So it’s hard to imagine that 50 years ago this year “Love is a bird” was released, his first 45 rpm. In an almost general indifference. For success, it will be necessary to wait for the meeting with Alain Souchon two years later, then “Rock collection” in 1977.The rest, we know. Everything has been said about this unfailing friendship-complicity, this sharing of work even in the relationship with the media where Souchon…
So it’s hard to imagine that 50 years ago this year “Love is a bird” was released, his first 45 rpm. In an almost general indifference. For success, it will be necessary to wait for the meeting with Alain Souchon two years later, then “Rock collection” in 1977. The rest, we know. Everything has been said about this unfailing friendship-complicity, this sharing of work even in the relationship with the media where Souchon does the job with good words while Voulzy remains the discreet musician, who responds seriously. And yet: “When I tell myself that since the age of 23-24 I have made a decent living from this profession, it’s wonderful. It’s impressive, seen like that… 50 years of happiness. But hey, time goes at its speed. In fact, I don’t know what to think of it. »
” Never happy “
So time races, sometimes: “I have the impression that I have accelerated the pace of my record releases since 2001. But to say that I’m going faster…” Of an album every ten years to one every seven years. “I’m never happy with my job. For the others, it’s fine, but when it’s for me… If I compose, it’s because something caught my eye. I found a diamond that needs working. I refine until I no longer ask myself questions. A search for perfection, at least for something approaching it: “I don’t know if it’s perfection. It’s the search for a perfect sphere, it has to be smooth and create an emotion. That’s it, I’m looking for absolute emotion. »
A quest that allows him to turn around without blushing: “Very honestly, when I listen to my old albums again, I find them good. Even in the first two, there are good things. Well, sometimes, a little less well. And if we had to designate the darlings? “”Hidden behind” and ”Lys and love”, they are the most imbued with spirituality. »
“There is a real mystery in these places. For me, they are like spaceships, between the sky and the Earth”
There you go, the word is out. The one with whom he has been playing hide-and-seek for years, such as when he released the unequivocal but discreet “Hidden behind” (1992) and even more so since he undertook, three years ago, a tour in the churches and cathedrals. To date, 220 dates on the clock and a kind of permanent happiness to frequent monuments and “people passionate about these sites, priests, bishops, historians”… “There is a real mystery in these places. For me, they are like spaceships, between heaven and Earth. It’s something that I felt confusedly and really discovered. »
So for three years, he has been more vocal about what drives him, behind the music: “I’m on a quest, I don’t have certainties but I have the impression that there are things that l ‘we do not see. When we look at the stars, we understand that there is something that escapes us. We do not understand infinity. »
A musical piece on Joan of Arc
At 73, the musician who had become known for a tangy romanticism version of “Nights without Kim Wilde” or “Bopper in tears” becomes more serious, more serious, without abandoning the aerial aspect of his melodies. “I’ve always had the impression that I make music that’s a little religious, a little spiritual. I have always sought harmony. »
But there is a long way from Kim Wilde to Joan of Arc to whom he dedicated a song in “Lys and Love” and on which he is preparing a musical piece. With, unsurprisingly, Alain Souchon, who is more mocking on the subject, but also Franck Ferrand, radio host with a passion for history “for the references, to be sure that the fiction part respects the historical part”.
And when we talk about the more political connotations that the figure of his heroine has taken on for several decades, Laurent Voulzy comes out of his reserve and gets carried away: “She has been recovered since the 20the century but there are people from the center or from the left who like it. Me, I’m far from all that, I’ve been passionate about it since I was a child. He is a very mysterious, mystical character, straight in his boots. She probably heard some entity, so what? There have been others. “But the outburst gives way to the singer of “Soleil donne”: “It shouldn’t bother anyone. Everyone breathes the same air and drinks the same water. There, there is nothing hidden behind.
La Reole (33). Thursday October 13, at 8 p.m., at the Saint-Pierre church (full).