Almost thirty years later, on the occasion of her return to the Francos, reunion with the most enduringly popular Quebec singer in French-speaking Europe. The story of a long misunderstanding finally resolved.
We are at her place, in Verchères. Hello again, Lynda Lemay, it’s been a long time, huh? “It was for the first album, I think. An enthusiastic, joyful meeting, we revealed our common passion for Johnny [Hallyday] “, she says. “And never again…”
In the vast house bought in 1995, where her daughters grew up, where the acoustic guitars serve as decoration and a hedge of honor, giant enlargements of photos of her with Aznavour, Lama, and Johnny, of course. Our Johnny, still alive, even gone. In the tour bus in Europe, it is he who sings: “For me, life is about to begin…”
Let’s burst the abscess. Disaffection can be summed up in a few words: the “door handle syndrome”. She sighs and grimaces: others have driven this nail down, have decreed that she was guilty of being gifted, that her songs, in particular funny looking and The magic eye, showed that this ability to write about anything and everything tarnished the credibility of his entire repertoire. Including The strongest is my fatherwhich is nevertheless moving today, when one leafs through the 250 or so pages ofOnce upon a time my songs, the annotated and illustrated collection of his work (published in 2021, with the collaboration of Baptiste Vignol). In there, we find every five pages a line, a verse, a story recalling her real capacity, never denied: Lynda Lemay knows how to accurately convey an emotion and touch people. Of all ages. And even a critic with peremptory judgment and easy banishment.
Sixty-one times the Olympia
However, it is not the book that brings us to Verchères, any more than Life is a fool’s tale, but the show she will present Friday at the Francos and on tour across Quebec. It’s a number that had the effect, that turned everything upside down: 61.
Lynda Lemay “did” L’Olympia by Bruno Coquatrix, at the top of the bill, sixty-one times. The sixty-second is already on the near horizon. Without our knowing it here, everywhere, for three decades, people have come and come back to meet him, fill his rooms, the big ones, the smaller ones and the huge ones. To her three-hour shows are added two good hours where she listens to the spectators and speaks to them, one by one, a signing session from which she never evades.
It was a mutual friend who sent me his “reports” from there, just to share his bewilderment, his wonder at such a phenomenon. How the hell can we make such a fuss in the Quebec media around the first Olympia of a Pierre Lapointe (very meritorious) and so little case around the singer most faithfully followed and loved since the Lama, Bécaud , Aznavour, Brel and Brassens?
Praised, eclipsed, acclaimed
Attempt to explain by the person concerned: “I think that in Quebec, my career was largely eclipsed by gossip, that at certain times, it took up so much space that there was more for what I had to say in my songs. I don’t want to generalize: there are quite a few people in Quebec who have always followed me, but the media attention, let’s say, has been diverted. »
Even in France, where she made both the front pages of Paris Match and Telerama, her status as a popular singer follows her as the patronage of the now deceased Pascal Sevran. Far from Unbreakable and “trend” rankings. “The work outweighs the tube”, summarizes the publisher Gérard Davoust in the preface to the book.
“It is also due to the fact that I am not very star. It’s not my nature. I serve my songs, I serve people who find themselves in them, people that it helps. That would be a great description: Lynda Lemay, the song’s natural helper. That still wouldn’t do justice to her marvels of craftsmanship and miracles of emotional tact.
Some veterans of the trade say that Lynda Lemay is “the Félix Leclerc of the 21ste century “. Nothing less. What she sings speaks directly to the heart, she cleanses wounds and, if not heals, does good. Much good.
We can also think of a Springsteen who catches the “ audible (special requests) and responds immediately. Lynda Lemay also spends a lot of time preparing songs requested in writing on the day of the show in order to include them, namely. Everything is personal. “People have often told me: they come because they want the sequel, the new stories, where I am, where they are themselves. We feed each other. Yes, I have essential songs, but all my shows are mostly made up of new songs. I move forward in life, my audience too, and this chance that I have to find them, faithfully, beyond fashions and musical currents, I cherish it. “An ethic of self-sacrifice that is reminiscent of Johnny Hallyday, precisely. Don’t disappoint. Never disappoint. “I stay until the last person leaves. The bus is waiting, even though we have eight or nine hours to drive. I’m not doing this to be smart. It is I who find them fine to stay to meet me, and I connect to their energy, their love. »
The accelerator
We end up understanding: she is prolific because people want more. “If it’s boiling inside me, it’s because they ‘light the fire’, as Johnny’s song says. Inspiration is a gift, we won’t extinguish it. She challenges herself, takes it up, and finds another, even more demanding one. Since last year, she has been working on a series of albums. Eleven ! From ten texts, she multiplies the music by ten: different melodies, different chords, arrangements, styles. Ten texts for a hundred songs.
“I wanted a musical challenge, to go where I hadn’t gone. Maybe it’s my mid-fifties that does this to me, but I really weighed on the accelerator. Below the house, by the river, a real trapeze awaits the next jumps. Yes, in a vacuum, but not without a net. One crazy challenge at a time.
If it boils in me, it’s because [les gens] “light the fire”, as Johnny’s song goes. Inspiration is a gift, we won’t extinguish it.
Lynda Lemay will be at the Maisonneuve Theater at Place des Arts on Friday at 8 p.m. His show will be followed by a tour in Quebec until September, then in Belgium and France until December.