The song you are most proud of
Real Desrosiers : It is Luckily there is nightbecause it is a group effort. Michel [Rivard] made the music, Pierre [Huet] made the text, Pierre [Bertrand] sings it. It’s the one that touches me the most.
PHOTO MARIKA VACHON, THE PRESS
Réal Desrosiers and Pierre Huet, who reluctantly took part in our questionnaire exercise
Pierre Huet : Montreal. It so happens that I wrote the text, but it is especially because I will never forget that moment, at 6760 Saint-Vallier, at Robert Léger’s, when he sat down at the piano to play it and Marie Michèle [Desrosiers]who heard it for the first time, burst into tears.
The song you wish you could fix
RD: Ginette.
PH [l’auteur de Ginette] : How to correct perfection? [rires]
RD: The arrangement was done a bit too much as a joke and the text deserved more than that.
PHOTO RENÉ BAILLARGEON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES, PROVIDED BY BANQ
Réal Desrosiers at the Chant’août Festival in Quebec in 1975
PH: For me it is Montrealbecause of the error in the text. It was not a guy who wrote Watching over the stepsbut a woman, Camille Andréa. The problem is that the Camilles I knew at the time were all men. When Michel sings it today, he says bonne femme, instead of bonhomme.
Your most underrated album
RD: Passengers [paru en 1977]because the sound is exquisite. It’s a coherent album from start to finish.
PHOTO MICHEL GRAVEL, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Marie Michèle Desrosiers, Réal Desrosiers, Michel Hinton and Pierre Bertrand, in 1977
PH: You can hear the influence of Steely Dan, as you can see on many albums of the time. Steely Dan has a disproportionate imprint compared to the real success they had.
RD: We also listened to a lot of Stevie Wonder, but that doesn’t show at all. [rires]
PH: There’s a song about it, The rush hour passengerwhich I would like to be better known, more loved.
Excerpt from The rush hour passenger
Your best studio outtake or B-side
PH: I’m going with Gisele in autumn [1977]which later appeared on a greatest hits album. It is music by Pierre [Bertrand]who was really finding his style at that time. It’s a damn beautiful melody, which Marie Michèle sings like an angel.
Excerpt from Gisele in autumn
The song was a commission for The sun rises late [d’André Brassard]. I always found that it served to convey a weakness of the film, in which Yvon Deschamps and Rita Lafontaine play two hardened, dull bachelors, and then this tune plays, they sleep together and then they are suddenly in love. It’s science fiction.
RD: Disneyland [maintenant offerte sur les plateformes d’écoute en continu] is perfectly representative of the spirit of the first album, even if she didn’t find herself there. And I would also name Psychologywhich we did live, but never recorded. It was a kind of 1950s rock, like Oh! Darling.
PHOTO DANIEL LESSARD, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES, PROVIDED BY BANQ
Members of Beau Dommage at the Chant’août Festival in Quebec in 1975
PH: It was the story of a girl who, while doing a crossword, came across this word and decided to call on psychology to help her through heartbreak. It was my homage to Political Science by Randy Newman. I figured if he could make a song called political science, I could make one called Psychology.
The song you wish you hadn’t recorded
RD: Sixteen years in seventy-six [sur Un autre jour arrive en ville, en 1976]. It’s not our style at all to try to rock. We’re not a rock band.
Excerpt from Sixteen years in seventy-six
PH: It is Sixteen years in seventy-six also. I shouldn’t have written that. When you do something that is extremely current, you know in advance that it will die. I reread the text [une sorte de dénonciation d’une jeunesse militante, mais fêtarde et passive] and I realize that I was hanging out with too many Marxists. [rires]
Your most memorable viewer
PH: In 1977 in Longueuil, René Lévesque and his wife arrived, they were offered chairs and they refused. They wanted to sit on the grass, with the world.
PHOTO PIERRE CÔTÉ, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
René Lévesque at the Parti Québécois congress in May 1977
RD: He came to greet us in the dressing room after the show and Pierre Bertrand smoked a cigarette for him. He wasn’t a complicated guy, René Lévesque. He was close to people.
Your best memory ofOk here we are
[Le 26 juin 1976, sur le mont Royal, Beau Dommage, Harmonium, Contraction, Octobre, Richard Séguin et Raôul Duguay partagent la même scène. ]
RD: Actually, I don’t have any good memories of that show. [rires] It was all crooked, there were about 122 of us on the internshipit was a sonic shambles, it was wet. Apart from the pleasure, the feeling of being all together… Imagine four drummers hitting at the same time, including Farmer [Denis, d’Harmonium]who played a lot of notes…
It was captured for TV and it wasn’t rebroadcast because it was too bad.
PH: I regret that the theme song, which I wrote to music by Michel Rivard and Yves Laferrière [de Contraction]does not exist anywhere.
Your most moving return
RD: In 1992, at the Forum, for the 350th Celebrationse Montreal anniversary. When Dominique Michel introduced us, the place rose to its feet.
PHOTO PAUL-HENRI TALBOT, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Michel Hinton, Michel Rivard, Pierre Bertrand, Réal Desrosiers, Marie Michèle Desrosiers and Robert Léger in 1992
My parents were there and they were cheering non-stop. As I was scanning the crowd, I saw my dad crying his eyes out. It was like, Wow, I think my son is in a band that the world loves.
If I had not counted the beginning of All palm treeswe would still be here.
Le membre de Beau Dommage qui a le plus souffert lors de la tournée retour
PHOTO ARMAND TROTTIER, ARCHIVES LA PRESSE, FOURNIE PAR BANQ
En août 1995, à la salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, durant les Francofolies
RD : En 1994, on a tellement répété que j’avais de la misère à bouger les bras. Notre ami Jean-François Doré connaissait le soigneur du Canadien, alors je me suis fait soigner par Gaétan Lefebvre. C’était comique, parce que les joueurs rentraient dans son bureau et demandaient « C’est qui ça ? Le batteur de Beau Dommage ? Ah ouain, il joue assez fort pour avoir mal aux bras ? »
Votre plus grand regret
RD : De ne pas avoir continué en 1978. On devait faire une tournée en Europe, on avait travaillé fort pendant six mois là-bas et si on y était retournés, ça aurait pu marcher. Même chose en 1995. Le Bataclan [à Paris] offered us a series of shows, but we didn’t go. Let’s just say politely that we were never careerists.
PHOTO DENIS COURVILLE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES, PROVIDED BY BANQ
Robert Léger, Pierre Huet, Pierre Bertrand, Réal Desrosiers, Michel Hinton, Marie Michèle Desrosiers and Michel Rivard, in 1984, during the launch of the album Nice pity
PH: There are a few songs that didn’t make the cut, including one I really liked called I will go see her one daybased on a religious hymn. One evening, a few years ago, at Michel Rivard’s, we reconstructed it from memory, bit by bit. There is another one called The Old Brick School.
I would like one day, perhaps at the hospice, to sit down and finally record them.
Your most memorable show
RD: The series of shows at the Nelson Hotel in 1974. The album had just come out, we were playing for two weeks during the holidays and the first night, when we arrived, there was a line of people all the way to the town hall. We wondered what show in the Old Town attracted so many people. And the show was us.
Beautiful Symphonic Damage – We’ve known each other for 50 yearsAugust 30 and 31 at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, with the Orchestre Métropolitain under the direction of Adam Johnson and 11 performers under the direction of Antoine Gratton
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