;Composite=(type=URL,url=https://images.radio-canada.ca/v1/assets/elements/16x9/outdated-content-2018.png),gravity=SouthEast,placement=Over,location=(0,0),scale=1 "L ‘Amère America by Luc De Larochellière, from yesterday to today")
October 2018, somewhere in Montreal. Thirty-two years later, it is Luc De Larochellière who welcomes me to his home, two weeks before the reissue of the 1988 album and the event-show that he will offer to the Lion d’Or for Coup de French-speaking heart. Concert during which he will perform all the songs of the disc with the members of the tour group of the time.
As we sit around the table, I point out that the demo version ofBitter America, called the “laundry room”, added to the forthcoming compact disc, is not the one I heard at the family residence in 1986.
“Indeed, because I only met Marc Pérusse in 1987, before making the first demos (including Chinatown Blues, The silence and the unprecedented A corpse for dinner), confirms De Larochellière. I’m pretty sure my mother played you the version I played in Granby, which she recorded when the contest was broadcast on Radio-Canada. “
To crown this segment worthy of Back to the future, Andrea Lindsay, Luc’s wife, lays on the table part of the newspaper clipping from the interview of yesteryear, published in a weekly that has long since disappeared. A little bit of old age, both for the artist and for the journalist, hey.
An excerpt from an article by Philippe Rezzonico about Luc de Larochellière.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Denis Wong
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Precisely, let’s start from there. The past. The vinyl and compact reissues as well as the upcoming concert, is this a rare moment of nostalgia for Luc De Larochellière?
“I have a past. There is a nostalgia attached to part of my work and I take it on. But I am very nourished by the present. What makes me get up in the morning is not what I did yesterday, it’s what I have to do today and what I’m going to do tomorrow. But I also have this sense of the past, so that it does not fall into oblivion. “
“It wasn’t so much that I wanted to do an anniversary event per se. For my 25th birthday, we released a compilation that covered my entire career, fromBitter America (1988) to A you in my head (2009). One of the reasons for reissuing the record is because it hadn’t been edited for a long time. It hasn’t been found in stores for at least 15 years and has never been on an iTunes-like platform. We did it for sustainability. I still sing several of these songs live and some are among the best known in my repertoire. “
Social concerns
“It was a time when you could tackle themes of the type I was discussing and still be broadcast on commercial radio stations. I wouldn’t want to say that there is censorship today, but when I listen to what is playing on commercial radios, it is very rare that social themes are brought up. At the time, there was a breach and I went through it. I was telling something that worried me. Perhaps my areas of concern have become even more pressing today. “
When we listen to the song Bitter America, we have the impression that a good part of the calamities and observations (war, misery, precarious economy, shanty towns, “the bullet that kills you”) which affected other continents has caught up with us.
The road is long and The elections could have been written last week, so hot is their topic. Chinatown Blues is perhaps more relevant today than in 1988 and The coach denounces abuses of power that we have counted a hundredfold in 30 years. As for Still liar and The fright of the next day, they have retained their timeless universality.
Luc de Larochellière’s album Bitter America, reissued in October 2018.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Denis Wong
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More than 30 years after having composed them, Luc De Larochellière comments on the nine songs born three decades ago from a current perspective.
Bitter America : “You listen to it and you tell yourself that our system has turned against us, when we look at the big financial crashes that we have experienced since. We spat a lot in the air. It’s the law of gravity, it goes down… But it doesn’t always come back as we think. At the time, I would not have thought that it would come back in an ecological way. Ecology, the economy, yes, there is also terrorism today … But if we look at where terrorism hits the hardest these days, it is all the same in the poorest countries. Many bad seeds have been sown… ”
The road is long : “This song is about migrants, Donald Trump’s wall, separated families … It’s the quest for happiness, for survival, for a future … And, without wanting to be a prophet, I think that it will continue in the coming years: expatriate people on one side and people who are afraid of losing their space, their identity and their culture on the other. The shock of civilizations that it will bring. “
The silence : “A song that speaks of spirituality and presence in silence. It is not a song that speaks of religion, but of a certain spirituality which is found in silence, during certain moments of pause. In this case, an unwanted stop … The guy has missed his bus and has to wait, but ends up having a good time in silence. “
Chinatown Blues : “I took the Chinese in Chinatown as an example, but I think it was more a song about the people of Quebec. What are we, the rest of us, in this land of America? America was fashionable. Pierre Flynn had made On the road, Richard Séguin was coming out America Day. America was at the center of the priorities. The image I had of Chinatown was a kind of picturesque little place where we bought bling-bling souvenirs and where we went to eat Chinese. But we, in our Quebec reality, are we that? Some kind of big Chinatown? A kind of curiosity? Where are we really full rights players in modernity? “
The elections : “We could put new faces on the characters I’m describing. New names, new faces, same roles. New actors for a script that has been written for a long time. Today would I say, “What’s the point of choosing? Today, my answer would be: “Let us choose the same. I was a bit of a cartoonish thing, of course, but we live in an age where reality goes beyond fiction. I had started to watch the series House of Cards, but I’m not able to watch it anymore, because what’s going on in the White House has gone beyond anything that was going on in this series. It’s surreal. “
Still a liar! : « We all know “boulechiteux”. I won’t name them, but I had two in mind when I wrote this song. They are not famous people. And at some point in the song, I go over that again and I become the liar. We have that in us, too. “
The coach : “It is a subject that has become very topical again, because it is a question of harassment and intimidation. But what do you do when your bully is your teacher? In the song, this gymnastics teacher acts like a bully, but I do a little awkward extrapolation where I bring it back to an international level.
Basically, it’s a song about the power that some people can attribute to themselves. It comes up in a lot of my songs, like in Save my soul. It shocked me a lot at the time and it still shocks me, the whole phenomenon of bullying. It’s like the big star of the moment, the Trump man, what is it if not a bully? And if you put sex in the equation, it falls into the #MeToo. “
The fright of the next day : “All my songs are close to me, but this one is the most emotional. It still does something to me to sing it. She still manages to make me lift the hair on my arms. We get along, it’s a youthful text. They are all early texts … But there is still something with these words, this melody. It’s a song about anxiety, when you think about it. This projection of the future. Today, anxiety may be the disease of the millennium. “
The split hourglass : ” This is the dream. The slit is a certain opening onto a world that goes beyond “I am born, I live, I die, I get up, I eat, I go to work, I go to bed…” Beyond that , there is a space and we live it in the dream, in the imagination. This is the moment when, sometimes, time stands still. This space is important to me. As a creator and as a human being. It nourishes the creator a lot and it calms the man. “
Bitter America and Save my soul
Time being what it is, we have forgotten to what extent Luc De Larochellière’s first two records have been linked. If the albums were released two years apart, a majority of songs were born in the 1988-1989 window.
“During the first tour, I performed all the songs ofBitter America, of course, but I also had a lot of songs from Save my soul already composed. I played them on the first tour, because with nine tracks on hand, that wasn’t enough to make a show. And then, I never sang dereprises in spectacle. Only original songs. Some have never made it to albums, like A corpse for dinner. »
The singer Luc de Larochellière
Photo : Radio-Canada / Denis Wong
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“We found a recording of my 1989 tour, when I officially came back to Club Soda. The songs we’re going to play on the 1stis November, at Coup de cœur, these are the songs. There were already six songs from Save my soul. The title song, Yes fragile and Avenue Foch were already present. And we will have the band tour of the time (1989, 1990). They all said yes. “
Old band
“There will be Marc Pérusse [complice de la première heure], of course, and Sylvain Clavette on drums. Sylvain had made programming on the disc. There will be Yoland Houle, who was my second bassist. Yoland arrived at the time of Save my soul to replace François Pérusse, who will come and say hello in the show. “
“Paul Picard [percussions] will be there. He played on the album and he did the first tour with us before Celine Dion stole it from me… Besides, Paul, who still plays with Celine, is going to be going back and forth from Las Vegas to play with us. . “
“Gérard Cyr [claviers] and Jean St-Jacques [claviers] Will be present. Gérard had not made the album, it was Jean Saint-Jacques who had done it and who was on keyboards at the start of the first tour. Jean had let me go because he was on another big tour, that of Make you sweet, by Gerry Boulet. Gérard had replaced him during the conflicting dates. There will also be Caroline Dupré, who took over from Gérard when the tours ofBitter America and of Save my soul intertwined. As well as the two singers who performed the most shows during these tours: Monique Paiement and Dominique Faure. It’s a big conventum of musicians. “
Like what, even 30 years lived in an often bitter America will not have weakened the friendship. It’s reassuring.
Luc De Larochellière, concert 30e birthdayBitter America : 1is November, Lion d’Or (French-speaking favorite)
Bitter America, reissues 30e anniversary (vinyl and CD): on sale November 2
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