“At some point, people form an idea of you and they don’t want you to deviate from that,” thinks Garou. The eternal tripper, on tour in Quebec, recently welcomed The Press in his barn in Orford.
Aboard his black Ford Bronco, Garou emerges from the three-kilometer logging road that crosses his vast land. With his few layers of plaid shirts and his camouflage pattern pipe boots, the singer evokes the studiously rustic charm of a Bruce Springsteen in a tank pub, but also a little Félix Leclerc. “It was a little happiness, which I had picked up,” he intones, giggling.
Five years ago, the Sherbrooke resident became the owner of this small estate on the edge of Mount Orford Park and transformed his ruined barn into a studio, where he greets us while lighting a cigarette. He had returned the day before from Lyon, in order to begin a tour of Quebec, the first during which he remained seated behind his guitar almost all evening, as when he jam here with his musicians, a posture that contrasts with his image as a variety singer, which made him feel insecure at the start.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
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“It’s clear that the perception that many have of me is not the right one. In any case, it’s not the same as the one people have who have been coming to see me in shows for a long time and who know that I’m going into a lot of delirium, “he underlines, without bitterness, in a tone of simple observation.
I’ve always been a music junkie, who buzzes to be with his musicians. It all happened to me so fast. Before Our Lady [de Paris], I didn’t want to be a singer, I didn’t want to be famous. I played in bars, I had fun like a little crazy and I told myself that at some point, I would find a job that made sense.
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“It’s as if I had been crowned in a helicopter and dropped off at the top of the mountain. There, what I do is that I go down quietly. »
It was at Pub 16
At age 13, at the Séminaire de Sherbrooke, Garou joined Windows & Doors, a group whose repertoire consisted mainly of Beatles songs. “At dinner time, we would sell tickets to girls from Mont Notre-Dame or the Sacré-Coeur college. He adds with his highwayman smile: “There are also girls to whom we gave them. »
He gave in at the age of 19 at the insistence of his friend Isabelle Bolduc, who had often heard him scrape his dry hair around a fire, and accompanied him to a popular singer’s bar in Sherbrooke, Pub 16. Accompanied him… to backwards: the young man was more of a rock fan – he mostly hung out at Graffiti, the defunct alternative bar on rue Wellington Sud in Sherbrooke – than a regular at pop music bars.
But during his performance, the singer Louis Alary, with whom Isabelle was in cahoots, invites Garou to join him on stage. “I didn’t feel well,” he recalls, “but I started playing Layla and like in a movie, the bartender called the boss and told him he had to come and listen to this. »
Without any real repertoire, 48 hours later he began a five-week series of shows in this pub, then soon became, for 6 years, singer in residence at the Liquor Store in Magog.
“Hi Mister Garou, my name is George Harrison”
Tahiti. Monaco. Yerevan. Michael Schumacher. Salvatore Adamo. Good. Garou talks about his many encounters around the world with the naturalness of someone who would tell of a hunting trip with his brother-in-law.
Is he still sometimes impressed to be able to rub shoulders with all these greats? “Amazement, there is much less. I know I have a fuckin’ lucky run. But as everything happened so quickly, at the start, I had no gauge, no reference. Just to give you an idea, that’s when Bono said to me: “Guy [Laliberté, son grand ami] is the most amazing person I’ve met in my life” I realized how genius he is. »
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
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Her fondest dating memory? That of George Harrison, during a party of F1 organized by a friend of Garou whose name he prefers to conceal, a few months before the death of the Beatle, which occurred in November 2001 – it would be one of his last, if not his last performance in public.
“I was chatting with the girl sitting next to me and noticed out of the corner of my eye that no one was talking to the gentleman sitting on the other side. Someone came to talk to the girl, I turned around and the gentleman said to me: “Hi Mister Garou, my name is George Harrison.” We got crowded right away and he talked to me about super personal business for four hours. »
After only three songs from the Untouchables show, the R’n’B group from Garou who officiated that evening, the legend invited herself on stage, even if she had sworn not to like the jam sessions.
As we only had one microphone, we sang into the same one; it was disgusting! I’ll never forget when he took my guitar and put a capo on it and started playing Here Comes the Sun.
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“I pinched myself, but in the end, I had fun with this guy like I had fun with Louis Alary. I was more proud to have tripped musically with him than to have met a Beatle, even if it was me who was doing George in my little band at the Séminaire. »
No calculation
Could it be that Garou’s undeniable love for music is diluted in his albums, which sometimes seem designed for France and only for France? The main interested party thinks, up to a certain point, that we hear what we want to hear.
I had put the brakes on Quebec a bit, because each time I released an album, even if I Americanized my sound, people said it sounded too French. There’s a part of the public that has the wrong perception of who I am and I can’t fight that. But I will keep trying to reach them.
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The song UpScenelaunched in October 2021 and co-written with the Too Many Cooks Dan Georgesco, testifies well, he says, to the country-folk direction in which he wishes to engage.
His tribute album to Joe Dassin released in the fall was already part of this line, even if the main interested party knows too well that many have received it as yet another album of Garou covers, and not as the fruit of his desire. to folkize the repertoire of the interpreter of America.
This is after inserting into his show a medley of choruses by Dassin that his record company, Universal, demanded this anthology of bare interpretations – including a great duet with the original Garou, Robert Charlebois. “I said yes to Universal, but it was on the condition that they give me the keys and that I can do it here, with my gang, that I have a veto on everything. »
No more compromises? “But compromises, in show, I’ve never really made. I’m not an album guy, I’m not a calculating guy, I’m a performer. Garou puts out his cigarette, gets into his Can-Am and drives off at full speed into his forest.
Garou is on tour everywhere in Quebec until April 21
“It’s not true, that story”
If the legend is to be believed, it was at the Liquor Store in Magog that Luc Plamondon would have been captivated by the voice of the one for whom love is violent inside. “But it’s not true, that story, it didn’t happen the same way,” says Garou, bursting out laughing.
A few years before Notre Dame de ParisGarou had auditioned for yet another version of starmania, appointment to which he had presented himself with a broken voice, which had nevertheless charmed the lyricist, but not to the point of entrusting him with a role. “It must be said that I didn’t want to know anything about musicals, but that I went there anyway, to meet Luc. »
PHOTO DENIS COURVILLE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Garou in 1999
“But when I was called back to Our Lady, we decided it was easier to say that Luc had discovered me when he came to the Liquor Store. Herby Moreau landed with a kodak and that crystallized the story. »