Every day, a personality invites herself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Today, the singer, Florent Pagny. He has just published his autobiography “Pagny par Florent” with Fayard editions, written with the writer, lyricist and longtime friend Emmanuelle Cosso.
Florent Pagny is an interpreter who has accompanied us for more than 35 years and who is part of our sad or joyful memories. The songs like Know how to love (1997), My freedom of thought (2003), Sing (1997), And one day a woman (2000), Bearing walls (2013)” or Where I’ll Take You (2006) have become his songs, but especially ours.
>> FRANCEINFO DOCUMENT. “Mentally, the disease has not yet won the case!” : Florent Pagny talks about his cancer
The little boy divorced very early from school, a great director of nonsense of all kinds, always dreamed big, but simply until he discovered this voice from the height of his eleven years. A discovery experienced as a second birth. His tours have sold out or nearly sold out. His albums have sold 15 million copies, his personality having a lot to do with it, he knew how to conquer the hearts of the French with his outspokenness and his humility. Florent Pagny has just published his autobiography: Pagny by Florent published by Fayard, written with the writer, lyricist and longtime friend Emmanuelle Cosso.
franceinfo: I would like to talk about the cover of your book. It is a photo that is very important to you. It is in black and white.
Florent Pagny: First, she is beautiful. It can pose a problem of reading because one smokes. It is an act that I practiced and all the people who could come into my intimacy necessarily saw me in this situation and with this image. And it will never take place again since anyway, it’s behind me, I have to quit smoking.
You speak precisely of why we could no longer take it today with the discovery of this disease. From the beginning, we feel that you are living with this disease, but that it is not part of you.
So far, mentally, she hasn’t won the case. So frankly I plug into other things and I don’t think about it, even when I go to bed, I don’t think about it. It’s still a big chance. I don’t know if my nature doesn’t allow me this kind of thing and then if finally, what I’ve learned and what I’m learning from life, which anyway is ephemeral, it’s for everyone, is that if things were to become otherwise, I think that I would also find the axis where you say to yourself: “Still, with everything I’ve been through, everything’s fine!“
Things can be difficult, but if we know how to take them, if we assume, if we face well and understand what is happening to us, you should be able to get out of it. It’s the pepper… This one, it’s a little spicy, but good.
Florent Pagnyat franceinfo
It took you a long time to agree to write your memoirs.
Yes. In fact, it’s this 60-year-old band that brought me to all this, it’s when all of a sudden, I’m preparing the 60-year-old tour and I say to myself: well, come on, I don’t know what will happen next because I honestly have the impression that a page will be turned. It’s quite blurry. And in this page that is turning, I may be able to make a kind of balance sheet, it’s age and if it’s to do it, it’s now.
This man we’ve grown to love over time has a starting point. It’s that age of eleven. You are sick, your mother tells you:Stay warm“And you have a big problem as a child, which is that you are hyperactive and very often bored.
Yes and very quickly!
You will fill this boredom with nonsense. But that day, you fill it with a record player and you put on a Gérard Lenorman record with the song He and sing the song to you. And even before your mother comes home from work, you feel that something is happening at that moment.
It’s quite special when all of a sudden, you feel that you are capable with your body, with an organ, of doing something that others will perhaps look at and say to themselves: ‘but I can’t do it. ‘.
Florent Pagnyat franceinfo
Exactly. You have found something that will become your strong point. You turn around and there is your mother who is frozen. She too has been singing all her life and very well and she realizes that she has a child who has that. And from there, our lives will change.
In the last title that you perform with Kendji Girac, Again, you speak of recklessness. Did you keep it?
I’m afraid so! I always say that I was stuck at 27, the year when my life changed, when I went from a quidam to someone you recognized on the street. I have this kind of natural youth in me, with necessarily more experiences.
When we talk about you, we obviously think of the performer that you are. Are you proud of the repertoire that you managed to build yourself through others, through the exchanges you had with others, through the fact that others wanted to write for you too?
Ah yes, I found the good songs and afterwards, I think I inspired, me, my better half, life, other very good songs. There were even some weird events that inspired a great song that became my greatest song. And on stage, I explain that it’s the one I sold the most and it’s a bit sad because I would have preferred it to be Know how to love the message of love, but no, it’s rather a somewhat materialistic message.
It is My freedom of thought !
It is My freedom of thoughtbut with so much irony and so much hindsight that you say: “Come on, it’s fine, we can laugh about it and it can also be useful“. All these songs, all these messages, everything that I have to do with all of this, it defines my journey.