INTERVIEW
“I dream, I dream. I wash a lot less than I dream. I’m a bit of a raccoon, but a lot of dreamer”. These words surely mean something to you. These are those of The song of the dreaming raccoon from the musical tale Emilie Jolie. In its original 1979 version, it was Louis Chedid, then a young singer of 31 years old and not yet famous with the general public, who performed it. 41 years later, this collective experience remains a very beautiful memory for the singer, as he explains at the microphone of Pascale Clark in Media Culture.
“I loved participating in this record”
“I loved participating in this record,” he recalls. “In addition, I was just starting out. I was not well known at the time, and I had the chance to meet and rub shoulders with Georges Brassens, Henri Salvador, etc. All these people were my heroes.”
In this first version of the musical tale (brought up to date in 1997, 2002 and 2018), Louis Chédid also sings on the same album as Sylvie Vartan, Françoise Hardy, Yves Simon, Robert Charlebois, Julien Clerc, Alain Souchon, Laurent Voulzy , Eddy Mitchell and Philippe Chatel, at the origin of the project.
“Brassens spoke to me, I founded on the spot”
But it is his meeting with Georges Brassens, the idol of his adolescence, which marks him the most. The two singers did not record together, but both present the project on Michel Drucker’s set. “I was able to chat a little bit with Brassens, for the first and only time in my life”, explains Louis Chedid.
The young singer has just released his song I made myself the beautiful, and Georges Brassens discusses it with him, to his astonishment. “He had heard my song on the radio, and he spoke to me about it then. I couldn’t believe it, I was on the spot,” explains the singer, who seems surprised by this exchange even today.
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