Interview | Pierre Bertrand still lives on the sunny side

(Saint-Côme) Even weakened, the discreet Pierre Bertrand recently agreed to welcome The Press in his hometown of Saint-Côme, in order to take stock of a career of which Beau Dommage will have savored every moment and every refrain, as if he had only ever been on vacation.

Pierre Bertrand wanted a river. Pierre Bertrand wanted peace. And so it was that 20 years ago, in April 2004, the velvet-voiced Beau Dommage settled in Saint-Côme, in Lanaudière, deep in the woods. But on this Monday at the end of summer, it is in the village, in a park, that he joins us, under a cloudless sky, a day-off sun.

And that’s a good thing, because even though he worked on creating a number of unforgettable refrains from the Quebec repertoire, Pierre Bertrand – and that’s his great quality – always seemed a bit like he was on vacation.

This is also what is implied in several of his songs which celebrate the sweetness of idleness – A summer airobviously – when they are not upset about all those hours that have to be sacrificed to something other than having fun, like Waiting all year long for summer to finally arrive! And We lose our lives in earning it..

Songs of pure empathy, he explains, just like the superb title track of his most recent solo album, Hopepublished in 1987 (!), a prayer for a planet that has never ceased to need it.

The “big purple flash”

Usually very discreet, Pierre Bertrand has agreed to give a few interviews over the last few months to mark the 50th anniversary of Beau Dommage’s first album, but also perhaps to tell his story one last time, before returning home for good.

He prefers not to specify what he is suffering from, out of modesty or to avoid giving the disease a chance, but he will admit to having visited hospitals a lot over the past year. Emaciated face and unsteady gait; the 76-year-old man, under his eternal summer hat, appears diminished, but his big, welcoming smile has kept that gentle warmth, the same that carries his soothing voice, one of the sweetest in Quebec, in which all our problems suddenly become soluble.

He had a lot to say about music anyway, the big deal in his life since that evening in 1963 when his dad François, a Radio-Canada announcer who also ran a bookstore and record store on Place Ville Marie, came home with the Beatles’ second album under his arm. It was then “a big purple flash” that splashed the imagination of the adolescent Pierre.

He never recovered from this flash; he immediately tried to imitate the Liverpool boys on his mother’s tough Stella guitar, which he played upside down, because he was a “terminal left-hander”.

Who invited him to join the ranks of an embryonic incarnation of Beau Dommage? Pierre Bertrand doesn’t remember. One thing is certain: “Michel Rivard often joked that it was because I had an Econoline that they took me on.” We laugh.

Stay in happiness

From 1973 to today, the members of Beau Dommage have never ceased, despite many long breaks, to form a circle of friends linked by mutual admiration. They were reunited again, all smiles, during the presentation of the symphonic shows We’ve known each other for 50 years in Montreal and Trois-Rivières. A sustainability that Pierre Bertrand attributes to this decision to separate, from the start, all their income into equal parts, including copyright.

“Robert [Léger] gathered us together, a little before we went into the studio, and he asked us: “Well, what happens if we sell 10,000 of them?” And we laughed! he says. I thought that if my parents, my uncle and my aunt bought one, it would be great. But we did the exercise. Between tours, what happens to Réal [Desrosiers, batteur]who does not collaborate on the composition of the songs, but who is just as essential to the group?

The seven musicians of Beau Dommage were all very generous to each other. Generous first of all with their ideas. It took a lot of self-denial, or at least a high sense of camaraderie, to agree, like Michel Rivard, to let go Luckily there is nightone of his compositions on a text by Pierre Huet, to Pierre Bertrand.

“Ah, but you see, it was our director Michel Lachance who decided that I would sing it,” Pierre explains. At the time, Michel [Rivard] was not happy, but as our director was master after God, he was obliged to accept. And it is all to his credit, because, humbly, I dare say that it gives a good result. ” At the very least, yes.

It is also one signed by Michel Rivard, lyrics and music, that Pierre Bertrand will choose when naming his favorite song from Beau Dommage: I loved wintertaken from the 1994 comeback album.

“The symphonic version I heard a few days ago reminded me how beautiful it is,” he observes, “even if it is little known. It is a tribute to Michel that I pay and I think he deserves it.”

The songs that run through the streets

The conversation will last almost an hour and a half, talking, for the most part, about music, and then more music. About the vocal harmonies of the Hollies, Graham Nash’s first group, from which Pierre Bertrand learned a lot. About the bass line of Eight Miles High of the Byrds, from whom he learned that this instrument could also sing. From the self-mockery of several of his compositions, such as the very tearful Sitting in the kitchen“because what’s the point of living if you don’t know how to laugh?”

From the Félix for Director of the Year that he won in 2001 for his work with his friend Patrick Norman, his only Félix outside of Beau Dommage, one of his greatest prides. Flies that reigned in Saint-Césaire during the recording of The Heptad d’Harmonium, on which he forms a sublime quartet of celestial voices with Monique Fauteux, Richard Séguin and Estelle Ste-Croix. And of the cigarette he “bummed” to René Lévesque after the concert of Beau Dommage and Félix Leclerc at the 1977 national holiday in Longueuil. “It was a Sweet Caporal, sir!”

Then Pierre Bertrand sings a tune from another era. “To see that 50 years later, the public still loves us, even if Beau Dommage hasn’t been on stage for 30 years, makes me want to say, like Charles Trenet…” His voice cracks. “It makes me want to say that [il chantonne] “Long, long, long, after the poets have disappeared, their songs still run through the streets.”

With a smile on his lips and his beautiful Helen at his elbow, the stroller returns to his river. Please do not disturb him, he is still on vacation.