There was a long period, after the first end of Beau Dommage, when I no longer played The Lament of the Seal in Alaska, because I was tired and pretentious. Then at one point in the same year I saw Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and James Taylor perform, and the four of them did all the songs I wanted to hear. From that moment on, I decided to do it again, without asking myself any questions, as best I could. And the taste came back. The reaction of happiness from the audience is always palpable.
Diane Dufresne who performs L’oubli or The Return of Don Quixote, it was in the dash.
But it’s certain that in 1975, when Félix Leclerc, a few months after the release of Beau Dommage’s first album, invited us to a private listening to his version of La complainte, we pinched ourselves. Not only did he cover my tune, but he jazzed it up and, what’s more, before we listened to it, he said to me: “You’ll see, I changed a word. » When I heard him sing “He imagines his girlfriend putting on a show” [and not “Y would like to see his girlfriend putting on a show”], I understood that I should have worked harder.
I really like the text of Jérémie’s guitar [by Patrick Norman], Entre Matane et Bâton Rouge [by Isabelle Boulay] and Only that an adventure [by Offenbach]. It was my first try for Gerry [in 1985] and I worked very hard to sing those words in my head with his rolling R’s. “I kept in my leather heart / all my loves in wax statues / you melted them with a smile”, I was at our house and I couldn’t wait to hear him sing that.
With my heart on a tightrope [from Beau Dommage’s album Another Day Comes to Town in 1977], I find it appalling. This is me trying to make reggae. It’s failed cultural appropriation and the text, tell me what it’s about.
There are also songs that I don’t exactly disavow, like Rumeurs sur la ville [1983], but at some point you have to face the facts: I’m not a rocker, I’m just the king of the Ballad.
In Another Day Comes to Town, there are some great ideas, but it feels too much like I want to be Bruce Springsteen and write big pictures about the night.
I like the monologue on the new album where I explain the genesis of La valse de l’idiot and Un trou dans les neiges. But it’s certain that Drobny Orobné’s first monologue [on Bonsoir my name is Michel Rivard and here is my double album in 1985] is striking. There are many, in the monologues of that time, bits of improvisation that we did at the table with friends. It’s possible that I stole a line or two from Claude Meunier. And there was perhaps also the influence of Andy Kaufman in Taxi.
Fallen from the sky took on another dimension. In The Origin of My Species [2019], we played the intimacy card, but there, with the winds and the operatic choirs, every evening there is a thrill that runs through the room.
It’s still L’oubli [1992]. She reminds me of the main character, whom I knew well, Claude Jutra. But it’s not necessarily a song about Claude Jutra, it’s a song inspired by him. He owned the house where I rented a room on Laval Avenue. He is a gentleman who moved me with his solitude. He was starting to lose bits of it. And when I saw him again some time later, his disease [Alzheimer’s] had gotten much worse. It took me several years to be able to write the song.
When what we called the Claude Jutra affair happened in 2016, I did not speak out. I believe the people who have complaints about him, but what I could have said at the time is that this song is far from being a tribute. It’s a sad observation about a sad life that ended even more sadly.
Beau Dommage’s first big venue success was at the Nelson Hotel. One evening, in the kitchen which served as our dressing room, we see three guys from Offenbach arrive: Pierre Harel, Willie [Michel Lamothe] and Wézo [Roger Belval]. We all say to ourselves: They are coming to kill us. But on the contrary, they jumped into our arms. Pierre Harel, a bit of a mythomaniac, tells us: “You people are the Beatles, the rest of us are the Stones. » And he adds that they will come back the following week.
In the meantime, we start playing a folk version, a little cute, of Câline de blues and saying to ourselves: if Harel comes back, we’re going to do it. Harel walks into the dressing room after the show and the first thing he says is, “Don’t ever play that again. »
Two hundred nights at Fiori-Séguin time, in 1978. Pierre Huet, François Bouvier and I left with Serge [Fiori] in his old Valiant to spend three or four days with Richard [Séguin] in Saint-Venant. We were confused about life there, about the small community of hippies who helped each other. And we started playing songs. I’m pretty sure there’s a line or two in It Feels Good that came from me.
But I left for Europe with Beau Dommage and decided to stay in Brussels. I missed the Fiori-Séguin boat, but I wrote my first solo album, Méfiez-vous du grand amour.
During the tour of the Sauvage album [released in 1983], in an open-air show in Gatineau, there were three guys in front of the stage with Quebec flags who were hot or frozen, but who in any case were very excited. strong. At the end, I go to greet them and one of the guys says to me: Michel, you’re our Ozzy! [Huge laughter] Where did he get that? I would have liked him to show me his pusher.
“In the north of the city, of a northern city, there is a little guy who is still looking for the thread of his memory. » [In The Autumn Moon, 1992]
The next.
