Bernard Lenoir

Bernard Lenoir was born on September 13, 1946 in Deauville. He grew up in Algeria, a country he left at age 17, in 1962. He then became a disc jockey at Tam Tam, on the Côte d'Azur before finding a job as a radio presenter in Paris at France Inter. Bernard Lenoir's first radio presenting was on the early morning show before being recruited by José Artur as a presenter for Pop Club. Through out the decades he presented different genres of music including: Souvenirs souvenirs (60s music), Cool (black American music) and Bananas (world music). In 1978, he presented a show called Feedback and broadcasted many live concerts, including Joy Division's 1979 concert at Bains-Douches. In the 80's, he joined Radio Europe and later returned to France Inter in the 90's, where he had a show called C'est Lenoir (This is Lenoir), which played alternative music and the Black Sessions (named after the English translation of his surname), where many artists including The Cure took part in. In 2011, his show was cancelled and Lenoir took retirement.

Links To Peel
Lenoir is considered as the French John Peel, where he would play new artists and sessions of alternative artists. Lenoir knew of John Peel's work and admired the DJ and released an album of what he considered were the best Peel session tracks. The album was released only in France in 1990 called the Best Of Peel Sessions (Par Bernard Lenoir), featuring his favourite session tracks amongst artists such as The Smiths, Joy Division, New Order, Wedding Present and many others. Whether Peel knew of Lenoir's work remains unanswered, but it seems Peel had an influence on Lenoir's musical tastes, especially his last two compilation albums released in 2013 called L'Inrockuptible and L'Inrockuptible 2, which featured Lenoir's favourite artists in the last 30 years.