Bruno Pelletier | The time of the balance sheets

“In my head, I am the biggest living impostor,” sings Bruno Pelletier on the first extract from his album. …because the time has come, to be published in the fall. “I knew that sentence was going to make people react,” he confides to me, when I meet him in a hotel in Old Montreal.

Bruno Pelletier suffers from impostor syndrome? “You have to understand it in the second degree,” he said. But I pretended to be strong. So much. Today I can say it. »

Pelletier turned 60 on Sunday. The time of the balance sheets for the one who resumes this Tuesday evening, at the Wilfrid-Pelletier hall, the famous role of Gringoire which he created 24 years ago in the musical Notre Dame of Parisand which gave him his greatest success, The Cathedrals Time.

“I am anxious”, says the singer. A very simple sentence, which he utters publicly for the first time in his 40-year career. Because he comes from a generation, an era, an environment – ​​that of the bar circuit – where these things were minimized.

“It’s unsettling to go on stage and say to yourself, ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to’, when everyone behind you is convinced that you’re going to rock the house. I said I was nervous, but it was anxiety. »

He made himself ill, sometimes not sleeping for several days in a row, for fear of disappointing the public. “It’s calmed down a bit over the years,” he said. I’ve been through it all my life through preparation. »

Although he may have played the character of Gringoire hundreds of times and know the repertoire of Notre Dame of Parishe rehearsed the role alone, in his living room, for months, before returning to the stage in Moncton at the end of July (he was not at the New York premiere last month).

We suspect it from the outset when we meet him, the “sex, drugs and rock and roll” diet is not part of his daily life as an artist. He keeps in shape, saves his voice, avoids air-conditioned places as much as possible. After our interview, Monday morning, he told me he wouldn’t speak until Tuesday’s performance.

“I trained for six months to Our Lady. A chance that there is a physio on the show because I hurt everywhere! I feel that I am 25 years older. At 35, I was pumping a lot less! he laughs. On the other hand, at 35, he was less open to the comments and opinions of others. “I was a control freak! “, he admits.

Pelletier is particularly happy to reconnect with Daniel Lavoie – the young people of the troupe call them the “originals”, as they were from the first version of the show – and to resume the ping-pong match between their Gringoire and Frollo characters, experience, wrinkles and gray hair giving them even more depth, according to him.

“Today, people know what they are buying when they come to see me or thereabouts. There are those who love you and those who don’t. It doesn’t matter. It slides off me like water off a duck’s back. »

I point out to this talkative singer that there is a paradox between the serenity he exudes at 60 and the performance anxiety that has been secretly eating away at him for 40 years. This discrepancy, he tells me, is at the heart of the book of interviews with journalist Samuel Larochelle, The time has come…which he will publish in the fall with Libre Expression.

This biographical book, in which he displays his vulnerability more than ever, he says, has inspired a new album of original songs, entitled …because the time has comewhich he practically designed from scratch. During the pandemic, he saw young artists creating songs themselves in their living room, with their computer, and he said to himself: why not me?

This is the first time that Bruno Pelletier has invested so much in the production of one of his albums, he who has been rolling his bump on the show-business highway for four decades.

“I worked in bars for 10 years, he recalls. I did all the competitions: The Empire of Future Stars, Rock Envol, all that, without winning anything. I was sending demos to record companies and I didn’t even have an acknowledgment of receipt. I was in my thirties, I had a child and I wondered if I was going to be able to continue. I was not discouraged. »

In 1997, his third album, Miserere, changed everything. A year later, with over 200,000 albums sold, a Félix for pop-rock album of the year (as well as male performer of the year) and the phenomenal success of Notre Dame of Paris, the proposals rocketed. France and the United States were interested in him.

“I always say that I got on my own, because I wasn’t ready to be in France as often as my record company would have liked. I didn’t have the success of the post-Our Lady that Garou knew, for example. Or that of Isabelle Boulay and Lynda Lemay. »

He still filled the most prestigious Parisian rooms, including La Cigale and the Olympia, “but one evening, not four”, unlike the others, he specifies. “The biggest stars made other sacrifices that I was not ready to make. More modest success is more like me,” he says, a philosopher.

For 25 years, he has been making “saucettes” internationally, as he calls them. A week in South Korea, a week in France, two weeks in Ukraine, Russia or Poland when it was possible. When performing, he has interpreters translate his interventions into the local language. “ Notre Dame of Paris opened up the world to me,” he admits.

Pelletier, whom many first knew in the early 1990s in starmaniais preparing to participate in the musical al Capone by Jean-Félix Lalanne, which will be presented at the Folies Bergères in Paris in January.

The ups and downs

The turn of the sixties, the time of the balance sheets, it is also the opportunity to take a lucid look at the more hollow periods of a career which lasts, but which has known its setbacks, its hard knocks and its bad years. lean. “I’ve seen venues with 4,000 people and festivals with 40,000 people, then venues with 200 people and festivals that no longer engage you. I have known all of this. »

“What do you call it, when you have reached the limit of your skills? Ah yes: the Peter principle! “While he was preparing in the mid-2000s the musical Draculawhich he co-produced, of which he was artistic director and in which he held the main role, he lost his savings, victim of fraudsters in the Mount Real affair, revealed shortly after the Norbourg affair.

He had invested $240,000 over six years in Mount Real products, at the suggestion of a friend and neighbor who was a financial advisor. He did not know that the organization operated according to a Ponzi-style pyramid structure. Like 160,000 other investors, he lost everything. ” One year later Dracula, I was still burnt out. I, who used to ride 4000 km by bike in the summer, had barely managed to do 800. I’m not fat and I had lost 25 pounds. It was unhealthy. »

Often, he told himself that he was going to drop everything, because the anxiety made him suffer too much. “I’m not independent of wealth, but I don’t need much to live well. I have always lived like this. Maybe because I was poor in tabarouette in my twenties, playing in bars. When the success came, the money I had put aside, I lost it in a fraud! »

Today, he’s grateful for the chance he has to reunite with his audience after the forced pandemic hiatus. “There are things you have to accept when you reach 60. If you’re still here, you’re lucky. If someone asks you for an autograph or a selfie, you say thank you. And you accept that you are part of the nostalgia. As Ginette Reno often says: the important thing is to last. »