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 26th 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: For years, your interpretations and compilations have found their audience, like the title of Françoise Hardy Leave me a place. Precisely, was it difficult to keep yours during these five decades? Were there times that were more difficult than others?
Julien Clerc: There certainly were, but they did not see each other. Generally, I only keep the good in memory, and even when it was a little more difficult, it allowed me to bounce back, to reinvent myself. I had decided from the start, at 20, to go long, I knew instinctively that a course was not linear.
With Leave me a place, we have a text signed Françoise Hardy. It was really a very good collaboration.
Oh yes. Leave me a place is a kind of little miracle like that. I remember how we did it. She came home, I played her lots of music. Françoise Hardy has a particularity in life, it is that she says what she thinks without taking gloves. He didn’t like anything so weary, in the end, I told him: I have this one, but I haven’t finished it. I started to play and she said to me: “That, I want it, I like it!“I recorded the thing and she left with it. She left me a message saying: “Don’t change anything you gave me ’cause I wrote on it“and I remember what she said to me:”And I will not rewrite!“There you go, we did this song and she covered it too.
Françoise Hardy is someone I love deeply and so working with her on ‘Fais-moi une place’ was something unexpected.
Julien Clercat franceinfo
But saying your rendition was so perfect she only did it because she liked that song.
Undoubtedly yes. We recorded it in the United States and it was a great adventure with a producer called Phil Ramone. He produced all the greats. We all have an American record produced by him in our nightclub. It was a pride to work with him.
Leave me a place was a huge popular success, but above all marked a return to very intimate French song. You have always kept this modesty, your secret garden. Is this a way to protect yourself?
Yes, it’s a way of protecting me, of course. In my life, I have always been in complete harmony with what I was doing. I think instinctively I never wanted to see someone I didn’t like in the mirror. I didn’t force myself for certain things. Basically, if we talk about the press, I gave some things of my life, I gave what I could, honestly. When it was too much, when I felt that it bothered me, that it was intrusive, I preferred not to have the cover of this or that newspaper.
This life journey shows how much you have kept the promise made to your mother which was: “I too will become one of them“, when she spoke to you about Bécaud by saying that there was only one!
Yes that’s it. It was also that it was important to have a private life. I was lucky not to give in too much to the lark mirror, or things like that so it goes back to what I was saying about the newspapers, don’t feel obligated to give.
When you have a real private life, you feed your art.
Julien Clercat franceinfo
Leave me a place won Victory for Song of the Year in 1991. What’s a Good Song?
It’s a song that has grace. I don’t know what it is, it could be due to so many different things.
But do we feel it?
Yes, we feel a kind of little thing, there, while doing it or when we have finished it. We tell ourselves : “There, this one may have a chance. She might touch people“. And then there are songs that are good too, but never touch people. It happens. Firstly because in an album there are a lot of songs, so not all of them can be known and then you have songs that are stronger than others. You do your best when you write them and then afterwards, the public makes their choice. That’s the rule of the game.
Julien Clerc will be, among others, on March 4, 2023 in Vittel, on March 9 in Gap, on March 18 in Cap d’Agde, on April 25 in Boulogne-Billancourt, on April 6 in Bollène, on June 29 in Bayonne, on June 30 in Bouillargues etc…