Author, composer and performer, many define Bernard Lavilliers as an ‘adventurous singer’, starting with himself. It was his mother who taught him to read poetry and she has never left him again and accompanies his songs. Songs that have often been written to express revolt in favor of the oppressed, but also tenderness.
Always faithful to himself and to his roots, Bernard Lavilliers is On the road again with a new album coming out on Friday October 12: Under a huge sun, or 11 brand new titles. He will also be at the Olympia from June 16 to 19, 2022.
franceinfo: With Under a huge sun, you take the pulse of humans, but as a good boxer you also send them to the ropes.
Bernard Lavilliers: Yes. We must not be shy! I wrote a few songs because I knew there was the Cop26. I know it won’t change much, it’s just to open up the minds of those who forget or those who analyze poorly. Afterwards, it’s true that I went to the Republican public school and that I came across teachers who, apart from my mother, drew my attention to poetry and beautiful texts. When I was young, I learned by heart Baudelaire who marked me, but also Prévert, then Aragon.
We realize, with this 22nd album, how much you still have the same convictions. As in the first, it didn’t change that.
There is no reason for me to change, I remember my origins, my roots. I know the common people well “from below”, as others say. There is no reason to write extremely easy things with four and a half words for them to understand. You must not believe, they understand everything.
What does this album represent for you?
The 22nd! I hope it’s not one more album or one too many album, which is worse. I still tried to be up to the task. We also worked a lot remotely, it’s quite complicated, but in the end I said everything I had to say around the time. I had a little bit of slack and I’ll see for a future album.
I feel like the armor is cracking more and more. That it was necessary to protect you too and that over time, you put down the “weapons” a little. You keep saying what you have to say, but you open up more, especially on the song Elsewhere. At times you have tears on the edge of your lips.
When I sing it on stage, after a while it will be different because, there, the interpretation is raw. I didn’t want to do it two or three times, I just did it once. I had just written it. I was leaving the hospital because I had a heart problem. So Elsewhere, it was just after the anteroom. I was quite moved to be still alive and asked a nurse in the recovery room to bring me a lamp, paper and pen, which he did very kindly. I started to write this song at that time. It’s still very important writing for me. The first thing I thought about was not my health, it was to write.
We always felt you were indestructible. Has this event changed your look?
I don’t feel indestructible. No doubt I am lucky because I have been through a lot of things that could have cost me my skin a long time ago.
This album is also a tribute that you pay to your parents and to the education they gave you. ?
Sure. My father was quite square, extremely honest and the fact of having learned to work very young, I wanted to write or go on a trip especially, that gave me very solid foundations, like boxing. I always get back on my feet, it’s true, whatever I do as a kind of bullshit and I don’t usually do little bullshit. It’s better now.
My education gave me a kind of balance between the imaginary and the real. It is important.
Bernard Lavilliersto franceinfo
When does music definitely enter your life?
In 1974, when I began to imagine a little that I could improve myself already, to find musicians as imaginative as me, who will give me a hand. But let’s say that from Barbarians in the fifteenth round, I feel more free. That’s when I really found the sound I wanted.
You did the round at the start. Did you know this was going to end in something?
No. I absolutely did not sing my songs. I didn’t take myself seriously. I no longer went to the factory so every now and then I had to go do the sleeve. I sang Boris Vian, Boby Lapointe, Georges Brassens, Léo Ferré, etc.
You received your first pay while playing in a pizzeria.
Absoutely. Pizza du Marais was a theater café. After me or before, there was Jacques Higelin, Renaud. We were doing three quarters of an hour. People were going out, there were others coming in for the next one.
Didn’t all of this make you stronger?
It allows you to correct yourself. Where I really learned to have confidence, it is certainly in the restaurants, to be the sleeve. Turning the customers who came to eat, into followers, into spectators, it was not that easy, but I was getting there. No one is expecting you. So afterwards, when I wasn’t coming, people would say: “Is he the singer there?“So, it’s funny, restaurant owners were shouting at me.
Is it true that you hesitated for a very long time to be either a boxer, a gangster, or a singer?
Yes. I actually tried all three for quite a while, after all. But like I told you, it’s still my writing thing. So I think if I had stayed in the other two, I wouldn’t be here to talk to you anymore.