Art Mengo

French singer-composer. Born in Toulouse from Spanish immigrants (both ardent Republicans who fled their country because of Franco's dictatorship), Michel Armengot suffered a 70% deafness during his childhood. Despite that, he early played a small electronic keyboard his mother gave him and as a teenager he regained perfect earing thanks to an operation and soon showed a big passion for music. After his 'baccalauréat' diploma, he studied physics and chemistry at university and played piano in a local bar in the evenings. He eventually dropped his studies and created a home studio in his bedroom. He wrote several compositions while his brother-in-law Patrice Guirao wrote lyrics around his melodies. In 1988, Michel brought a demo tape to the Polygone studio in Toulouse where he was signed for the single "Les Parfums de sa Vie". With his artist name Art Mengo (an anagram of his family name), he and his distinctive husky vocals had a big success with this song but because of a legal proble