Marie-Pierre Arthur
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Marie-Pierre Arthur, in 2022
It was neither as a musician nor as an admirer that Marie-Pierre Arthur first thought of Jean-Pierre Ferland. “It’s more like a piece of furniture in my parents’ house,” she said. My dad plays it all the time. We often sing as a family I’m coming back home, The little king, It’s lucky that we have… It’s like songs that belong to us. They not only remind me of Jean-Pierre Ferland, but of my family, of my childhood. These songs are like old memories that belong to me because they were so present. » This kind of attachment is rare, she explains.
As a musician, she admires Ferland’s sense of melody and his ability to combine it with the magic word, which means that we are moved each time we listen again to one of his songs that we have heard a thousand times. times. “Waiting for the word that you know will come and that you know will move you and be moved by it all the same, I find that beautiful,” she said, quoting A chance we have. Marie-Pierre Arthur also praises the performer he was.
“There is something in his phrasing that is close to speaking, something very sincere,” she emphasizes. There are all kinds of voices, but the most sincere ones always resonate. It’s there, it can’t be calculated, it can’t be invented. You feel that the head does not interfere between the heart and the voice. It goes straight through. »
Vendôme
PHOTO ADAM PAYETTE BÉDARD, PROVIDED BY AUDIOGRAM
Marco Ema (Marc-Antoine Beaudoin), Bobo Laurent, Cédrik St-Onge and Tom Chicoine, from the Vendôme group,
The guys from Vendôme make no secret of their admiration for Jean-Pierre Ferland. They mention his name and the title of his album YELLOW in their song called My band Vendôme. “ YELLOW, it’s the French album that I listened to the most, says Marco Ema. It’s a revolutionary album. I’m a big Beatles fan and I think there’s something like that on this record. I found it important to name him in one of our songs, because his madness and his imagination were really an influence. »
My band VendômeVendôme
Tom Chicoine connected with the world of Jean-Pierre Ferland by seeing him sing If we got started on TV with Hubert Lenoir on the show Swingersin 2018. Which also led to the album YELLOW. For these two guys in their twenties, this record broke in their eyes the image of the singer for “an older audience”.
Ils ont lu par la suite sur l’enregistrement de cet album et ont pris conscience du fait que Ferland a été une espèce de chat à neuf vies qui s’est réinventé souvent et qui avait un côté provocateur. En fait, ils le trouvent « badass », lorsqu’ils pensent au courage artistique dont il a fait preuve et aux critiques qu’il a encaissées. « Pour ça, je le trouve inspirant », dit Tom Chicoine.
Thierry Larose
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, ARCHIVES LA PRESSE
Thierry Larose
Adolescent, Thierry Larose ne se trouvait pas beaucoup d’atomes crochus avec la musique québécoise. « Comme beaucoup de jeunes de ma génération, j’avais un préjugé, presque du dédain [pour la musique d’ici] “, he said, adding that even artists like Charlebois and Ferland passed for “monuncles” in his eyes.
His outlook on things changed when he turned 15. Hired as a singer in a vineyard in Rougemont, near his home, he had only one constraint: to only play Quebec songs. “I decided to do my homework and borrowed Quebec music CDs from my whole family,” he says. In the lot, there was a copy of YELLOW, by Jean-Pierre Ferland. Who touched him. “It’s such a poignant album… and strange,” he says. It doesn’t sound like anything else. »
His admiration for Ferland’s adventurous side does not only concern YELLOWbut also the trilogy that it forms with Sunpublished the following year, and The virgins of Quebec (1974), “all of which have a little extraterrestrial side”. He points out that, in his opinion, the quality of the arrangements and sounds of Ferland’s records are often underestimated.
“Quebec albums with synthesizers like The virgins of Quebec, there aren’t many, he said. There are other people who have done amazing things, but what Jean-Pierre Ferland has done remains quite unique. »
Light
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Light, in 2022
Lumière immediately recognizes the influence of Jean-Pierre Ferland on his music. ” Above all YELLOW and especially for my first album, he says. My first record was about emancipation and there’s a lot of that, I find, on YELLOW. The idea of becoming what you want to be. » He supports his point by evoking the change of direction of Ferland who, returning from France at the end of the 1960s, broke his own mold to reinvent himself with his great album published in 1970.
Ferland, the author, touches him because of the mixture of “naivety and sensitivity” that he finds in words that are often simple, but whose arrangement sometimes gives them a fleeting meaning. “I find it very attractive,” he says of this poetic approach. Lumière admits that Ferland’s romantic side in love with women did not spontaneously touch him, but that he recognizes him as a great lover. He also finds Ferland inspiring in the way he freely expressed his desires, his desire, throughout his life and the ambition he demonstrated on YELLOW And Sun.
Jean-Pierre Ferland tops Taylor Swift in the iTunes charts
The album YELLOW of the late Jean-Pierre Ferland rose to second position in the top 100 Canadian of the most listened to albums on iTunes, ahead of The Tortured Poets Department, by Taylor Swift. This is the album Royal Pub, by Cowboys Fringants, in which we can hear the voice of singer Karl Tremblay, who died on November 15, who tops this highly coveted list of the most listened to albums in the country. Jean-Pierre Ferland’s other albums also do well. Her First boxbringing together 27 of his songs, arrives in 4e place, while his album don’t listen to thatreleased in 1995, ranks 5e position. Jealous songspublished in 2016, is in 6e position and album live 2000 tour arrives in 10e. That’s not all. If we focus on top 20we also find the albums I don’t want to sleep tonight (12e), Sun (14e), Sun Remastered (16e), Second box (17e) And Yellow’s Golden Wedding (19e). In short, 11 of the 20 most listened to albums go to Jean-Pierre Ferland.
Jean Siag, The Press