Era is reborn and will shake the Zenith of Toulouse with his “medieval” and heroic rock

“The Live Experience”, your latest album, gives a taste of what awaits us on Sunday on the Zenith stage…

Indeed, it was recorded at the start of the tour at the end of 2019. It was to last two years and land in many places in the world where Era sold records (12 million worldwide, editor’s note) and, obviously , because of the Covid crisis, it stopped after 20 dates. We have been playing again since November but we were all impatient!

You say “we” but Era is you!

Since leaving with Era I have never put myself forward, there has never been my name on the covers of the discs because above all I wanted it to be a musical experience with very beautiful voices. I come from this hard-rock culture which puts forward the voices because since very young I listen to Led Zeppelin and Robert Plant, Deep Purple and Ian Gillan… They are singers who sing great tunes and the bridge between hard rock and the classic that Era establishes comes from this capacity to put forward powerful voices. And I think the brand, if we can talk about the brand of ERA, is the voices, the choir, the melodies. So, of course, when you come on stage, you need a few people!

On this subject, the cast is impressive, how many are you on stage?

There are 10 musicians and 20 singers including 4 soloists, two from classical music, a tenor and a soprano, and two from symphonic metal. We take the public on a sound and light journey, in a mystical atmosphere that corresponds well to the era, in particular with the success of heroic fantasy, of the medieval due to the films “The Lord of the Rings” in cinema and “Game of Thrones” on television. My inspiration came from all this universe by thinking of the legends of King Arthur, the Templars, voices and melodies…

Finally, hard-rock, metal, rock are the favorite styles that also fed the Era project…

When you’re a young hard rock band like ours at the time, Shakin’ Street, and you find yourself playing big gigs with Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Blue Oyster Cult, Alice Cooper, you learn what works, there is not too much space for what is a bit useless. That’s what I like about hard rock, it’s a culture of efficiency. It is true that I am impregnated with it and that I unconsciously breathed it into Era, going straight to the point.

Is this the reason why the success has been so wide around the world?

It’s universal I think, it can appeal to an Israeli, a Swede, a Mexican. Moreover, Mexicans are very receptive because spirituality is very important to them. I realized the phenomenon and the success of the group when I went to promote when the success arrived, it was so important that I was forced to go there when in France we had no nothing done except an ad on TF1.

At the end of the 1990s when the title “Ameno” revealed to you, it was difficult to position yourself in a musical category…

Yes it was very complicated and it was the music of the film “Les Visiteurs” by Jean-Marie Poiré that made us known but while the film gathered 14 million spectators, the soundtrack only sold 35,000 copies . The success of a film then led to substantial sales of soundtracks, but the record company did not believe it. My interesting royalties allowed me to make my album without depending on anyone. Which gave me real artistic freedom, I did what I wanted.

A life in rock

From his first group Shakin’Street, rock guitarist Éric Levi remembers the energy, the friendly faces (Fabienne Shine, Louis Bertignac, Corinne Marienneau (these last two will then participate in the Telephone adventure). But also the experience of tours in the United States with the groups Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Journey, AC/DC after Sandy Perlman, the manager of the first two groups, noticed them at the Mont-de-Marsan punk festival in 1977.