Patrick Norman never dreamed of becoming a singer. “It’s the guitar, my first love”, says the one whose farewell tour ends this Friday at Coup de coeur francophone.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
Would you like to see Patrick Norman’s eyes light up? Talk to him about guitar. Tell him, more specifically, about his father Fernand’s guitar, on which he played his first chord, an open G. “He placed my fingers, he said to me, ‘Go ahead, play’, I made the chord and I had it the first time”, says the son, who has grown up, giving friendly ” boy” and “my guy” to his interlocutor.
That first chord, it was a moment of light, my boy, enough for me to still remember it at 76 years old. My father’s guitar was a very hard Kay. I played the same, even though it hurt my fingers to the point of bleeding.
Patrick Norman
The six-string that Patrick Norman sings about on the piece (My dad’s Gibson) which opens his most recent album, If we went there (2019), is therefore not the first one he has played on, but rather another – a 1971 Gibson Dove – which he gave to his father in 1974 and which he later recovered.
“Music is my reason for living,” he summarizes. What we see in a few minutes of conversation punctuated by the names of the artists (Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, the Beatles) whom he followed in 1967, by dropping the jobs that his parents advised him to keep in the name of his proverbial security, to devote himself entirely to the stage.
No wonder so many of his songs (Jeremy’s guitar, sing for nothing, I make my friends cry) celebrate the irreplaceable bliss that music allows us to taste. “I starved to death at first, but never felt like I was working again for the rest of my life. »
Serge’s Gretsch
If Patrick Norman measures his privilege so well, it is because he himself was initially this fan unable to take his eyes off the musicians. In the early 1960s, at the Buffet Versailles, a dance hall on rue Saint-Hubert, a teenager named Yvon Éthier regularly went to attend shows by the group The Sprights.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
A man and his guitars
“The guitarist, Serge Brabant, had a beautiful Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins, he recalls. I stood in front of him and watched him play. Then I would go back to my uncle Albert and try to reproduce what I had heard. »
Then, roles reversed. In the early 1990s, during a festival in which he participated, Patrick reconnected with Serge Brabant, who had come to hear him, without suspecting that the popular singer had admired him so much. Luck: Serge Brabant still had his gleaming Gretsch, with which the former Sprights admirer had the joy of playing on his album Guitar (1997).
“Life is beautiful, isn’t it? It was I who used to go to see Serge every weekend when I was cool and it was he who came to see me now. »
Enjoy your happiness
Recorded in Nashville, If we went there marked a new chapter in the rich relationship that Patrick Norman maintains with this city. His first album in English, the underrated Textures (1976), was also created in the country capital with the collaboration of arranger Bergen White, whose name appears on the album cover of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Tanya Tucker.
It was also there that the fabulous and elegant singer met his hero Chet Atkins, none other than Monsieur Guitare, in 1991 during a filming for Radio-Canada, “two hours of pure happiness”.
When I got there, I said, “Mister Atkins, I hope I don’t make a fool out of myself.” He replied: “Don’t worry, I experienced the same thing in 1946 with Django Reinhardt.” He immediately put me at ease.
Patrick Norman
The smiling septuagenarian is therefore on his farewell tour, but has really not pushed his last note, firstly because this current trip to Quebec will take him far, into the 2023 calendar, but above all because he does not exclude going back on stage from time to time.
Understand: he is tired of not being home more often. He is also carrying out renovations these days in order to be able to take his last breath at home, unlike his mother, Marguerite, who packed up at the age of 101 in April 2021, in the midst of a pandemic.
“When I leave, I would like to be close to my guitars”, confides the one who has been a great-grandfather since February and whose eyes become those of a youngster again as soon as you pronounce the name of his lover, the singer Natalie Lord.
“I have never been so happy and it’s because I accept my happiness. Before, I set myself the bar high, I did not forgive myself for my mistakes. I learn later how important it is to be kind to yourself. »
At Club Soda, November 11, at 8 p.m.