Posted at 5:00 a.m.
On the hockey player, there is no doubt. Guy Lafleur was a great, one of the best of his time.
His forays into the world of “pop” culture, on the other hand, are more questionable. Especially since he did not deprive himself of it.
Whether on TV or on record, the “misdeeds” of the Blond Demon have been numerous, rarely for the better, often for the worse. We say it with affection, because they also allowed us to know the superstar from another angle, let’s say, more “human”. Though.
His many TV commercials remain particularly memorable. It is enough to surf on YouTube to have the painful proof of it.
Zeller? Molson? Chevy? Weston bread? Lafleur sausages? Whatever the product offered, Ti-Guy remains of a formidable constancy in the absence of expression, debiting his text with a fixed smile, in a monotone voice rolling his “r”.
It’s even worse when the advertised product lends itself to humor.
We are of course thinking of his Viagra ads. Or to his “ads” for Revitive, while the ex-player, barefoot in his living room, extols the virtues of a machine to “boost” blood circulation.
But in this register, the palm undoubtedly goes to the hair product Hairfax, where Lafleur makes the apology of a new revolutionary treatment against baldness. “Hair loss is preventing you from achieving your dreams? “, he asks, surmounted by a terrifying “brushing”.
Some of these commercials were filmed during his heyday. Others after his retirement. But each time, this same little discomfort, unidentifiable.
No wonder the duo Total Crap have often drawn on the “laflorian” work to feed their video compilations vintage. We are here in full psychotronism, raw material of the tandem specialized in culture trash.
Hockey players are not actors, we agree. But Guy Lafleur, he did a lot like that. He has charisma when he is himself. But when he reads a text and he’s in front of a camera, it comes out flat…
Simon Lacroix, member of Total Crap
Mr. Lacroix wonders why Guy Lafleur put his feet in the dish so often. Bad choice ? Lack of money ? Need to stay in the media “longer”?
For Benoît Melançon, professor of literature at the University of Montreal, and author of the book The eyes of Maurice Richard, the answer probably has more to do with the fact that Lafleur was a good guy who couldn’t say no. “It’s so anything and everything that it has to relate to personal generosity,” he suggests.
Be that as it may, Lafleur’s contribution to culture is not limited to advertising. He was also seen as an extra in the 1970s TV series Tit for tat.
PHOTO FROM ICI.RADIO-CANADA.CA
Guy Lafleur and Roger Lebel in Tit for tat in 1978
And he would also have been a poet in his spare time. At least that’s what Victor-Lévy Beaulieu tells us in an issue of the magazine Outlook published in 1972, quoting this extract, apparently signed by the Laflorian pen: “Forgive the indiscreet house / Who during your absence / Came to leaf through this notebook…”
It is also a poem by Lafleur, entitled Shadow and light, which would have inspired the title of the biography that George-Hébert Germain devoted to him in 1990.
Same The Press had published one of his poems in its pages in November 1971!
Unless I am mistaken, these texts have never been published in the form of a collection and are today among the great untraceables of Quebec literature.
Dance with Guy
With all that, we were almost going to forget the disco album recorded in 1979, by a Guy Lafleur at the top of his game.
No, the Blond Demon does not sing. But you can hear him lavish his hockey pro advice on youngsters, to fashionable disco rhythms. Sometimes a singer takes over for the star, who catches her breath.
This funny bug, which appeared at the time in English and French, had apparently cost $100,000 to produce. At least that’s what we learn in the CBC report, which covered the launch of the disc at Régine, a fashionable nightclub.
vinyl now sells for around twenty dollars on specialized sites, or even a little more if the copy includes the original poster, where you can see Lafleur, shirtless in the locker room. But if only the content interests you, know that the album is also on YouTube.
identify with him
Guy Lafleur in popular culture is also a brand image. These are hockey cards. Stamps bearing his likeness. This is the name of an energy drink named after him (Flower Power). It’s a “hockey-oriented” restaurant in Rosemère (Bleu Blanc Rouge… which he ended up selling) as well as a “Guy Lafleur” gin and a “Guy Lafleur” wine, the bottle of which could sell for up to $300.
PHOTO DAVID BOILY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Guy Lafleur wine in its luxury box
It is, finally, the representation that other artists will make of it, from the comic strip (We stole the Stanley Cup) to painting (Serge Lemoyne) to song (Bob Bissonnette), aspects also covered by our colleague André Duchesne (see other text).
Like Maurice Richard and Jean Béliveau before him, Lafleur will thus have left his mark in our media environment, and perhaps even more, because of the growing importance of television in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
It may not have always been very happy, but it will have allowed Lafleur-la-superstar to enter our homes with the aura of the “ordinary guy”, making him automatically more accessible to us.
“Guy Lafleur has a dimension of proximity on which we played a lot, underlines Benoît Melançon. He was close. There was no distance. He was someone who had such good interpersonal skills that everyone appreciated. All the media was saying, “He’s the smartest guy in the world.” And in addition, he went through family dramas. It played on the perception we had of him. It became easier to identify with him. »
“And then he was in the news for 50 years non-stop, for all sorts of reasons, good or bad.
“It helps to be remembered…”