After the saxophonist Manu Dibango, the coronavirus has just made a new victim in the world of music. Daniel Bevilacqua, aka Christophe, died on Thursday. The 74-year-old singer was transferred from Paris to Brest last week in intensive care after being tested positive for Covid-19. Back in song on the career of the interpreter of the Blue Words .
Read also: Christophe: "I would never have sung if I had not tampered with my voice"
Aline (1965)
Come back Sophie , Christophe's first single, is a failure. It is with the album Aline that the singer made a remarkable entry on the French musical scene. The disc is carried by a title track inspired by the American blues that the singer loves and composed in a few minutes during a lunch at his grandmother's. The title ranks number one in France, with almost half a million copies sold, and transforms the newcomer into an icon of yé-yé.
The Lost Heaven (1973)
After a slump, Christophe, who has grown a mustache that will never leave him, is joined by the services of lyricist Jean-Michel Jarre. From this collaboration was born the album Paradis Perdus. Record of consecration, it is considered one of the most important of hexagonal rock. His first single, a seven-minute ballad that ends up in a dissonant frenzied rock, is inspired by bands from across the Channel like Pink Floyd. The title has been taken up by many artists, notably in a hybrid version with a song by Kanye West by pop singer Christine and the Queen.
The Blue Words (1974)
Christophe takes advantage of the success of Les paradis perdus to target a new audience. Still helped by the young lyricist, he released the album Les Mots bleus a year later , carried by a song of the same name. The singer expresses the difficulty of expressing his feelings to a young girl with whom he is madly in love in a refrain which now appears in the repertoire of all karaokes in France and Navarre: "I will tell him the blue words , the words you say with your eyes. Talking seems ridiculous to me, I rush forward and I step back. ”
Crazy Success (1984)
In the following years, the singer revived rock. His albums are critically acclaimed without really meeting the same enthusiasm as the Blue Words on the part of the public. He released a ballad in 45 laps, a crazy success in which he boasted of his success with the fairer sex. A slow carried by an arpeggiated guitar and a saxophone which, as its title let predict, meets an enthusiastic public.
Enzo (1996)
Christophe has deserted concert halls and studios for a long time. The singer has not released a single album for 13 years ( Clichés d'amour ). He returns with the very personal experimental record Bevilacqua , named after his last name. Going unnoticed when it came out, the techno-sounding disc experienced renewed interest in the 2000s. It was reissued in 2013 at the singer's request. In the title Enzo , it pays tribute to the car manufacturer Enzo Ferrari who died eight years earlier.
Silence we die (2013)
An ultra-productive period has begun since the start of the century for Christophe. He is back on the scene and sings "paradise found" in the eponymous album. The disc opens with the experimental piece Silence one dies , one might think out an album of Sébastien Tellier - inviting them also to sing his duet disc Christophe Etc . We can hear a dialogue of the film by Billy Wilder Boulevard of the twilight , which Christophe, lover of the seventh art since his childhood, inserted at the beginning of the song.
Petit Gars , with Étienne Daho (2019)
For several years, Christophe has multiplied collaborations. He fulfilled his dream by singing with his idol Alain Vega in the song Tangerine a few weeks before his death. In his album Christophe Etc. , released in two volumes, he surrounds himself with his favorite artists for a versatile disc composed exclusively of duets. There are notably collaborations with Eddy Mitchell, Raphaël, Juliette Armanet, Jeanne Added and Étienne Daho.