Between the best and the worst | Pierre Flynn has more gratitude than regrets

In Between the Best and the Worst, an artist revisits, one song or moment at a time, the peaks and valleys of his work. “It gives me pleasure to be your new victim,” jokes Pierre Flynn, who is celebrating 50 years of career and who, despite his reputation as the prince of darkness, has never stopped believing that it is sweet to be in life.

Your best memory of opening for King Crimson

It was one of the first big shows of October [le 19 septembre 1973 au Capitole de Québec et le lendemain au Capitole de Montréal]. The technical team at King Crimson had been great with us. We weren’t pushed too hard, but we weren’t mistreated. The guys in the group pretended to be curious about how stupid we were. I remember our manager, who gave me the envelope containing our fee: $60, for the whole group, but we were so happy to be the opening act for the best band in the world.

Juan Rodriguez, one of our great rock journalists, wrote the next day in the Montreal Star : “October almost steals show. » We were bragging.

Your song that moves you the most

It is My little warrior [2001]. Especially when I get to the end. I wrote it when my daughter was 4, she is now 31.

[Pierre récite] “We bequeath you a strange land/Where sheep no longer have mothers/Where Antarctica loses its tunic/And penguins drown in the water…” Just after that, there is danger for me.

[Il reprend] “But when I see you in the hallway…” [Sa voix se serre] “A strange hope comes back to me/Because we are here in the light/Hello my cat, my little warrior”. You see, I just say the text and I fall for it, that’s why I can’t sing it live anymore.

My daughter has never really told me what she thinks about it, because we still have a modest relationship. It’s not the kind of thing she’s going to tell me, but it’s not the kind of thing she needs to tell me.

Your weirdest song

It is The 11-beat waltz [1975] of October. It is constructed in 7 and 11 beats with a slightly bizarre text: “Sitting on my steak, I wait for ecstasy all the time/Excited in the void, eager, absent, I’m bored”. I played with the sounds.

One day, I shared a dressing room at the Quebec Summer Festival with Fred Fortin, we started chatting and he said to me: “The tune from October that makes me the most trippy is The 11-beat waltz. » My esteem for the song suddenly went up a few notches. I would love to hear Fred sing it.

The song you love more today than when you created it

Recently, The enemy [1987] regains relevance to the global situation. I feel like I can fully embrace it. There is in this phrase from the chorus – “There is the enemy, the enemy is there, and he is watching your heart” – something banal, but which resonates.

By pointing fingers too much, we may not examine ourselves enough, even though the enemy is within us too. Every day is a kind of little struggle to move to the brighter side of things. We must stop imagining that intolerance is always the prerogative of others.

One of your biggest regrets

Gerry Boulet came to me with music for See you sweet [1988], which would be his last album, but we didn’t know that yet. It was music inspired by Fats Domino, very major, very happy, not quite my cup of tea, because it’s known to me [il sourit]I am the prince of darkness.

It wasn’t easy to find a thread, but I ended up writing a blue flower text in which I talk about lilac and periwinkle. I call Gerry to tell him that it’s been released and he answers: “Pierre, I’m mixing the album. » I arrived too late.

People often say that they don’t regret anything in life, and I regret a lot of things, especially the ones I did late. I recorded the song, The path of flying hearts [1991]on one of my albums, but I still regret not being able to hear Gerry sing it.

The song that took you the longest to finish

For My prayer [2001], I had music, a little soulful, for a while, and I was afraid of ruining it with a bad lyric. The solution I found to avoid ruining it was to do nothing for a long time, but songs don’t write themselves.

One day, I decided to lock myself in a seedy hotel room in Quebec until I found the key to this song. It would take as long as it took, I wouldn’t come out without the song. But after three days, nothing had happened.

One evening, I went to have a beer at the Fourmi Atomik, rue d’Auteuil, and when I came out at 3 a.m., I was in a bit more of a good mood. I climbed onto the ramparts, and poof, it fell on me: “At my feet a carpet of jewels/It’s my city lying in its night/I climbed up to the railing/Telling myself that It’s sweet to be alive.”

Your best duo show that no one remembers

In 1986, I met Gerry [Boulet] in a Pauline Julien show at Club Soda. Gerry introduced me to his friend Maurice Painchaud, from the Îles-de-la-Madeleine, who wanted Gerry to go play at his inn. Gerry said to me: “Hug, Pierre, come with me, we’ll do this together. » It was getting late, I said yes, yes, but I was sure he wouldn’t remember. The next day, the phone rings. It was Gerry. I was stuck.

I did a first set with my songs, Gerry accompanied me for two, three tunes, then Gerry played his and then, in the third set, we played Ray Charles and old rock’n’roll. We did seven, eight shows. Nobody remembers that, but we had a lot of fun.

Your best medley in someone else’s show

[Durant la tournée À fond d’train, réunissant Offenbach et Plume Latraverse]

In 1983, Octobre had just split up and perhaps because Plume wanted to give me a job, he asked me to join him as a keyboardist. And what’s more, he asks me: “Would you like to do some songs of your own?” »

I had gone up in the middle of the Plume show medley of three tones: The song of the underground, The cursed machine and another. But I had set a condition for Plume: It would be great fun for you to sing The cursed machine with me.

He groaned a little, because Plume rarely does performances, but he said yes, and it made for an explosive number.

The song you put away the longest

This is the first time in my current show that I put The cursed machine [1972], since the end of October. As it’s a little tour of my 50 years of musical life, I told myself that the time had come to relive it.

I’m still making a whole preamble because there are things that are dated in the text. Robineux, we don’t say that anymore. We no longer talk about class struggle. But beneath the surface of things, the machine, even if the vocabulary has changed, it still runs and hums comfortably. Too comfortably.

The song you are most proud of

I was asked this question recently and I answered Believe [2001]. But today, I want to say that it is Star, star [2015]. I’m a song maker, I don’t claim to be a poet, but I like to think that some of my songs have a poetic dimension, something a little mysterious.

I love it because inside there is a wish for kindness.

February 27 at the Gesù on the occasion of Montreal in Lights and on tour throughout Quebec

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