The Bezard Legacy: From Lido de Paris to Las Vegas to Bezard Guitars
The Bezard Legacy: From Lido de Paris to Las Vegas to Bezard Guitars
Bezard Guitars didn’t appear out of nowhere. My work sits on top of a much older story that starts in Paris in 1924 with my grandfather, Pierre Louis Bezard. He grew up in a world that was about to fracture. As a young man, he survived imprisonment in a Nazi work camp during World War II. When he came home, he did not choose something safe or small. He went straight into the chaos and discipline of backstage theatre. He started at the bottom, learning rigging, cues, and practical problem-solving, and over time he worked his way up until he was directing some of the most complex live shows of his era.
In the 1950s, Pierre became a stage director at the legendary Lido de Paris and worked with the Ballet de Roland Petit. His world was feathers, glass, hydraulics, mirrors, and precision. At the Lido, he was not just calling “places” from the wings. He was orchestrating dancers, lights, moving staircases, costume changes, and live music into a single, seamless experience. The classic image people have of a Paris revue—the towering headdresses, endless staircases, and ultra-tight chorus lines—was the environment he spent his life shaping and refining. The show had to feel effortless from the audience, but behind the scenes it was pure engineering, discipline, and relentless iteration.
In the early 1960s, that Parisian sense of spectacle was exported to a completely different landscape: the Nevada desert. Pierre and his wife Nadine moved to Las Vegas on what they believed would be a five-year contract. There he directed lavish productions such as Casino de Paris and Vive Les Girls! at the Dunes, helping translate the Lido aesthetic into the emerging language of the “Vegas show.” The feathers, the staircases, the high drama, and the high precision were not just decorations. They became the template for what a Las Vegas production was supposed to be. Over time, Pierre built a life in Vegas, collaborating with major stars like Pavarotti, Maurice Chevalier, Sandler & Young, the Smothers Brothers, Line Renaud, Louis Jouvet, Miss Bluebell, and Leslie Caron. During those years he also served as Honorary Consul for France in Las Vegas and eventually received the French Order of Merit. What began as a temporary contract turned into a lifetime of building worlds onstage.
That is the atmosphere I come from. My grandfather’s job was to make impossible ideas work in reality: to turn sketches, music, and wild concepts into something that could be walked on, danced on, and lived in, and then repeated night after night without falling apart. The blend of precision engineering and maximal expression that defined his work is the same thing I chase in every instrument I build. Where he used light, motion, and bodies on a stage, I use wood, metal, and electricity. The goal is similar in both cases. You give performers a space, or in my case an instrument, that feels like it was built exactly for the performance they are about to give.
Bezard Guitars is my way of continuing that line of work. Instead of showgirls and moving staircases, I build instruments for modern players who demand both brutality and nuance. These are guitars and basses that can survive the rigors of touring, hold up under intense scrutiny in the studio, and still feel like a piece of personal mythology when they are in your hands. The legacy I am carrying forward from Pierre is not just “art” or “entertainment.” It is the belief that performance deserves infrastructure worthy of the moment, whether that means a full stage at the Lido or a single guitar under blinding lights.
Stagecraft is in my blood. Bezard Guitars is what happens when that heritage is distilled into six (or more) strings, tuned for a different century but driven by the same obsession: build something that lets you step into your own spotlight and makes the impossible feel natural.
