The moment of a conversation about their career, the passage of time and the world around them, The Press takes news of personalities beloved by Quebecers, who now live farther from the spotlight.
Posted at 8:00 a.m.
“People often ask me: ‘What’s become of Claude Rajotte?’, asks her friend and former colleague Geneviève Borne. Well, he becomes the same as usual: he is at home and he listens to music. »
From his large apartment in downtown Montreal, the most generous and ruthless of music critics, joined by videoconference, sums up his daily life as a young 66-year-old retiree. “I love it, doing nothing. I like my little peace. I get up when I want, I go to bed when I want, no pressure. It’s over, the stress of life. »
He turns his computer towards his cat, languid on an armchair. “That’s great. A companion from a long line of felines with ridiculous names: Roland, Sphinxe (with an e, yes), Pouf. “Poof went poof after only a year”, jokes its former owner, the acidity of his humor having obviously not been diluted by age.
Then, while we’re at it, the ex-VJ, who piloted his last show on Musimax in December 2015, shows his interlocutor the audio system he bought for his 65and anniversary, and describes its quality with the help of a sentence that his followers already guess.
Sounds like a ton of bricks.
Claude Rajotte
Claude Rajotte claims that he does nothing, which is both true and false, insofar as music occupies the same place in his life as it has always occupied. If he got rid of several records during his last move – “my remixes of Milli Vanilli, I didn’t particularly care about them” -, the undertaker of the CD Graveyard is still as obsessed with new sounds, which he mainly discovers thanks to the high fidelity of the Tidal streaming service. Music remains his big business.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Claude Rajotte, in 2001
His hearing regimen? “I wake up listening to classical music and watching my news. When I do the dishes, I can listen to total muzak. When I take my bath, it’s jazz from the 1930s, 1940s. In the evening, from 1:30 a.m. until I go to bed [vers 5, 6 h], it’s drum and bass music. And the Beatles, his favorite band? “I don’t need to listen to it anymore, my brain plays it for me on its own. »
Rajotte has always lived upside down from the rest of society, at night, and always resided downtown, because his bustle calms him down. When he arrived in the metropolis in 1982, he lived in an apartment on Crescent Street, between Sainte-Catherine and De Maisonneuve. “I could make all the noise I wanted, play punk at 4am while vacuuming: no complaints. »
like a monk
Born in 1955 in Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Conseil, a village near Drummondville, Claude Rajotte was, until the age of 18, what he himself called a “fat”. “I weighed 215 lbs at 15 years old. He sings these last words to a perky tune. “See, I always said 215 at 15 would make a great Beau Dommage song. He assures us that the taunts he suffered as a teenager left him no scars, but a somewhat devious psychologist would no doubt see in the distrust he has always maintained in the face of the outbursts of the masses a consequence of this bet. apart.
At the heart of a media landscape where animators must often change hats during the same career, Claude Rajotte will never have been anything other than Claude Rajotte, this gentle misanthrope of an eternally renewed curiosity, this music lover demanding communicative enthusiasms, this monomaniac maintaining a high idea of the power that music possesses to burst the walls of our imaginations. Right from the start, he was pleased to take the opposite view of the consensus: “To Good Sunday [son premier contrat télé]I was doing reviews on Einstürzende Neubauten [groupe allemand de musique industrielle] in front of Reine Malo. »
It was thanks to a device bought by his father in a pharmacy – “it was Françoise Hardy who played and as my father saw that I liked it, he had offered it to me” – that the young man tuned into CKGM, the ancestor of CHOM. “It was a trigger. It was very artistic. At the time, each animator did what he wanted: to introduce music. It is also at CHOM that he will end up after being fired from CKOI for insubordination. “When I arrived at CHOM, my English was terrible. I could only say, “Now Led Zeppelin, we CHOM.” But I carried my dictionaries with me and tried not to smoke too many bats. »
It is this freedom that he will defend throughout his career. After leaving the small screen in 2015, Claude worked for a time for a company offering disc jockey services. One evening in a party Montebello office, the dance floor revolts. “People were shouting ‘Help’ after half an hour. I had been asked for a Latin evening. Me, I went looking for modern cumbia, electro, while they, the poor, they hoped Despacito. »
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, PRESS ARCHIVES
Claude Rajotte during the 18th anniversary of MusiquePlus, with Catherine Vachon, Geneviève Borne, Marie Plourde and Sonia Benezra, in 2004
“I can say that the great love of Claude’s life is music”, confides Geneviève Borne, an observation that would be obvious, if she did not hear the expression “great love” in the literal sense. , and not as a hyperbole. “He is like a monk who will dedicate himself to study, rituals, prayers, mediation. Claude, his life is devoted to listening, analysis, love of music. »
The former VJ remembers that his comrade, at the time when he received more than forty promotional discs each week, still ordered dozens and dozens of albums to import.
In contact with Claude, you reassure yourself of the normality of your own love for music. It confirms that you are normal. And it tells you that you can be whatever you want in life, no matter what people think. If your mission in life is to discover music, to share your passion: perfect, that’s it.
Genevieve Borne
Like an RBO sketch
Claude Rajotte was diagnosed last year with Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that he controls by injecting himself with medication and taking care of his diet. Tired, he immediately gave up his CIBL show. He doesn’t really miss the microphone and the camera.
“Lucky that I was able to do my destroys at the time when I was doing them”, he says about these segments to which his legacy is often reduced, while he will also have been a pedagogue and a guide for all a generation.
At the end of some episodes of CD Graveyard, the ruthless host tortured a mediocre album, subjecting it to torture sessions worthy of Guantánamo. It was the co-founder of MusiquePlus, Pierre Marchand, who had proposed this idea to him after having seen him throw a disc in the lunch (!) of Francis Bay. “I was always breaking records, of course, even before doing destroys. »
When he returned to MusiquePlus in 2011, Claude Rajotte now had to have his destroys approved by the record company of the artist on whom he imposed this martyrdom. “Lucky that I was able to say all the bullshit I wanted to when it was allowed. Today, I would be chased by everyone. The executioner of lasers, however, ensures that no one has ever complained of having been buried six feet under. “Everyone understood that it was a joke, that it was like an RBO skit. »
Does he regret that TV now makes so little space for music? “We don’t care about television, the music is on the web now. I don’t know how people watch shows like The Voice. My god… It’s discouraging. They should do The Drums instead, it would be more interesting! I say that jokingly, because I stopped hating people. I don’t listen to them, it’s simpler. »
That week, Claude Rajotte posted on Mixcloud, as he is used to, a new selection of drum and bass and jungle music. “When I listen to stuff I like, I say to myself: I can’t keep this to myself. It’s like drugs. »