Didier Barbelivien is a songwriter, performer and a prolific author with more than 2,000 songs composed between 1970 and today. He wrote and composed a lot for others. First, there was Joël Prévost, candidate for Eurovision in 1978, then Hervé Vilard, Michel Sardou, Johnny Hallyday, Dalida, Patricia Kaas, Céline Dion, Julien Clerc, Christophe, to name but a few.
Author but also performer with songs that have become hits like To all the girls (1991), Time takes time (1991), John of France (2011), most of which came out on top in the Top 50. Today, he returns with a new self-titled album.
franceinfo: This album is a bit of a business card to better present yourself, at almost 70 years old. I say it because it is you who tell it in a song.
Didier Barbelivien: I don’t have them yet. I’m only 68, but I feel them coming fast and it makes me laugh, especially because I won’t be making records anymore. It’s my last record.
Why make this decision?
Because, it’s a bit pretentious what I’m going to tell you, but I’m pretty happy with this record. In the doubt of the one who will follow where I am not sure, I speak vocally, to still have this fishing and this health. I prefer to say that I won’t do any more. I will do, I hope, a lot more for the others, because it is still my primary vocation.
22 albums, but in this one, you feel that you are a performer first.
It’s nice to tell me because, there, I made an effort as it was the last in my head, for example on a song which opens the album like Susie...
Which is still a song about a crime of passion!
I said to myself: if you could play it a little Jacques Brel, it would be good because he was a great performer and I have always sung my songs melodically, that is to say the interpretation, c is to say what a man puts a little theatrical in a song, I never did in my life, except in Susie.
Through this song, we also feel your somewhat feminine side. Was that a wish too, to let go and show that you were that too?
When I write for women, which I have enormously enjoyed doing in my life, I’m not afraid to say that I had Sylvie Vartan’s combination when I had to write for Sylvie Vartan. When I wrote the song for her about her daughter Darina, I imagined myself adopting a little Bulgarian girl and raising her and how it was going to be between the two of us.
“There is this part of schizophrenia between what I write and what I am, because obviously I am not always the character of my songs.”
Didier Barbelivienat franceinfo
You started writing at 16. As a child, you were very rambunctious all the same, you grew up in the Congo, you were born in Paris…
Yes, I did not like my childhood. I was not happy. I started to feel good at 15, 16, when I started to write, to have bands of friends at Lycée Chaptal, to finally be an independent teenager.
Writing at 16 to tell stories, to get out of your somewhat difficult daily life, was it necessary to write or was it a game?
I don’t know what else I would have done in life. It was essential. But it wasn’t essential as something, as an escape or all that. I said to myself: this is my thing, my job, that’s going to be it.
You knew it very early.
In a somewhat unconscious or silly way, because indeed I remember my father saying to me: “But if you don’t succeed?”, but the word shocked me, “succeed”. I didn’t think about that, I thought about doing it.
“I had no concept of success or failure.”
Didier Barbelivienat franceinfo
There you are on stage, on tour.
I don’t know if you can call it a tour. Let’s say I’m going to sing on the trestles and I love it. First because I started singing late. I started singing on stage, I was 53 years old. It is often sometimes where the others stop…
Why did you make this decision?
To tell you the whole truth. When I was told: “You’re going on tour in the winter”, I said to myself: November, the ice on the roads, December. No, no, no, I prefer to be in the country with my dogs and all that, by the fireplace. And then, when I started getting into the game, because it became more than a game, it became a reality. Now it has become a kind of addiction. I like it a lot on a stage because also maybe in those years, I said to myself: I’m not going to reproduce less well what all my boyfriends do since I didn’t feel the most legitimate and the stronger. I found very above me.
You have shared many moments with them. Is it hard to keep going when they leave?
At the same time, they leave and they do not leave. Because I have Johnny’s voice, his gaze, his life… The past moments come back to me. Christopher is the same. I see Christophe’s face moving in front of me. I see Christophe in his studio. They never go away.
Isn’t this album, precisely, a tribute to life itself?
I hope. Life has been sweet to me. She’s been nice so far. If I can give him back through a few songs, it’s not much. I say 12 times thank you in this disc.
Didier Barbelivien will be on stage on February 19, 2023 in Locminé, on February 25 in Châteaudun, on March 10 in Chauny and in Poissy, on March 12.