Great Moments of Clarity | Inside the mind of Jean Lelop

in Great moments of clarity, journalist Olivier Boisvert-Magnen analyzes in depth the creative process of Jean Leloup. A comprehensive journey across ten albums, none of the main interested parties are involved, but it sheds a fascinating light on the character.

Josie Lapointe
Press

project

The publisher of Les Malines, Marc-Andre Audet, proposed to the journalist Olivier Boisvert-Magnen to write a book on Jean Leloup. The project was to make a biography, but as the singer remained silent on his repeated requests for an interview, he was forced to change his angle. “I decided to start his musical career, his first contact with the public when he won the Festival International de la Chanson de Granby in 1983.” Such is the idea of ​​a kind of hyper-searched musicology. The birth of each album is the subject of a lengthy report, practically song by song. To do this, Olivier Boisvert-Magnen talked to dozens of Leloup employees, from the first hour as well as recent ones. They provide a delightful narrative Geek Those who want to know what type of microphone was used for a song or how another was mixed. But through all these details, the outline of the creator and the man emerges. “I learned to find him more in his doubts and questions and in his moments of genius and madness. His humanity, we understand what an artist is. »

portrait

“There are personal stories that I don’t want to go into until they serve to understand an event or a song,” explains Olivier Boisvert-Magnen. Family and romantic relationships are touched upon, as are bipolarity and addictions. But because creation and life are closely intertwined with Jean Leloup, the narratives surrounding the often legendary albums and tours reveal his strengths and weaknesses. We see a perpetually discontented man who prefers to work in chaos and fears that the system will swallow the plague. And we find an artist with an irritating habit of demanding absolute availability from those he works with and abandoning people along the way as demanding and unimaginably stimulating, unifying and stimulating as he is. “There are also stories of loyalty, but it is true that there is a leitmotif. He makes music with someone for a while. Then he gets a new trip, he goes into the studio or he goes on tour and the person disappears from his life. “A painful separation, but many people forgive him because The singer took them out of their comfort zone and changed their lives. “I wanted their testimony because they are an integral part of his work. And that kind of breaks the myth of the singer-songwriter. »

Music

Album by album analysis By choosing an album, the journalist didn’t expect Sira to be this great. “He was always reacting to his previous album. Each is a musical universe, sometimes poetic, though the themes are repeated. And each is associated with different musical encounters. At this point I didn’t believe it. But if he feeds on others, Lelop also has “depth” to which he always returns. “His essence is always the same: a man with his “gait”. The author asks artists from all walks of life to testify to the influence he had on them, from Clo Pelhague to Loud through Dumas. It is Hubert Lenoir – no, this is not an innocent choice – who signs the preface. “He transcends generations and musical styles,” observes Olivier Boisvert-Magnen. How does he explain it? “He never fits a mold. But through his tunes, it has a pop structure and it makes him accessible to everyone. His irreverent side is most evident in his public appearances: this can be seen in the many quotations in the book taken from interviews granted over the past 30 years. “His songs are his famous great moments, where he can create something concise and structured. »

the wolf

It’s inevitable, Olivier Boisvert-Magnen’s book will make you want to listen to Jean Leloup again. All Jean Lelop. And he was very happy with it. “Beyond his greatest hits, all of his albums have gems,” says the author, who notes that the five most-listened-to songs on Spotify come from five different albums. “It’s crazy to see how it’s not just a tale of two albums. Of course, he wants to know what he thinks of the book — the singer was in Costa Rica during the entire writing process, but he was back in Montreal last spring when he was putting the finishing touches on it. “He’s not a nostalgia person and I think he really doesn’t like people who like him too much. The book is basically two things that don’t move him. » Three and a half years after its release strange country, can we expect something new? “I think so. We know what usually happens when he’s gone too long. When he comes back The heavenly city, we know it’s not the end, until he dies, he can come and get us with better songs. »

Jean Leloup – great moments

Olivier Boisvert-Magnen

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Smart guys

312 pages