Between the best and the worst | Michel Rivard is already dreaming of his next song

In Between the best and the worst, an artist revisits, one song at a time, the peaks and valleys of his work. Michel Rivard, who was inducted into the Canadian Authors and Composers Hall of Fame on Wednesday and who is launching a new live album on Friday, Around the blockopened the doors of his memory to us.

The song you can’t play anymore

There was a long period, after the first end of Beau Dommage, when I no longer played The seal’s lament in Alaska, because I was tired and pretentious. Then at one point in the same year I saw Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and James Taylor perform, and the four of them did all the songs I wanted to hear. From that moment on, I decided to do it again, without asking myself any questions, as best I could. And the taste came back. The reaction of happiness from the audience is always palpable.

Your favorite cover of one of your songs

Diane Dufresne who performs Oblivion Or The Return of Don Quixoteit was in the dash.

But it is certain that in 1975, when Félix Leclerc, a few months after the release of the first Beau Dommage album, invited us to a private listening of his version of The lament, we pinched ourselves. Not only did he cover my tune, but he jazzed it up and, what’s more, before we listened to it, he said to me: “You’ll see, I changed a word. » When I heard him sing “He imagines his girlfriend putting on a show” [et non « Y voudrait voir sa blonde faire un show »]I realized that I should have worked harder.

Extract of The seal’s lament in Alaska (reprise by Félix Leclerc)

Your favorite song among those you wrote for others

I really like the text of Jérémie’s guitar [de Patrick Norman], Between Matane and Baton Rouge [d’Isabelle Boulay] And Just an adventure [d’Offenbach]. This was my first try for Gerry [en 1985] and I worked very hard to sing those words in my head with his rolling R’s. “I kept in my leather heart / all my loves in wax statues / you melted them with a smile”, I was at our house and I couldn’t wait to hear him sing that.

Extract of Just an adventureby Offenbach

The song you wish you hadn’t recorded

Heart on tightrope [de l’album Un autre jour arrive en ville de Beau Dommage en 1977], I find it appalling. This is me trying to make reggae. It’s failed cultural appropriation and the text, tell me what it’s about.

There are also songs that I don’t exactly disavow, like Rumors about the city [1983]but at some point, you have to face the facts: I’m not a rocker, I’m just the king of ballads.

The song you would like to correct

In Another day comes to townthere are some great ideas, but it feels too much like I want to be Bruce Springsteen and write great images about the night.

Excerpt fromAnother day comes to town

Your favorite monologue

I like the monologue on the new album where I explain the genesis of The Idiot’s Waltz and D’A hole in the clouds. But it is certain that Drobny Orobné’s first monologue [sur Bonsoir mon nom est Michel Rivard et voici mon album double en 1985] is striking. There are many, in the monologues of that time, bits of improvisation that we did at the table with friends. I may have stolen a line or two from Claude Meunier. And there was perhaps also the influence of Andy Kaufman in Taxi.

The song you had the most fun rearranging for this tour

Fell from the sky took on another dimension. In The origin of my species [2019]we had played the intimacy card, but there, with the winds and the operatic choirs, every evening there is a thrill that runs through the room.

Your song that moves you the most

It is still Oblivion [1992]. She reminds me of the main character, whom I knew well, Claude Jutra. But it’s not necessarily a song about Claude Jutra, it’s a song inspired by him. He owned the house where I rented a room on Laval Avenue. He is a gentleman who moved me with his solitude. He was starting to lose bits of it. And when I saw him again some time later, his illness [l’Alzheimer] had gotten much worse. It took me several years to be able to write the song.

Excerpt fromOversight

When what we called the Claude Jutra affair happened in 2016, I did not speak out. I believe the people who have complaints about him, but what I could have said at the time is that this song is far from being a tribute. It’s a sad observation about a sad life that ended even more sadly.

The cover you abandoned the quickest

Beau Dommage’s first big venue success was at the Nelson Hotel. One evening, in the kitchen which served as our dressing room, we saw three guys from Offenbach arrive: Pierre Harel, Willie [Michel Lamothe] and Wézo [Roger Belval]. We all say to ourselves: they are coming to kill us. But on the contrary, they jumped into our arms. Pierre Harel, a bit of a mythomaniac, tells us: “You people are the Beatles, the rest of us are the Stones. » And he adds that they will come back the following week.

In the meantime, we’re starting to play a folk version, a bit cuteof Blues hug and saying to ourselves: if Harel comes back, we will do it. Harel walks into the dressing room after the show and the first thing he says is, “Don’t ever play that again.” »

The most legendary album you almost participated in

Two hundred nights an hour from Fiori-Séguin, in 1978. Pierre Huet, François Bouvier and I left with Serge [Fiori] in his old Valiant, spending three, four days with Richard [Séguin] in Saint-Venant. We talked about life there, about the small community of hippies who helped each other. And we started playing songs. I’m pretty sure there’s a sentence or two in It feels good which come from me.

But I left for Europe with Beau Dommage and decided to stay in Brussels. I missed the Fiori-Séguin boat, but I wrote my first solo album, Beware of true love.

The most amazing compliment you received

During the album tour Savage [paru en 1983], in an open-air show in Gatineau, there were three guys in front of the stage with Quebec flags who were hot or frozen, but who were in any case tripping very hard. At the end, I go to greet them and one of the guys says to me: Michel, you’re our Ozzy! [Immenses rires] Where did he get that? I wish he would have shown me his pusher.

The phrase taken from one of your songs that best represents you

“In the north of the city, of a northern city, there is a little guy who is still looking for the thread of his memory. » [Dans La lune d’automne, 1992]

Your proudest song

The next.