What would the summer holidays be without summer hits, those songs that loop on the radio, that we sing at the top of our lungs and that make us dance until the end of the night? The duty takes you on a musical and temporal journey to (re)discover these hits that marked our summers.
It was the time of Donald Lautrec Hottelevision shows in lipsync badly done, and gogo dancers who accompanied the artists, in miniskirts on the podiums. Luc Plamondon was still writing songs in secret, secretly dreaming of becoming a lyricist. André Gagnon had started working with Monique Leyrac, and drove a blue Camaro, the model launched in 1966 by Chevrolet.
The song The summer pathsbetter known as In my Camarolaunched the career of the lyricist, at the same time as that of the young Steve Fiset, who interpreted it.
“One day, in Montreal, André Gagnon said to me: “you know, what is missing in Quebec is a lyricist”. I told him: “I have been writing in secret for a very long time”. I show him and he says to me: “these are not really songs, they are poems”, recalls Luc Plamondon, during an interview granted to the To have to on the occasion of the death of Monique Leyrac. “I was upset that he told me that my poems weren’t songs. »
Until then, Luc Plamondon believed that, to be a lyricist, it was a question of writing texts which would then be put to music. pop”, by submitting the music of summer paths. “I found thisfun. André Gagnon had a blue Camaro. I didn’t go far to seek inspiration,” says Luc Plamondon, who had just arrived from a trip to California.
A bomb
“It came out, and it was like a bomb,” he says. I left for two weeks, and when I came back, the song was everywhere. »
In his autobiography, Steve Fiset, who died in 2015, reveals that the song was originally intended for Renée Claude. “Luc had seen me on television in an advertisement for Philco Ford, he wrote, in Love is stronger than anything. He thought of this song he had written for Renée Claude, played it to Yvan [Dufresne] and it only took a few minutes to convince Luc to give it to us. »
“Steve Fiset was very young, recalls Luc Plamondon. It was launched by Yvan Dufresne, who was its producer. He said to me: “I have a young man with his long hair and his guitar, it will be a hit”. ” And hit it was.
“ The summer paths is the song that created “Steve Fiset”, writes Fiset again. I have said it several times: I owe my popularity to Luc Plamondon and André Gagnon. »
Plamondon and Fiset remained friends. “Our story of friendship led us to a three-month trip to India. Luc dreamed of this trip and me too. So we went on an adventure,” writes Fiset.
Steve Fiset’s career passed like a comet in the sky of the 1970s. In 1981, he became a delivery man for a grocery store. Years later, weakened by drug problems, he suffered a stroke, which left him paralyzed. On the contrary, the careers of Luc Plamondon and André Gagnon were long and fruitful.
The paths to success
While the song The paths of summer is on the airwaves, Plamondon receives a call from Monique Leyrac, a singer he deeply admires and whom he met when he was living in London.
“I get a call. I pick up and I hear him singing: “In my Camaro, I’ll take you on all the summer roads. In my Camaro, I’ll take you to San Francisco”… I say to myself “it can’t be. It’s Monique Leyrac!” She used to call me to ask me to sing songs for her. She said to me: “if you are able to do In my Camaroyou are able to make good pop songs for me, ”he says.
But the future decided otherwise. A little later, Monique Leyrac calls Luc Plamondon back to tell him that the Orchester symphonique de Montréal will accompany him for a concert. “She said to me: ‘if you could put me words on pieces of classical music…'”, he says.
One of these pieces is the magnificent This is where I want to livewhich Luc Plamondon wrote to accompany the music of Bachianas Brasileiras noh 5, by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, a pearl of the genre. First sung by Monique Leyrac, the song was taken up thirty years later by Marie Michèle Desrosiers. It’s probably not a hit, and certainly not a summer hit, but it’s a jewel in the Plamondon repertoire.