Brave Quasimodo surrounded by gargoyles in the musical Notre Dame de Paris in 1998, Garou confided how hard his notoriety had been to live with and even “weird“in the show As an aside on Canal+. Spotted only a year earlier by Luc Plamondon in 1997, the young man (Pierre Garand his real name) then aged 26 completely changed his life overnight thanks to the immense success of this musical comedy where he sang with Patrick Fiori and Hélène Segara. Currently on tour with the show Up Scenehe reveals to have fallen into the dangers of the night and nearly lost his life due to excess.
“Inevitably, I had trouble understanding what was happening. At the same time, I let off steam in the party, it was great. At night, it was maybe the place where I was most normal, I went to places where people didn’t give a damn“, confides the interpreter of the title Downwind. One evening, the singer has a serious road accident at the wheel of his brand new Ferrari. Between life and death, the man saw his life pass before his eyes. “I counted about six seconds where my life passed (…) I thought about technical things… Of the six seconds, there were two seconds where I lived hours of reflection and the other four seconds were only for my daughter who was going born not long after: ‘What will happen in his life?’“.
I am almost often ashamed
Fortunately, everything ended well for the dad of Emelie (born in July 2001 from his union with the Swedish model Ulrika) who has since rolled his bump even if he still has trouble managing his celebrity. “I’m almost often ashamed of being a personality, I have a lot of trouble with that side because I never wanted that. The whole fan side… I have a hard time with that. I really don’t feel more important than anyone else. I’m not someone more important than the dentist“, he says with great humility.
Amused, the singer also confided that he was sometimes compared to the beautiful gypsy of the musical when he met fans! “I was told: ‘Can we have an autograph? It’s Quasimodo!’ They even called me Esmeralda sometimes!“, he added.