Every day, a personality invites herself into the world of Élodie Suigo. This week, Julien Clerc, author, composer and singer is the exceptional guest of Le Monde d’Élodie. He looks back on the highlights of his career through five of his cult songs.
Julien Clerc is half a century of songs, concerts, love of a faithful public now made up of several generations who have fallen under the spell of the artist he is. It is told all this week through five episodes, five titles that have become essential. After releasing a 26e album earthlingJulien Clerc is on an acoustic tour with the show Happy Days in which he covers songs by artists like Barbara, Bécaud and Trenet.
franceinfo: Has music shaped you as a man?
Julien Clerc: Yes, because when you do this job properly, that is to say, you use music to progress in life, then you can say that music trains you. I’ve always had a chance, it’s to have very, very broad tastes and to have no preconceptions about style, for example. I listen to something I like, I don’t try to analyze why I like it. I love this music because it speaks to my heart, to my ears, to my soul. And that allows you to train. Because when you’re a bit curious, you want to know where this music comes from afterwards and it’s always very interesting to know that.
At the time of the release of Women, I love you., we are in 1982, you are going to take a big risk by leaving Pathé-Marconi. It’s not easy to leave a record company that works for a small label.
I never understood any of this. I have always been more or less well surrounded, in any case sometimes, I regretted it, because I delegated these kinds of decisions too much, but I finally realize, with the time that I have always wished to be above all an artist. I may be wrong. There are artists who manage very well to be artists and at the same time, if not businessmen, at least people who are a little more aware of the rest of life. But me, it’s like that, I was made like that. What matters to me above all is the artistic side, so leaving the record company where I was becoming a piece of furniture was not a risk. I did it again afterwards, it’s not more serious than that.
You have always been very demanding with yourself first. A while ago you really looked for yourself, you had voice problems. You took a path that wasn’t necessarily the right one, but you managed to get back on the right path.
I was made to understand that my voice was something that was exceptional. We may not like it and I understand it very well, but then, for once, it’s my capital.
Julien Clercat franceinfo
When they made me understand that my voice was exceptional, already at first, I said to myself: we have to stop messing around, so I’m going to work on it. And afterwards, especially, I discovered that the work of the voice was an extraordinary thing, that is to say that it is a better knowledge of oneself. I understand all the people, for example, who do yoga and I look forward to all my singing lessons which I continue to take obviously, all the time. I’m waiting for that moment.
A word about rocker heartI have the impression that you are a rocker through and through.
Yes, it’s a text by Luc Plamondon, it was a very important song because all the other lyricists were angry with the first of them, obviously, Étienne Roda-Gil. But Luc arrived with his North American culture and he changed all that. He made heart rhyme with rocker, which enraged Roda. But it’s a song that I can’t remove from the singing tour, just like My preference (1978), Women, I love you. (1982) or It’s nothing (1971). It’s a given moment when everyone, all the different, let’s say, tribes that make up the people who love my work, come together.
Luc Plamondon has created something. Both with ‘Lili wanted to go dancing’ and with ‘Coeur de rocker’, everyone gets together and dances.
Julien Clercat franceinfo
In the middle, in 1984, there was The girl in the nylons after that Melissa. The latter will make you a desirable singer, which was already the case with Women, I love you., we are not going to lie. How did you experience this kind of adulation by the female sex, in particular.
I remember, in the very first concerts, we often passed in attraction in balls. The guys were hot, a bit like Michel Sardou describes it very well in the song popular balls, That was it. Well, I was always protected by the girls, that is to say, I never received a can, nothing. I used to show up with my songs in these kind of places like The Volcanic Heart (1968), stuff like that, a little poetic-disheveled, those of Roda and I never had a problem. I could see that the girls were saying to them: “You leave me alone for an hour, while he sings“.
Which represents Melissa for you ?
Melissa is a song that is written before the text and strangely, without melodic support. It’s a melody that comes to mind like that, in the kitchen or elsewhere, which often happens. There’s this thing that comes to me:Pinpin Pim Papam” like that. Afterwards, I sit at the piano to find the chords that go to this little melody that came to me like that. And I call on David McNeil to write me the words that go on it.
Julien Clerc will be, among others, on March 4, 2023 in Vittel, on the 9th in Gap, on the 18th in Cap d’Agde, on the 25th in Boulogne-Billancourt, on April 6th in Bollène, on the 29th in Bayonne, on June 30th in Bouillargues etc…