It was in September 2020. Jean Pellerin, then passing through Montreal, was in the studio with his friend Éric Goulet, trying to record some of his compositions (in English), when the musician Carl Prévost, of the record company DeVizu Musique, asks him if his bag also contains songs in French. His face turns into a question mark.
“And that’s where my boyfriend Johnny said to me: “Well come on, you know all the songs on Tex!” », Says Jean of his residence in the Miracle Mile district in Los Angeles. His boyfriend Johnny is Jean Larocque, former drummer for Blaise and Daphné and Psychocaravane, also from Salaberry-de-Valleyfield. Jean Larocque, son of the milkman from Salaberry-de-Valleyfield.
Johnny remembered that when he passed the milk at our house with his father, it was Tex playing all the time. And that’s true ! Before I leave for school, my mother [Hélène] always sang Vigneault, Léveillée and Tex Lecor.
Jean Larocque, former drummer of Blaise and Daphné and of Psychocaravane
A short day after his friend Larocque recalled his affection for Lecor, a first EP of six re-readings was already almost in the box. Launched last December, On the trail of Tex Lecor (which adds six other titles to this initial EP) draws mainly from the first four 33 rpm records (from 1960 to 1967) of the late songwriter, painter and comedian.
A rich repertoire that is too little celebrated, preceding by a few years the immense success of the Ti-bicycle or Fridge, to which Johnny Pilgrim, literal translation of Jean Pellerin, applies with his co-director Eric Goulet a resinous varnish of americana. And it’s suddenly as if The Band had maintained an obsession with the Hautes-Laurentides, rather than the southern United States.
PHOTO AARON RAPOPORT, PROVIDED BY THE ARTIST
Jean Pellerin
“We recorded it on a bine”, says Jean about these truly epic songs, carried by a mythologized vision of a heroic Quebec, populated by men who know how to face the elements and the background of a whiskey canisse.
Looks like I forgot I had those songs inside of me. But I had always tripped over all his stories of trappers, loggers, loggers.
Jean Pellerin, on the work of Tex Lecor
Teenager, Jean Pellerin was however less attracted by Quebec song than by rock and blues. His first group? The Craps Blues Band, it was called. “Everyone knew us in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, because one of the guys in the band [Jean dit la band, et non le band]He was the one who sold pot in town, ”says Johnny, laughing and finishing rolling a cigarette.
With his weather-beaten face of an adventurer who has lived it all, his bushy eyebrows and his scarf permanently tied around his neck, Jean Pellerin is like an escaped character from an André Forcier film, crossed with that of the song Into the Great Wide Open, by Tom Petty. On the walls behind him: pictures of Jimi Hendrix and Willie Nelson, guitars, a dobro.
Heading to Los Angeles
After a brief stint in the classes of the theatrical interpretation program of the Lionel-Groulx college, where his indocility clashes with the authority of his teachers, he set sail in December 1979 for Los Angeles and enrolled in cinema at the Art Center College of Design. His graduation project: the production of a music video for his band at the time, called Bag of Snakes.
The tape of the clip in question ends up by chance on the desk of an influential producer, thanks to which the young Quebecer becomes one of the most requested directors of shaggy metal. He directs or co-directs clips for dozens of artists, including Kiss (Crazy Crazy Nights), Guns N ‘Roses (You Could Be Mine) and Def Leppard (four clips from the album Hysteria, of which Women and Love bites).
It is also thanks to Jean Pellerin, and his partner at the time, Doug Freel, that Metallica accepts for the first time in November 1987 to market a VHS, Cliff ‘Em All!, a tribute to their late bassist Cliff Burton.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JEAN PELLERIN
Jean Pellerin (right) with Metallica singer James Hetfield
“The girl from the record company told us, ‘We gotta make videos and the guys don’t want to know about making videos, but I think you’re going to get along well.’ We rented a car, we went to Lars [le batteur] in Oakland. “
At that time, the guys drank a lot of beers, so we went for three, four cases. And the guys took us into a little room that was filled with Metallica stuff: posters, newspaper clippings, bootleg tapes.
Jean Pellerin
A few weeks later, Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich travel to Los Angeles to record the comments interspersed by Jean and Doug, in Cliff ‘Em All !, between performances unearthed from this jumble of archives. “We had shot and taken a shot all afternoon in our office. It was so upside down afterwards, so full of empty bottles and bags of crisps, that we didn’t touch them for two months. ”
Jean the cowboy
From 1991, when flannel shirts succeeded leather pants, Jean Pellerin struggled to find contracts for the production of music videos. “The Grunge didn’t want to know about me. He signed a few B movies (with Rob Lowe and Christopher Plummer), strummed his guitar like a dilettante in various Hollywood brown bars, then returned to Montreal from 2002 to 2010, with the ambition of creating a Quebec feature film.
“I tried to get funds from Telefilm Canada for eight years and Telefilm Canada pissed me off for eight years,” he regrets, adding perhaps a few swear words.
I was not in the clique. I wasn’t even able to find myself a job as a cameraman.
Jean Pellerin
However, it was during this Quebec break that he became friends, thanks to Jean Larocque, with Éric Goulet, with whom he soon played blues and country on the small stage of the chic Cheval Blanc, rue Ontario. “Frank Martel [le copropriétaire] called us his cowboy gang. ”
Jean Pellerin, Campivallensian cowboy? He takes a whiff of his rolling machine. “It was absolutely necessary that I get out of my small town and that’s what I did”, summarizes the young retiree of 63 years, back for good in California for more than a decade.
“I was very lucky in life, I never did a 9 to 5. It would have killed me. But I took a lot of risks. When I arrived here, I didn’t speak good, good English. I had learned English with Bugs Bunny. But I didn’t let anything get out of my way. Me, if I see a sign that says “Do Not Trespass”, I’m sure I go for it. ”
Folk
On the trail of Tex Lecor
Johnny pilgrim
DeVizu Music