“I thought it was going to last two weeks,” says Gilles Valiquette about… his career! Fifty years after the release of his first two albums, he continues to say hello, as if it were the last, to each new beautiful day of music.
Gilles Valiquette takes out the vinyl copy of Chansons pour un café, his first album from 1973, from the threadbare sleeve. The LP – left to your journalist by his mother – shows some signs of wear. “And that’s how today I learn how well my records have played: it’s difficult to find one in excellent condition,” the author jokes with that discreet smile that is his. -71 year old composer.
Back, Gilles Valiquette? “I wouldn’t talk about a comeback. “Music has been in my blood for a long time,” replies the man who, every Monday when he was 14, showed up at the local convenience store with the comrades of his first group, the Rockin’Roopers, to try to convince the responsible for the jukebox to put this 45 rpm on it, rather than that one – 45 rpms that the boys could listen to, and listen to, and listen to again, all week long, with the aim of adding it to their own directory.
The creator of Quelle belle jour has never exactly left the stage – in recent years he has presented trio performances with two backing singers and sang with Lou-Adriane Cassidy, Thierry Larose and Ariane Roy, a blessed moment in history 2022 show Le roy, la rose et le lou(p). But, it is underlined, the veteran returns today through the front door of a tour of theaters in the province and a date at Coup de cœur francophone, on November 10.
He would later add: “Sometimes there is reason to wonder how we value the past of our song. »
Birthdays being the new safe haven of the recording and entertainment industry, the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Chansons pour un café, Gilles Valiquette’s first album launched in March 1973, and re-recorded today at the invitation of director Marc Pérusse, who learned his hand by scraping Valiquette in the toilets of his high school.
“There was so much reverberation in this space that you could even get the wrong chord in Dis-lui hello without it seeming too much,” he writes in the superb cover of Retour à Chansons pour un café, on which his youth idol revisits the 13 tracks of this album which was not supposed to be one.
End of 1972. After recording the album No Need to Knock to Enter as Jacques Michel’s guitarist, Valiquette spent two evenings in the studio in order to be able to present models of his choruses to other performers. Stunned, director and former Bel Canto René Letarte said: “You should release that! »
Of the three record companies that submitted offers to him, the young musician opted for Trans-World/Zodiaque, because the label would allow him to retain ownership of the master tapes, a rare occurrence at the time. “I owe Jacques Michel a good one,” remembers Gilles. “At 19, 20 years old, I traveled with him and I had a whole master class on the roads of Quebec on copyright, contracts, everything you don’t know when you’re 20 and you sign the most important contracts of your life. »
The year 1973 marked many transitions in the world of music in Quebec. In 1972, at the age of 19, Gilles Valiquette played guitar – in one take! – on Le train du Nord, the first 45 rpm from Séguin, forced like so many artists of the time to begin their journey by drawing from the repertoire of another.
“They had to have commercial success for the record company to consider allowing them to make an album,” says their former accompanist, who for his part obtained the rare privilege of igniting his career with a complete album. , “which seems normal today, but was impossible back then.”
Marie-Claire and Richard Séguin, who lent their voices to the original version of Chansons pour un café, are back on this new version, alongside other distinguished guests, including Jacques Michel, Monique Fauteux, François Pérusse, Normand Brathwaite, Louis Valiquette (his son, from the legendary punk group The Sainte Catherines) and Louis Valois (from the legendary prog group Harmonium).
After Chansons pour un café, which had played extensively on the formerly very free airwaves of FM radio, Gilles Valiquette’s record company let him know that the time had come for success on AM airwaves.
“I don’t want to brag,” warns someone who would need to exert a lot of effort to appear full of himself, “but in the summer of 1972, on the top 40 Radio-Mutuel CJMS, it was me who I played guitar on half the songs. As a young braggart, I told them: “I’ll make you one, a hit!” »
What did it give? “It gave I’m Cool. ” Not worse.
The young braggart was clearly not just a big talker: in addition to Je suis cool, La vie en rose also appears on Second stop, which appeared as quickly as October 1973. “I found it lazy, at first era, to release just one record per year. »
What about the future? “I still have the impression that the gig I’m doing is the last one, that we’re going to shoot the plogue. When I started with the Séguins, I thought it was going to last two weeks. All I hoped for was to be able to do just one more show. »
Gilles Valiquette also reconnects on Retour à Chansons pour un café with the Norman guitar with which he recorded the 1973 album, but this time for only a short piece. It was Robert Godin who brought the six-string back from a hunting trip to Mont-Laurier, where he met Normand Boucher – Godin and Boucher would together found Norman guitars.
A beautiful mahogany guitar, believed Valiquette, who used it a lot.
“But one day, I go to La Tosca [instrument store where Godin worked] with my guitar whose paint was all peeling and he offers to make it beautiful again. ” THANKS. “The problem was, when I brought it home, it didn’t sound the same. The varnish had changed the sound. »
When Valiquette asks Godin to return the guitar to its previous state, the gentleman has no choice but to admit that his instrument is not made of mahogany, but of scraps of veneered wood, recycled by Mr. Boucher from the remains of the cabinets he made.
It is therefore impossible to remove the new varnish without risking destroying the guitar. Its original, immaculate sound will remain only a memory, immortalized on several major records of the 1970s.
