Philippe Lavil returns with a new album, “Under the same sun”

Philippe Lavil has accompanied us for more than 40 years with his tubes that smell good of summer, which make us want to wave our bodies! He never lets himself be invaded by an ounce of sadness and it’s communicative as with He bangs on bamboos (1982), She prefers love at sea (1986), The girl on the train (2011) or even Cuban Chica (1989). The author, composer and performer has just released a new album: under the same sun. It includes 12 of his hits revisited and two unreleased.

franceinfo: under the same sun, these are 14 titles revisited by the child of Martinique that you are. You finally seem not to have lost that warmth. This desire to share in music.

Philip Lavil: It is the desire to share. It’s very selfish what I’m going to tell you is that sharing, I often share it with myself because it’s a real pleasure to be on stage. And then, if you speak of nonchalance, I claim!

You want to bite into life to the fullest in any case!

Yes. Hugues Aufray when asked about his retirement replied: “I don’t have the right to retire, I always did what I loved“. And I’m kind of like that.

You were born in Fort-de-France, Martinique. You are a descendant of the colonists of the West Indies, what is called a ‘béké’ in the local language. Your parents operated a banana plantation in the commune of François. What do you keep from this childhood?

It was extraordinary. People who make you realize that you were born in an exceptional place where there are indeed qualities or faults, but we sing in a certain way, we walk in a certain way, we talk about a certain way. And there’s all of this that makes the first 13 years of my life incredible.

You lived the present moment for a long time until you were sent to boarding school in the Drôme. When did you want to become a singer? In any case, when did you make this decision which will not necessarily please your parents at the start elsewhere?

It’s clear. When I returned to the Paris region with my parents in 1961, I started hanging out with friends. There were some who played the guitar, others the drums, etc. We set up a small orchestra to do the booms with our friends on Saturday afternoons. I started making songs, I had a friend who was doing the lyrics and little by little, I said to myself: this is what I want to do. So I went to business school for three years. And then, once that was over, I was in second year and there, I made my first 45 laps which was called Astride.

In 1969, there is this first 45 rpm and then in 1970, first tube With the girls, I don’t know. How did you experience this success?

After the success of my first hit ‘Avec les filles je pas sais’, I was, for three months, a little jerk who sold records and thought he had arrived.

Philippe Lavil

at franceinfo

One day my dad came to my room and said, ” I need to see you“, it was a Saturday afternoon, ” Come with me“. We went to the small corner bathroom that I had, and he puts my face in front of the mirror and continues: ” Who’s the guy over there? I don’t know him, I don’t know who he is“. I answer him how that, you don’t know who it is? It’s me daddy!” No, it’s not you. My son Philippe, he’s smarter than that. He might have more talent than the asshole I see in the mirror“. He didn’t say it like that, but anyway, it was quite decisive in my career. Overnight, with a Revox, that is to say a good tape recorder, three or four guitars well , I filled up with songs.

under the same sun is acoustic, organic. Isn’t this above all a good excuse to go on stage?

Yes, but I have plenty of excuses to go on stage. But the story of this song, it’s still a pretty weird thing. I haven’t done many songs for other people. We arrive in Lebanon a few months after the end of the war. We circulate in the middle of the ruined buildings, really the Bérézina, if one can say. And then, a guy comes to see us on the campus of the University of Beirut and we start talking about a lot of stuff and I ask him how he experienced the war. He answers me : ” Me, I was born in a cellar, I saw the light of day, I must have been three or four years old“. But how is that possible? The luck of being from Martinique, of being born where I was born, jumps out at me and him, in a cellar! Me, at three years old, I knew how to swim, I I had love, tenderness. He must have had love, tenderness, but that’s not possible, the sun doesn’t shine the same way for everyone. is what is a truism, but I write it down anyway in a little notebook. On the plane back, I write the text. I arrive in Paris, I go up to my little studio, in a quarter of an hour, I make music. Not a comma has been dropped. And Élisabeth Anaïs said to me: ” I wish I had done that one“.

How do you view this career then?

I think I was honest enough to do what I wanted to do and not do what I didn’t want to do.

I could have done a lot more songs, no doubt, but I also took the time to live a bit because it’s important.

Philippe Lavil

at franceinfo

Every August, for example, since my daughter, my first child, was born, every August I spent with my children. Except at the beginning, I did two tours, but afterwards, I was with my children, my family. I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this!

Because it’s important, it’s what defines you and you often say that your greatest pride is your children.

It is crucial. Yes of course. And above all, there is a pretty sentence that says: ” The greatest proof of love is to help the other to become what he is.“. So I’m working hard on it.

Philippe Lavil will be in concert on July 6, 2023 in Nuits-Saint-Georges.