In an ideal world, it’s 61e Dédé Fortin’s birth anniversary which we will celebrate on November 17. Unfortunately, the singer decided to put away his famous aviator glasses well before his time, on May 8, 2000, in a gesture that left traces and scars among those close to him and among his many fans. Few people have since managed to put their finger on the whole of André Fortin, a paradoxical character, a complex man.
This is what the cartoonist Christian Quesnel, known among other things for his drawings in Mégantic, a train in the night, You have destroyed the beauty of the world And The oblique city: to paint a fair and sensitive portrait of an artist and a man who turned out to be much more complex than we had believed during his lifetime.
“It’s Lise Raymond [qui était la relationniste de presse des Colocs, à l’époque] who had the idea of a comic strip, says the author. In fact, the project was to create an interpretive route in the Quartier des spectacles, with stations that would have told the life of Dédé in drawings. She approached me at the time, and as I was finishing my work on Mégantic and was looking for a new project, I accepted! Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and the project turned into an album. »
The most ironic thing in this story is that Christian Quesnel is not, basically, a fan of Colocs’ music. “I was a death metal fan, but I knew the songs that were popular. I remember buying Outside November [le dernier album des Colocs sorti du vivant de Dédé], and I had a lot of respect for what the band was doing. That’s probably what helped me the most in my approach, because that’s how I approached everyone around him. Not like a fan who wanted to tell about the Roommates. What interested me was to understand who he was. In fact, I treated the process a bit like a police investigation and ended up with a huge puzzle of conflicting versions marred by old quibbles. Then I cross-checked each piece of information and that was the basis. »
Dédé’s voice
Living all this time with the ghost of someone who had such an important effect on those around him, and on all of Quebec, leaves traces, leaves a mark. We live a little with the nostalgia of a relationship that never happened: “I got to know him so much in a personal way that, even if I never met his eyes, I still felt things by hearing his voice, explains Christian Quesnel. I remember that at one point I put Outside November and I feel like there is no icon anymore, just a familiar voice, as if I’m hearing someone I know. I felt like I was on the other side of the wall. And then, by hanging around his friends, his former girlfriends, I ended up becoming close to some of them. »
There’s this saying that it’s perhaps best not to meet those people you admire, that it usually leads to disappointment. What disappointed Christian Quesnel in this meeting? “First of all, as I said, I wasn’t originally a fan of Dédé and the Roommates. But, as I got to know him, I realized that the disappointment I had with him was that he didn’t give himself the time to make films. Because that’s where he was going. The rest, his contradictions, his adventures with women, it’s just human. It seems like he lived his 38 years in a very intense way and that’s why, in the comics, there are places where it’s very busy. This is what I wanted to show. »
Speaking of showing, precisely, how we represent him, Dédé? Do we draw him as faithfully as possible, or do we concentrate instead on a symbolic representation? “Eric Henry, his best friend, couldn’t wait to see how I was going to do it. It was a trap, because I had to represent Dédé in all his excitement, in all his complexity. But, I really enjoyed drawing it, even though I needed a lot of photos. He has a particular look that is not easy to reproduce. »
Closed doors
We discussed a lot, during our meeting, about Dédé Fortin’s entourage and his family. If, miraculously, several of them decided to collaborate and even provided Christian Quesnel with biographical elements, unpublished letters for example, some people decided not to speak. “There are, indeed, people who refused to discuss with me. But, at some point, the absentees are wrong and they won’t be able to say that I didn’t ask their opinion when it was time. I am used to working on delicate subjects, I did it for MéganticI did it for You have destroyed the beauty of the world, which deals with suicide. I was as honest as possible and, above all, I gave the floor to those who spoke. I didn’t try to make this album about me. I was asked to enlarge my name on the cover, to put my photo in the book. I refused. Hélène, one of Dédé’s sisters, told me a key phrase that I kept in mind throughout the process, and that I used as a quote at the beginning of the album. She told me that the man tended to disappear behind the icon. I just wanted to tell it. »
Did Christian Quesnel ultimately manage to capture the character? The task was colossal and the cause, let’s say it, a little lost in advance. However, after reading, it turns out that the author and designer got just close enough to his subject to give us a fair and sensitive portrait, just as we manage to take a photo of comets.