the essential
Michel-Pierre Autissier, weakened by illness, plunged into precariousness. The musician, who sang and rose to fame with the children’s group Les Poppys in the 1970s, is asking for recognition of his disability.
Yet he is a spirited man who sang and played throughout his life as a musician. But today, Michel-Pierre Autissier is exhausted, undermined by a disease that weakens his joints. He who, barely 8 years old, was part of the famous musical adventure of the Poppys, a group of kids from the early 70s, no longer has a taste for hit melodies that denounced the war or confessed the trouble of the first loves of childhood, in the midst of the hippie movement. “I have just been given a prosthesis on my right shoulder, it is the fourth after the other shoulder and both knees”, he says, in his room at the Cedars clinic, where he is recuperating in the follow-up care unit.
Physical “glitches” that he collects with philosophy and that he has always overcome, but which this time have made him fall into great precariousness. “As I have been on sick leave for three years, I have just lost my daily allowances and I only have my disabled adult allowance to live on, i.e. 390 euros per month. Fortunately, I am hospitalized, otherwise I could not not even pay me to eat.” For good reason, by losing his job as a driver in the Castres company Balent, Michel-Pierre can no longer pay the rent of 400 euros for his apartment in the Toulouse district of Mirail, where he lives. And the administration did not make it easy for him.
The Poppys, a children’s choir that was a hit in the 70s with the title “No, no, nothing has changed”… DR
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“With the Poppys, we never saw a penny, we had no contract”…
“I’ve been calling social security and health insurance since November, but I can’t get answers to my questions,” he sighs. If his inability to work is obvious, Michel-Pierre would like to obtain recognition of his category 2 disability. to retire. Which he doesn’t have in mind anyway. At least for the stage. “I still have my production company MPA Light and I want to continue singing at village festivals when my body allows me to do so,” he hopes.
The balloche and the pangs of showbiz, Michel-Pierre knows. “With the Poppys, I was a head voice and I had popularity, but we never got any money, despite three lawsuits, because we didn’t have a contract,” he recalls. Multi-instrumentalist, teasing the guitar as much as the piano, the drums or the sax, the artist has also collaborated with recognized groups such as the René Coll orchestra or Sentimental Trumpet… “I have every intention of starting make dates,” he says. In the meantime, it is to the attention of the social services that he appeals to have his handicap recognized. Hoping to make the Poppys lie: “No, no, nothing has changed, everything, everything will continue… hey, hey!”
