The singer, composer and guitarist Louis Bertignac is the exceptional guest, all this week, of the Elodie’s World. Musician, lyricist, singer, guitarist, producer, the co-founder of the rock group Telephone or Visitors began a solo career in 1986.
He took advantage of the pandemic to write, in collaboration with Guy Carlier, his autobiography nice little story published by Cherche-Midi. This book allows him to look back on the highlights of his life. From his musical sessions with Telephone and the Rolling Stones to his tumultuous stories with Corine Marienneau and Carla Bruni. Louis Bertignac recounts his whole life without filters.
franceinfo: You started at a very young age, at Lycée Carnot, at the end of the 1960s. You did your first scene there and then you went on to win prizes, under the benevolent gaze of your parents.
Louis Bertignac: Yes, I was proud of course!
They are really going to be your first audience.
Of course, but especially when I had prizes! Afterwards, they were less of a good audience when I played the guitar. Because it’s true that the first years, we are bad. It’s annoying to hear the son make noise like that. And then, when they realized that I was doing a little less well at school, that I was playing more and more music, they started to worry a little bit and they supported me less in this that time.
In any case, you say in the book: “To mom and dad, to whom I owe the essentials“.
My parents did everything for me.
Louis Bertignacat franceinfo
Yes, because no matter what, they were absolutely adorable.
Born in Oran, in French Algeria, you arrived in Paris at the age of three and you heard your parents talking about bombs and all the difficulties they could cause. You changed your last name to protect yourself.
When I was ten years old, he came to Tarbes and said to us: “Listen, we have four solutions. Bertignac, Bretignac, Bertini, Bretini. What do you prefer ?“And I said: Bertignac after thinking for a minute and so he chose this name.
Pillar parents, friends with certain musical aspirations. Very early on, your goal was to set up music groups. The starting point is indeed the records of the Stones and of course the Beatles. But the goal of the game, I feel like every time, was to build you a family like a musical family.
Yes, groups, because I was shy. I had trouble speaking even though I wasn’t particularly interested in it. On the other hand, playing music with other people, I loved that. And so I had a big family of musicians that ended with the group Telephone. Then I stopped looking.
The famous group, precisely, was born from an encounter with Jean-Louis Aubert. It was immediate between you even if there was a big rivalry at the beginning?
Yes. There was a rivalry before we met. A friend said to me:You know, you play really well, but there’s another guy who plays really well, he’s at Lycée Pasteur” and me : ‘What is it? The other is better than me?‘ And he too, I think he thought like that because he was talking to him about me. And one day, we ran into each other. Immediately, I felt it. He had a charming side, full of pimples, straight hair, a big mouth like Jagger and we played for 10 hours, 12 hours together and it went royally. We became best friends.
You will find the name Telephone, when it could have been “Hygiaphone” on the occasion of the emblematic concert at the American Center.
Yes, because it was written everywhere, on all the telephone boxes in the street, there was this name.
You were very young. Wasn’t it too fast in the end?
No, not too fast. For us, it was even quite slow, since we did about thirty concerts before it started to be a little known. We were overjoyed, it was going really well and after about a year or two people started to really hear about us and we sold a lot of our self-titled debut album (1977, editor’s note). We had fun for months going to concerts at the other end of France. We were all in the truck with the equipment. It was folklo, but it was quite nice.
The success is amazing with Subway is too much, Hygiaphone, The human bomb, Money too expensive and then this title, in 1982, which defines you well: Cinderella. This song, which sticks to your skin, has been totally adopted by the public. What does she represent for you?
‘Cinderella’ was like my baby, he was going to take my place in the world.
Luis Bertignacat franceinfo
It was one of the first songs I sang, which would become a big hit. It took me months to write it, months to find the real story. At first it was a cartoon story with actors, Grendizer, Mickey, etc. which go wrong, which are all in the dope. And then Romy Schneider had just died, I said to myself: ‘come on, we forget Mickey, we forget Goldorak, we will focus on Cinderella‘. And during the first tour that followed the release of this album, I broke my collarbone. Tour cancelled. So I’m in a hospital bed, then in a hotel room and I can’t move. And just then, I’m told the single is Cinderella and that he was taken by Air France.
It also showed how much you had this romantic side.
I have always had this side. I don’t know if it’s romantic, but sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, it was not for me, really. Sex was love first and foremost.
Louis Bertignac will be in concert on July 8 in Divonne les Bains, on July 29 at the Festival du son in Civray and on September 10 at the Lysfestival in Comines.