A Led Zeppelin show changed her forever, so much so that she became one of the first female rock journalists in Quebec. Even today, Marie-France Rémillard facilitates the arrival of great rock stars in Montreal, particularly on the set of Everybody talks about it. Portrait of a music lover who thrives on rock shows.
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
“Springsteen has already sold a million tickets in Europe. A million ! »
We are barely seated in the restaurant when Marie-France Rémillard informs us of news from the music industry, as she does several times a day, with relevance, on social networks like Twitter.
The day before our interview, at the beginning of June, this great thirst for rock had driven at night to return from the Fenway Park stadium in Boston, where she had seen a show by Paul McCartney.
“It’s nothing, the road,” says the one who loves driving at night.
Marie-France Rémillard returned from London on Monday. On Sunday, she saw the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park for her 64e anniversary. On Wednesday evening, she will be seated in the front row of the Gesù for the show of the Polish pianist Hania Rani. On Thursday, she will fly back to Rome for a performance by Maneskin. Then she will return to London to ABBA Travel and Duran Duran. An entire program !
“We had to go”
Marie-France Rémillard caught the rock bug in 1975 when she saw Led Zeppelin perform in Montreal. “It was a shock and a passion with the desire to share,” she says.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Marie-France Remillard
The young Montrealer then began to write for the newspaper Pop rock, where another woman, Lise Ravary, worked. She was hired by the man who would become her friend, Mario Lefebvre – who later managed the careers of Garou and Roch Voisine. Marie-France had sent by post a review of a show by the Nazareth group at the Place des Nations. She was then… 17 years old!
Later, she wanted to see Led Zeppelin again, but the group had excluded Montreal from its tour, so she made a first trip to the United States to see the band of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in Detroit, then two evenings at the mythical Madison Square Garden in New York. “I stayed at the same hotel as them in Detroit and I met Robert Plant in New York,” she says. Robert Plant is the artist I have met most often. »
During our meeting, Marie-France Rémillard launches a lot of anecdotes of this kind. Experienced facts to make you dream, but which seem mission impossible today.
How did she pull it off?
“It was easier back then. I made a cold call to the record company. You just had to go and ask. »
As simple as that…
Build long-standing ties
Marie-France Rémillard worked at Pop rock from 1975 to 1980. She covered Quebec music, while her male colleagues were only interested in Genesis and progressive rock.
I went to see Harmonium, Aut’Chose, Diane Dufresne… there were record launches all the time. It was really a good time. There was a lot of money for promotion.
Marie-France Remillard
At the same time, Marie-France Rémillard began to make contact with the teams of “more rock” international groups, such as Aerosmith, Rush, Van Halen and Kiss. In 1980 she left Pop rock to found the magazine Live! and she became the first female journalist to write about metal in Quebec.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MARIE-FRANCE RÉMILLARD
Marie-France Rémillard with the members of Van Halen. Eddy Van Halen at left, and Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen.
Contacts and links, she weaved, and it served her. She became close with Gene Simmons of Kiss, for example, one of the artists she facilitated into Everybody talks about it.
Later, Marie-France worked in the management teams of Garou and Angélique Kidjo, to whom she remains very close.
His great friend, Paul Lévesque, impresario of Bruno Pelletier, died two years ago. “A big hit,” she says. When she was working with him for the band Mahogany Rush, he introduced her to people who rose through the ranks and became close to bands like Metallica and Def Leppard.
In December 1989, Marie-France closed Live! because she had an overflow of metal music. Passionate about travel, she completed a master’s degree in international relations at Laval University. She then worked in Benin before returning to Montreal and being hired in customer service for Air Canada at the airport.
Thanks to employee discounts, she could do Montreal-London for $19. But above all, she was still able to meet a lot of public figures and musicians whom she accompanied in the private lounges of the airport.
Not nostalgic
On social networks, Marie-France Rémillard shares and comments on many news from the world of music: catalog sales, awards, state of health of old rockers, etc.
“Business interests me a lot,” she says. Harry Styles does 15 nights at Madison Square Garden and 15 nights at the Forum in Los Angeles. It is enormous ! People are unaware of its success. »
You will have understood that Marie-France Rémillard is a woman of her time. “I’m not nostalgic”, concludes the one who would not want to miss the flight of a new artist.