château d'Hérouville (aka Strawberry Studios)

The first French residential international studio

Few French recording studios left as strong a print on history as the Château d'Hérouville, in France and worldwide. From 1970 to 1985, many French and international stars lived and created there, many mythical albums were recorded in this 18th-century country manor, situated 20 miles away North of Paris, transformed in a residential recording studio by its then-owner Michel Magne. A breathtaking story, about to be continued...

A book about Michel Magne and the Château studio story is being written. It should be published, in French, mid-2016. If you went once at the Château, or if you know somebody who did, please contact me: fernould@club-internet.fr. Tell me if it should be translated in English. THANK YOU!

The Château has a Facebook page since 2010.

These postcards were printed in the 1920s.
You can see on both the left wing's original second floor, now destroyed and badly rebuilt.

It’s impossible to write about the Château without talking about Michel Magne, who re-created the place the way his extraordinary personality induced him to do...

Michel Magne sent this greeting card to his friends in 1957.
Sketch by Gérard Dulac, aka Gérard Delassus, first sound engineer and technical director at Hérouville.

In the 50s, Michel Magne then in turn an electro-acoustic pioneer, a symphonic music composer, a pop arranger, and began to write music for movies. A major personality in Montmartre (where he long lived), he was friend with Françoise Sagan, Boris Vian, Henri Salvador, Jacques Loussier, Eddie Barclay... At the beginning of the 60s, he heard, for the first time, about the Château d’Hérouville by a friend. Situated in a small rural village, a few miles from Auvers-sur-Oise (where Van Gogh lived, painted and died) and Pontoise, this huge double house has been abandoned since several decades, and was almost in ruins: it had been used as a post relay in the 19th century, including an inn. Legend had it that Chopin and George Sand met there on week-ends for torrid rendez-vous…

The Château belonged then to Colette’s daughter (Colette is a French famous writer). Michel Magne visited the place, and immediately felt in love with it. He bought it at once, with a friend, keeping the left wing for himself (that’s almost 800 sq. m to live in, on three levels). He then fully renovated it, no expense spared, using only the best and most beautiful materials available. To fund this renovation, he had to write more than 10 original scores a year (for French blockbusters like the Fantômas and Angélique franchises, Les Tontons Flingueurs, Mélodie en sous-sol, Les Barbouzes and many others...). After his friend died in 1965 in a car accident, Magne bought the other wing, and began to renovate it too.

The Château left wing, seen from the park, in 1967. The swimming pool is on the right, the tennis ground on the left, outside the picture.

Afterwards, Michel Magne who was a real hedonist and gourmet, regularly invited directors, record company executives, musicians, singers… to visit him ans spend the week-end in his completely refurbished Château. Sometimes, there were more than 100 guests eating, playing, having fun in the park. Magne had now a (heated) swimming pool, a tennis ground, a studio for his paintings, a splendid music room (see picture below) under the roof, a veranda, an aviary... For the whole Parisian show-business, at the end of the 60s, Hérouville was THE place to be.

On May 26th 1969, a fire, probably from criminal origin, severely damaged the Château’s left wing. Originals of movie scores, unreleased master tapes, records, music instruments, paintings, books: a huge part of Michel Magne’s life as a composer disappeared in the flames. But Magne had a strong character: he decided to move to the right wing, and to replace his music room by a private multitrack studio built in the second floor, under the roof.

Michel Magne’s music room, in left wing’s second level, in 1967. Almost 150 sq. meters to work, play, create...

A genial intuition

Magne’s aim was to be able to work on his own compositions when he wanted, to invite musicians and try things with them without having to keep an eye on the clock. A home studio, at a time where very few people could afford one! To begin with, he bought a second hand Studer 4-track recorder and a broadcast console, heavily customized by his self-taught-in-electronics old friend Gérard Delassus, and two young assistants who helped build and wire the studio.

But that’s not enough! He then has to buy a professional monitoring system, a collection of microphones, outboard equipment for the control room, then to pay for laying out and wiring the mansard studio itself (more than 100 sq. m, 6 meters height), with visible beams and vintage chandelier, soundproof doors… Bills soon build up, and Magne realizes that to make these investments profitable, he’s rather turn the place into a commercial studio, by creating his own company – the S.E.M.M. (Société d’Enregistrement Michel Magne, ‘Michel Magne’s Recording Company’). The place is far away from Paris? Sure, but people would be able to eat and sleep in the Château (each wing has more than ten rooms), and the park is 5 acres wide...

The Studio d'Hérouville’s very first flyer, beg. 1970.

Left from Right : Gérard Delassus, Michel Magne, Dominique Linné (assistant) et Anne-Marie David (singer).

So doing, Michel Magne had the genial intuition of the residential studio concept, completely unheard of in France at that time. Indeed, Paris’ biggest studios belong to record companies themselves (Philips, Barclay, Decca, Pathé...) – and there is a slightly ‘straight’ ambiance there (tie is mandatory, tasks are strictly separated, memos and application forms everywhere). Working schedule is made one year in advance, based on record release forecasts made by the marketing service…). There are very few Parisian high-level independent studios at the end of the 60s – Europasonor, Acousti, CBE, Studio 10 and Davout among others. In record labels studios, psychological distance is growing between a permanently hired technical personnel, more or less motivated (sound engineers had left their white coat aside not so long ago), and musicians and singers who let their hair grow and claim they want to change music and the world around.

The golden era of so-called ‘pop music’ is coming along: Woodstock festival just took place, in summer ’69, and new musical stars are The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones. USA are now invaded by British music! A few years ago, hits belonged to singers with their backing musicians: now, there are made by rock or ‘pop’ bands. At the end of the 60’s, ‘Freedom’ is the main word (remember May ‘68 in France?), and many young artists don’t want to work in their record company’s studios anymore, as they contractually had to until then. Being able to record songs in a huge old house in the country, for a few days weeks in a row, without any pressure, without counting time, without sharing the equipment, without urban unpleasant aspects, is most attractive to them.

Michel Magne’s room, in the Château’s left wing, in 1967. The "carpet" is a goat skin.
After him, Elton John, David Bowie, Stevie Nicks, among many others, slept there in the ‘stars room’...

A man nicknamed DBF

On November 21st 1969, Michel Magne creates the S.E.M.M. company, to run the Strawberry Studio (he apparently didn’t know there was already another Strawberry Studio in Manchester). Magne’s address book includes the whole French show business, but amazingly, his first customers are English and American artists – thanks to Jean Fernandez, A&R manager at Barclay and a good friend of Magne, who lived several years in the USA. So come successively to Hérouville Canned Heat with Buddy Guy, Memphis Slim, Julio Fin, Rex Foster et Marilyn, Slam Stewart, Milt Buckner, Jo Jones... All these artists are famous at the time, they only spend several days in a row in Hérouville, but they contribute to the place’s fame and prestige: at the time, there’s simply no other French recording studio welcoming English or American artists on a regular basis.

All the artists love the studio’s sound itself; it’s carpeted but there are no parallel walls, huge beams are visible, with a superb huge medieval chandelier hanging, there are several isolation booths for the drums, the vocals. Three large windows look into the garden or towards the village… The control room is smaller, pretty long but rather narrow; it is several steps higher than the studio itself. The original second-hand 4-track Studer tape machine leaves place for an 8-track Scully, and Magne even buys Dolby A noise reduction units, very expensive at the time. Gérard Delassus leaves at the beginning of 1971, and newcomers (and nevertheless already experimented) Gilles Sallé and Christian Gence work with the first rock and pop bands – for example, Camembert Électrique by Gong. They are joined by Dominique Blanc-Francard.

Rex Foster’s Roads of Tomorrow was recorded in Hérouville during the spring of 1970.
One of the first records made at Le Château, released by Barclay in France.

The son of a radio sound engineer, DBF was a guitarist in the band Les Pingouins (his older brother Patrice was a radio DJ too). As they split in 1962, he found a job as a recorder in E.T.A. studios in Paris, where he did absolutely every session, from spoken-word to demos, learning methods, illustration music... A mutual friend introduced him to Michel Magne in Hérouville in November 1970. Dominique visited the studio, had dinner there and discussed with Magne; he thought the place was great. Several weeks later, Fernandez asked him to finish an Eddy Mitchell record (Zig Zag), as the English sound engineer (Keith Harwood, as a matter of fact) had to go. For a few weeks, DBF works in Paris during the day, in Hérouville at night. He soon realizes the studio sounds really good, and even if almost every equipment is ‘custom-made’ and non-standard (including the mixing console!), records can be produced in good conditions. Moreover, Dominique is fully aware of the huge commercial potentialities of the “residential” side. He quits E.T.A to become a S.E.M.M. employee in February 1971. The records he makes at the Château will be noticed and considered, and he admits that he had to re-learn completely his skills in Hérouville, working with so many English and American producers and artists.

Make it double!

Dominique’s friends, musicians and producers, follow him and begin to record in Hérouville too. So do musical TV shows, often shot in the studio or in the park. The place becomes famous, and Michel Magne is an excellent RP manager. A regular customer is Laurent Thibault, a bass player and co-founder of Magma, who runs the Thélème label for Barclay. All guests appreciate the residential side of the Château, the rooms everywhere, the gastronomic meals coocked by a Chef-poet named Serge Moreau (an old friend of Michel Magne), the always heated swimming pool in the 50-acre park, the private tennis court, and Michel Magne’s inexhaustible wine cellar. Magne was a ‘bon vivant’, he loved to welcome artists at his home and to treat them well, even if there were 20, 30, 50 guests around the table… or even more sometimes!

Magma, Michel Magne and DBF in the studio... Then by the pool. Caption : "Between these 2 pictures, only a 15-minute pause".

The climax was reached in June 1971. Jean Bouquin, once a Brigitte Bardot’s stylist, had organized a kind of French Woodstock festival in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small village several miles away from Hérouville. He had invited the Grateful Dead, but the weather was terrible, and the concert cancelled. Magne told Bouquin and the band to come and stay a few days in le Château. To thank him, the Grateful Dead played a magical 'private' concert on June 21th, in the park… but the word had spread, and there were more than 1000 people present, with firemen, policemen, and a naughty guest poured some LSD in the ‘punch’ served to everyone. Even months later, people kept telling Magne that the Dead’s music had had an exceptional effect on them! And as Magne wanted to record the festival, the Château team built a mobile studio in a white Ford Transit van, called ‘Strawberry Mobile’, which was regularly used until 1975.

Jerry Garcia (Grateful Dead) himself in the Château's huge dining room, in right wing.
There's a geometrical painting by Michel Magne hanging left, another right. Picture by Rosie McGee

Michel Magne was a generous man, but a bad administrator and no accountant. Residential costs included, the studio burnt more money than it brought in the company’s bank account. To solve this problem, Magne began by creating the Strawberry Mobile, France’s first 16-track mobile recording studio, based on the same gear as the George Sand studio with even a CCTV set, to be able to remotely see what was going on onstage. It was used in many locations, serving as a secondary studio when not on the road, parked behind the Château. As the George Sand studio was almost always busy during 1971, Magne then decided to create a genuine second one, to double the S.E.M.M. income. It was built in a separate barn, in the Château’s courtyard, using lots of concrete, curved lines, and a large control room, equipped with 4 speakers and a ‘made to measure’ orange 40-channel mixing desk. This ‘Chopin’ studio was a little too small, the ceiling too low, and doesn’t sound as good as the big one. Neither could it use the three natural echo chambers built in the left wing of the Château, whose sound was so appreciated many engineers printed it on tape, to have it for the mix. As a result, the Chopin was mainly used by French artists, the George Sand by the English or American acts.

The Château’s brochure in 1972. this is the George Sand control room.
In the background, Gilles Sallé, then DBF, then Michel Magne.