Few Quebec artists arouse as much fascination as Jean Leloup. His eccentric personality, his escapades, his grotesque remarks in interviews have fueled the rumor machine since his debut, only strengthening his cult. But in John Leloup. Great moments of lucidity, the journalist Olivier Boisvert-Magnen manages to pierce for the first time part of the mystery surrounding the “Ponpon king”. This book is certainly not a biography strictly speaking, but it has the merit of lifting the veil on certain little-known parts of the hectic life of this popular singer “quite “fucked” thank you”.
The work is above all a musicography, in which each of the chapters tells the genesis of an album by Jean Leloup. But Olivier Boisvert-Magnen has carried out such expert work by dusting off an incalculable number of archives and by interviewing an impressive range of former collaborators that inevitably, this book also makes it possible to draw a rather intimate portrait of Jean Leclerc, the man behind the iconic singer.
What the public suspects — bipolarity and consumption problems — colors this brick of more than 300 pages. But everything is approached with great restraint, without ever falling into voyeurism. Olivier Boisvert-Magnen admits having preferred to keep certain information silent, when he judged that they had no connection with the music.
“There may be something very Quebec in there. All the artists will say it: we have a star system here which is very modest. There are no paparazzi and that kind of thing. So if I had crossed the family and love line, I wouldn’t have been comfortable with that. Especially since he did not respond to our interview requests. He was therefore not there to defend himself, ”explains the journalist, who does not hide being an admirer of Jean Leloup from the start.
His admiration is evident in this essay, which fully assumes his ” geek “. The book is aimed primarily at music lovers and fans. They will no doubt be happy to know some unpublished anecdotes about the six incredible years that preceded the release of the now timeless album. The domein 1996. During this period, Jean Leloup recorded bits of songs left and right, with a ton of different musicians, in Montreal and New York, to such an extent that his record company had a terrible time to determine all the collaborators of the disc to designate them as such.
Enfant terrible
All Leloup’s albums are epics in themselves, and this is precisely what each of the passages of the book tells. The chapters are interspersed with quotes from artists as disparate as France D’Amour, Hubert Lenoir, Loud and Ludovick Bourgeois, who explain how Leloup’s work inspired them.
“I knew he was an artist who transcended generations, but what surprised me was how much he inspired artists with such different styles. […] For me, Leloup and [Daniel] Bélanger will become legends, along with Beau Dommage and Harmonium. These are two artists who have constantly renewed themselves and who have crossed the ages,” notes Olivier Boisvert-Magnen.
That said, Jean Leloup’s career is not without a hitch. The book goes behind the scenes of some less glorious moments, like that famous show in August 2008 at the Coliseum Pepsi, where he arrived an hour late before starting to insult the public. Leloup had not digested that the big “pow-wow” he wanted to organize at Lac Beauport was moved inside. He was obsessed with his original idea, in which he imagined people dressed up as “Indians” and “Queens of England” on the ski slopes of Le Relais resort, dreaming of thumbing their noses at the 400e of Quebec.
Jean Leloup prefers to sabotage everything when things don’t go his way. This was also the case for his experimental feature film icecreamwhich, with its scenario without tail nor head, probably competes with Caido, by Michel Brûlé, for the title of the worst Quebec film of all time. Shooting in Vietnam was so chaotic that Jean Leloup and his team had to leave the country, while they were being followed by the communist regime.
Those around him are at the mercy of his mood swings and ideas of grandeur: for better or for worse. All are replaceable. Unfaithful, Jean Leloup has the annoying habit of disappearing and no longer giving news to those he wishes to exclude, rather than telling them the truth.
“Jean can be the worst and the best person in the world in the same afternoon”, confides in the book his former manager Anthony Ayotte, first hired to film a reality show to the glory of Jean Leloup, project finally abandoned along the way.
The man behind the character
The luminous side of Jean Leloup springs just as much in this vast musicography. It is said that man can be caring, generous, touching. Aspects of his personality that he is not used to letting appear during his rare media appearances, each one more delirious than the other. Would the singer-songwriter play a role in front of the camera? Or perhaps he has become a prisoner of this whimsical character…
“I don’t think he’s playing a character, but there’s a side he keeps to himself, for sure. On my third meeting with him, at the time of the release of In Paradise City [en 2015], it was the first time that I had met him alone, without a press officer, without a manager. And it was the first time that I had the impression of being in front of someone sensible. If he was still as seen in the media, there wouldn’t be so many people hanging around him. People would have fled him,” concludes Olivier Boisvert-Magnen, now a columnist at Radio-Canada.
During his time as a cultural journalist, he met his idol four times in total. But for the writing of this book, his requests for an interview with the manager of Jean Leloup remained a dead letter. Olivier Boisvert-Magnen cannot therefore confirm that Jean Leloup is aware that a book about him will appear on Thursday.
The interpreter of cookies and D’Isabella would have spent part of the pandemic with his brother, in Costa Rica, cut off from the rest of the world. Jean Leloup is used to taking off after releasing an album. Sometimes this exile heralds a great return.