Former Offenbach guitarist | Johnny Gravel, still alive

Breen LeBoeuf, hilarious, searches his memories. “With Offenbach, when we were too pissed off the day before, or when we knew that certain interviewers were going to ask silly questions, we sent Johnny”, says the bassist about his legendary guitarist comrade, a monosyllable nightmare for us. any journalist. “The host would ask a question and Johnny would respond, ‘Yeah.’ »

Dominic Late
The Press

More than 35 years after Offenbach’s last show at the Forum in 1985, Johnny Gravel, the only member of the band who has been in all its incarnations, besides Gerry Boulet, is no longer as laconic as it was in the good old days.

Not exactly chatty, but very warm, and often comical: he will call the author of these lines “my big one” throughout the conversation and will say with a laugh, when talking about his health, that according to the measures taken by friends, he would have shrunk four inches. What he refuses to believe, he makes it clear, dropping the word church that begins with t which is also the title of a film featuring his former band.

Whether his frame has shrunk or not, Johnny Gravel is certainly, at 73, more fulfilled than he has ever been. In 2012, the rocker spent 40 days in hospital after suffering multiple strokes that severely crippled his left side, but which in turn ended his long and stormy relationship with the bottle for good.

Despite a partially paralyzed ring finger and little finger, the survivor returned to his six-string in 2016, which he has been strumming since every day in his apartment in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. He launched at the end of January Acoustic sessions vol. 2, an album on which his Martin D-28 alone resounds with new compositions as well as instrumental re-readings of his classics. “I was lucky,” he confides on the line, in his drawling voice.

wild guitar

Jean Gravel was 5 years old when his uncle sold his parents his first instrument. “I wasn’t even going around the guitar,” he recalls. Self-taught, he was still a teenager when he formed his first orchestra, Rockets, in Granby. The Ventures and Duane Eddy are his role models.

It was in 1968 that he met a certain Gérald Boulet and quickly joined his group, Les Gants Blancs, which metamorphosed into Offenbach at the time of the decline of dance halls and yé-yé. albums like Holy Chronicle of Nether, In fusion and crossing cement his reputation as a guitar hero.

“What was Offenbach’s body and soul was Gerry’s raspy voice, the booming B3 in the background and the wild guitar of Johnny,” says Breen LeBoeuf, who joined the band in 1978 and was the guitarist’s roommate on the road from the start.

A musician with a style that is both frenetic and completely relaxed, Johnny Gravel, in his most glorious solos, makes his guitar roar as if by jerks, embroidering phrases full of sinuosity: impetuous, unpredictable, melancholy. In this sense, he is an authentic blues guitarist, who voluntarily lets his improvisations breathe and refuses to cast a score in concrete. He is also known to be almost incapable of playing exactly the same thing twice.

“We recognize Johnny at the first note, a bit like Keith Richards or Neil Young, who have developed their own sound, but who do not necessarily have a traditional technique”, observes Martin Deschamps, who succeeded Gerry at the microphone of Offenbach at the end of the 1990s. “Johnny always gives a big jerk, as if he had rage in his peak. That’s what creates that darker sound. »

It wasn’t uncommon, recalls Breen LeBoeuf, for the guys from Offenbach to tease Johnny on purpose, just before going on stage, to make sure he was a little angry when he got down. plug into your amp. A strategy that woke up the man every time, not exuberantly natural. “You told him anything that was going to piss him off and you always had a guy who was a little more committed, more of a go-getter. »

Life is a fight

He says it himself: Johnny Gravel has never been “a big flasher”. During a show highlighting the inauguration of a mural in homage to Gerry Boulet presented in September 2021 at the Bain Mathieu, it was however obvious that if the general public may be unaware of the importance of his contribution to Quebec music , Offenbach’s followers revered his intractable integrity. “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,” the crowd chanted repeatedly.

A recognition that smiles at Johnny? “It makes me happy and it makes me uncomfortable at the same time,” he drops, as if still bewildered that we admire him so much.

“It’s not yesterday that we hear people shouting ‘Johnny, Johnny, Johnny’ in Offenbach shows”, swears Breen LeBœuf. “And Johnny wasn’t really doing anything to get that…other than giving it his all!” And that is obvious to the world. The world can be shitty on a lot of business, but when you give it the truth, it’s no worse to recognize it. And Johnny, it’s genuine, his business. His suffering was real. »

His friend adds, visibly moved: “The guy he has become today, I think is the best version of Johnny I have known. He has a light in his eyes. When we listen to his new record, that’s what we hear. »

And as for the main interested party, what makes him the most proud? “It’s to have tried to do what and to have done it. There have been ups and downs, but there have been more ups than downs, that’s not bad. It is sure and certain that I have not always been an angel. But I don’t regret anything. I did what I had to do. Life is a fight, as the saying goes. »

acoustic rock

Acoustic Sessions, vol. 2

Johnny Gravel

Phono Records