Great moments of lucidity | Inside the mind of Jean Leloup

In Great moments of lucidity, journalist Olivier Boisvert-Magnen explores Jean Leloup’s creative process in depth. An exhaustive journey in ten albums, in which the main interested party did not participate, but which offers a fascinating light on the character.

Josee Lapointe
The Press

The project

It was the publisher of Les Malins, Marc-André Audet, who proposed to journalist Olivier Boisvert-Magnen to write a book on Jean Leloup. The project was to do a biography, but faced with the silence of the singer to his repeated requests for an interview, he had to change his angle. “I decided to start with the beginning of his musical career, his first contact with the public when he won the Festival international de la chanson de Granby in 1983.” This is how the idea of a kind of hyper-searched musicography, in which the birth of each album is the subject of a long report, practically song by song. To do this, Olivier Boisvert-Magnen spoke to dozens of Leloup employees, those from the first hour as well as the most recent. They feed a story that will delight the geek who like to know what type of microphone was used for a song or how another was mixed. Through all these details, however, the contours of the creator as well as of the man emerge. “I learned to discover him more, in his doubts and questionings and also in his moments of genius and madness. We understand his humanity, what it is to be an artist. »

The portrait

“There are personal anecdotes that I didn’t want to go into, unless they were useful for understanding an event or a song,” explains Olivier Boisvert-Magnen. Family and romantic relationships are touched upon, as are bipolarity and addictions. But since creation and life are intimately linked for Jean Leloup, the stories surrounding the often epic albums and tours reveal both his strengths and his weaknesses. We see an eternal dissatisfied person who likes to work in chaos and who fears like the plague to be swallowed up by the system. And we discover an artist as exhilarating, unifying and stimulating as he is demanding and unpredictable, who demands absolute availability from those who work with him and who has the annoying habit of abandoning people along the way. “There are also stories of loyalty, but it’s true that there is a leitmotif. He makes music with someone for a while. Then he gets a new trip, he goes into the studio or he goes on tour, and the person disappears from his life. “Painful breakups, but that most have forgiven him because the singer took them out of their comfort zone and changed their lives. “I wanted their testimony because they are an integral part of his work. And that kind of breaks the myth of the singer-songwriter. »

The music

By choosing an analysis album by album, the journalist did not think that the vein would be so rich. “He was always reacting to his previous album. Each is a musical universe, sometimes poetic, even if themes recur. And each is tinged with different musical encounters. I didn’t believe it was at this point. But if he feeds on others, Leloup also has “a depth” to which he always returns. “His essence is always the same: a guy with his ‟guit”. The author asked artists from all walks of life to testify to the influence he had on them, from Klô Pelgag to Loud via Dumas. It is moreover Hubert Lenoir – no, it is not an innocent choice – who signs the preface. “He transcended generations and musical styles,” observes Olivier Boisvert-Magnen. How does he explain it? “He never fit the mold. But also by his tunes, which had a pop structure and which allowed him to reach everyone. His irreverent side, he recalls, was most evident in his public appearances: you can see it in the many quotes that dot the book, taken from interviews granted over the past 30 years. “His songs are his famous great moments of lucidity, where he is able to create something concise and structured. »

The wolf

It’s inevitable, Olivier Boisvert-Magnen’s book makes you want to listen to Jean Leloup again. All Jean Leloup. And he is very happy with it. “Beyond his great hits, there are pearls in all his albums,” says the author, who noticed that Leloup’s five most listened to songs on Spotify come from five different albums. “It’s crazy to see how this is not the story of just two albums. Of course, he would like to know what he thinks of the book – the singer was in Costa Rica during the whole writing, but he would have returned to Montreal when he was putting the finishing touches on it last spring. “He’s not a nostalgia guy and I feel like he doesn’t really like people who like him too much. The book is basically two things that do not trip him up. » Three and a half years after the release of The strange country, can we expect something new? ” I think so. We know what usually happens when he’s gone for a long time. When he came back with Paradise City, we knew it wouldn’t end, that he was always going to be able, until his death, to come and get us with good songs. »

Jean Leloup – Great moments of lucidity

Olivier Boisvert-Magnen

The smart guys

312 pages