“Le Rital” made an impression, “Aime-Moi” or “I won’t write to you anymore” made hearts capsize in the 1980s: Belgian singer Claude Barzotti died on Saturday at his home from cancer. .
The singer-songwriter with a slightly hoarse voice “died at the age of 69 in his bed, surrounded by his two daughters”, in Court-Saint-Étienne, between Brussels and Charleroi, in Belgium, his manager told AFP. and conductor, Laurent Comtat.
“Barzotti preferred to be called a singer of emotion rather than a romantic. He was a lively flayed, a real sensitive, who drank to fight against his stage fright, ”he said.
Ill, Barzotti had stopped his career in 2020, and died of pancreatic cancer.
“I am rital and I remain so / And in word and in gesture / Your seasons have become mine / But my music is Italian”, sang Barzotti in his greatest hit, “Le Rital” (1983).
Born Francesco Barzotti on July 23, 1953, into a family of Italian immigrants from the Marche region (center), the singer with curly intense brown hair, evoked his origins and his condition as a “foreigner” in this song – which new generations could hear in the movie “Camping”.
His father was a minor. Claude will train in his youth in music theory, classical guitar and singing. He will begin his career in the 1970s, but success will not come until the 1980s.
Among his hits, slow songs and hit songs that rocked the booms of the 1980s, such as “I won’t write to you anymore” (1984), or “Aime-moi” (1990).
In the years 2008-2009, he had participated in nostalgic tours “Tender age and wooden head”, with Marie Myriam, Frank Alamo, Demis Roussos or Patrick Juvet.
Barzotti had spoken several times publicly about his alcohol problems, confiding on Belgian TV to having drunk at times up to five or six bottles of whiskey a day.
“I am a sad person. I can’t explain it, because I have everything, but I have nothing in fact,” he blurted out on the screen.
“Claude Barzotti was the French Italian lover on duty, an endearing and sincere guy, who suffered a lot because of women”, remembered for AFP the singer Hervé Vilard (“Capri, it’s over” ), who rubbed shoulders with him notably in concerts.
“He was the idol of the Middle East! You went to a nightclub, if you were French, to please you, we sent you Barzotti’s records. You went to New York, you heard Barzotti in Little Italy!”, he underlined.
“His songs, it was not marshmallow. He needed the words, he was a Latin. And that was another time,” he continued.
Barzotti? “A deliciously funny man, full of humor, he loved life and that’s perhaps what won the day,” producer Olivier Kaefer, organizer of shows over the years, told AFP. 1980. “We are going to regret it a lot”.
Among the reactions to his death on Saturday, the secretary general of the French Communist Party Fabien Roussel said he was “sad to learn of the death of Claude Barzotti, interpreter of the Rital and of so many songs from the 80s that made us vibrate and dance “.