his guitarist, Joël Favreau, remembers the icon of French song

Songwriter and performer Joël Favreau was Georges Brassens’ third guitarist. He notably accompanied the singer in his studio recordings or his performances on television sets. “I met him in 1966, says Joël Favreau on the 23 Hours set, Friday October 22. I first met him in his dressing room, and I was extremely impressed. But it worked out afterwards when we went on tour.“

Joël Favreau was part of Georges Brassens’ close entourage until his death in 1981. “I can’t be a childhood friend, because we were still 18 years apart, explains the guitarist. That’s why he called me ‘galopin’. I still enjoyed a certain friendship with him, which developed through music, which is a privilege, because it was what he preferred, obviously with literature and the words that he worked as we know.“According to Joël Favreau, the singer was not someone who”made great demonstrations“, but was”very reserved“. The composer also remembers the attitude of Georges Brassens when the latter had to record his songs in the studio: he confirmed that the artist did not listen to his takes and trusted the engineers. “For him, recording records was one of the things he had to do. He did them very carefully, but that wasn’t what interested him the most.”