Alternately pioneer of Quebec rock, successful singer-songwriter, valuable collaborator then general manager of the Society for the Advancement of French Expression Song (SACEF), the former Sinners François Guy died suddenly on Friday. last, at the age of 76. The news, broadcast late last Monday, shocked his family and the Quebec music community, which is losing a friend, an inspiration, a mentor, an ardent defender of song and its successors.
His old accomplice Jean-Guy “Arthur” Cossette, heroic guitarist of the Sinners, suffered the shock on Tuesday: “François was in super physical shape, he confided to Duty. We don’t expect that. [Avec les Sinners], we formed a rather special team. There was great camaraderie between us; with us, there were all kinds of controversies, but it was intended, it was to amuse the public and it worked. We wanted the world not to forget us.
“François was a very avant-garde and very brilliant, very intelligent guy, adds Arthur. We just had to follow him”. By following him, the quartet Les Sinners forever marked the history of rock here with an explosive sound that qualifies it as a garage rock band. We owe the orchestra the psyche-rock masterpiece Vox Populi (1968), “the first concept album in the history of Quebec rock, a monument, one of Quebec’s great psyche-pop albums,” recalls Sébastien Desrosiers, collector and historian of Quebec’s musical heritage. “François and his gang are the first in Quebec to be irreverent, on record as on stage where they destroyed their instruments, but they are also the first to tour in the great north of Quebec, and that’s something . »
“One day, my cousin [Louis Parizeau, batteur des Sinners] calls me: “Hey, do you want to be a singer? “, said François Guy at the microphone of Franco Nuovo during a long interview broadcast on ICI Première on May 1st. “It was the excitement of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones; I started to sing, and immediately I realized that, although the Sinners’ greatest hits were translations [de succès anglophones], we had to write our songs, because it was more interesting. »
In 1967, a year after recording their first single, the Sinners achieved popular recognition with Don’t Stand In The Rain, a cover of Don’t Go Out Into the Rain of Herman’s Hermits, then Penny Lane, the clear voice of François Guy rising above the orchestra; on the B side of the Beatles’ hit, however, is the precious Les Grits d’Aujourd’hui, a minute fifty-four seconds of powerful rock, a song written by singer Charles Prévost-Linton and François Guy. Two years later, under the name La Révolution Française, the members of the Sinners and their friends offered the immortal Quebecerscomposed by François Guy, Angelo Finaldi and Richard Tate.
“At a time when we heard a lot of prefabricated yé-yé songs, a lot of French versions of popular hits, the Sinners were more of a research and creation laboratory – they tried a lot of things and made irreverent rock”, sums up documentarian Guylaine Maroist of Productions La Ruelle, who piloted the reissue of the Sinners albums and imagined theOutrage to the Sinners presented at the Coup de coeur francophone festival in 2002.
From François Guy, “we should remember the pioneer, the pioneer and the avant-garde”, insists Sébastien Desrosiers. The avant-garde was prominent in the cult film “de gogo-vérité” Kid Feeling, directed by Jacques Godbout in 1968 whose Sinners signed the soundtrack. “We remember him as the old Sinners, escapades – more mythical than true – of the group, one or two hits, but we know little about his work”, adds the historian, praising his songs, starting with those of his first solo album (1973). Over the years, will have written dozens for Donald Lautrec, Michel Pagliaro, Boule Noire (George Thurston), Toulouse, Francine Raymond (his success Y’a les mots), Chloé Sainte-Marie and many others.
In 2000, François Guy took over the reins of SACEF, multiplying initiatives to supervise the next generation and bring them closer to their audience, with creative residency projects and tours such as Le Grand Huit and Du haut des airs. “What he did a lot was to accompany the performers, especially in the selection of songs that the young people interpreted: rather than always repeating the great hits of starmania, for example, it was a bank of modern songs for young people. He was not beating around the bush in the way of animating and directing the next generation, ”says Alain Chartrand, director of the Coup de coeur francophone festival and brother in arms of François Guy in the defense of Quebec song.
Former participant in the Ma première Place-des-Arts competition organized by SACEF, singer-songwriter Catherine Major benefited from the mentorship of François Guy: “He was someone who didn’t have his tongue in his pocket , and therefore someone who started projects, who stirred the cage of young artists to try to get the best of them and to question them. I then met him throughout my career, he was always present for me and full of encouragement. He had the flame, he was passionate. »
The departure of François Guy leaves to mourn his partner Isabelle Lajeunesse, his children Félix and Zoé, and several generations of music lovers.