Hospitalized on March 26 in Paris for respiratory insufficiency, then transported to Brittany to continue his treatments, the singer Christophe, 74 years old, died Thursday April 16 in the evening, announced the Obs. Rock enthusiast and friend of singer Pierre Lescure confirmed the news in the evening on Twitter. “Christophe is gone. He died in the early evening at the Brest hospital. Lucie, his daughter was near him. We think of him, her, his close friends. We've known each other since 1965. A lifetime. But all of us, we have words and refrains from him. His unique voice, " said the boss of the Cannes Film Festival.
A slender figure, a fragile voice and this chiseled face with the mustache and the unchanged hair: until the end, Christophe will have cultivated this look of timeless dandy so singular in the landscape of French song. A sought-after “Latin lover” look that hid the perfectionist arranger and the delicate composer behind many hits.
Christophe had been performing for a few years in a bare and intimate context on the stages of France. In 2019, he accepted an order from his record company: to record an album of duets. From this endless, often sterile and often barren exercise, he had found the material to reinvent several great titles in his repertoire. If he had sacrificed for the task, it was more to highlight the work of the people he admired rather than to add up the prestigious big names. " This is not a show biz album ", he had told us proudly about this record, entitled Christophe etc. and available in two volumes. “ I am inspired by others. It's a matter of passion, ”he explained. Until the end of his life, this singular and endearing man will have continued his sound quest with frenzy and passion.
Read also: Christophe: "I would never have sung if I had not tampered with my voice"
It was behind his console with a view of the boulevard du Montparnasse that Christophe received. In the personal studio where he had laid the foundations for his latest albums, in a maze of machines and musical instruments that told of his constant thirst for invention. “ What I do every day when I get up is to go into sound matters. At one point, I go after an experience, like a sound painter. I evolve with new machines, it's so unlimited! This self-taught man willingly defined himself as a fetishist. He recognized himself as a melodist while admitting to having become a singer thanks to technology. " My voice, I pass it in boxes, " he said. " I would never have been a singer if I had not tampered with my voice. It also started with Aline. "
It is thanks to this tube from the summer of 1965 that the young Daniel Bevilacqua, born in Juvisy-sur-Orge (Essonne) twenty years ago, had become famous. Descendants of Italian immigrants from Friuli at the end of the 19th century, he is the son of a heating engineer and a seamstress. The young man was fascinated by American music and culture very early on. The blues of pioneers John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson seduced him, then the first wave of rock'n'roll with the productions of the label Sun, Elvis Presley and the others. After playing guitar and harmonica, he formed the group Danny Baby and the Hooligans in which he sang in "yogurt". It was a few years before the invention of drinking yogurt. From the 1980s, Christophe preferred to use the expression "singing in Yop" ...
After a first single without success in 1963, the young man takes down the tube of summer 1965 with Aline, a blues dedicated to one of his tender friends. Success propels him among fashionable young people. It even appears in the photo of "Salut les copains", which brings together the ban and the back ban of the yé-yé scene under the lens of Jean-Marie Périer and the patronage of Johnny. It will take a few more years to find that Christophe is light years away from these singers. He followed the 45 laps with regularity, on the AZ and Barclay labels until 1968. Only Les Marionnettes experienced significant success.
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In 1970, Christophe composed the music for the film La Route de Salina , directed by Georges Lautner, a feature film that had become cult. This racing enthusiast, who has spent his royalties on racing cars, makes a first artistic turn, joining the stable of producer Francis Dreyfus. It was on the Disques Motors brand that he spent most of his career. He then became close to Alain Bashung, a young singer whom Dreyfus also took under his wing. The latter then had the idea of collaborating another of his foals, Jean-Michel Jarre. In 1973, Christophe released a record which placed him at the level of Anglo-Saxon productions which he admired so much: Les Paradis perdus . Recorded in the new Ferber studios complex in the 20th arrondissement by the brilliant sound engineer René Ameline, the album presents Christophe, who now has a fine mustache and medium length hair, as an avant-garde passionate about machines. In this case, the ARP Odyssey analog synth, which gives a unique sound to this first masterpiece. The following year, the same team produced the album Les Mots bleus , whose title song became a huge radio success, as did Señorita , another extract from the album. The same year, the singer gives a series of concerts at the Olympia, in a delirious staging by the illusionist Dominique Webb, who recycles for the occasion the figure of the levitation of the "Flying Piano". The arrangements, very elaborate, highlight the work of virtuosos like Patrice Tison (guitar), evoke the progressive movement of English rock, then very fashionable. This show is also the last one given by Christophe before his return to Olympia in 2002, almost thirty years later.
The second half of the 1970s saw Christophe collaborate with new lyricists. It is thus to Boris Bergman - future accomplice of Bashung - that we owe the texts of Samurai , in 1976, in particular that of Merci John to have come , in which the narrator tells how the Beatles attended his marriage. Two years later, the very rock Le Beau Bizarre was signed with Bob Decout. A darling of criticism, the disc did not meet with great public success. Not seen, not taken , in 1980, marks his collaboration with the singer Alain Kan, brother of Christophe's wife, Véronique, who gave him a daughter, Lucie, in 1971.
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In the 1980s, Christophe considerably slowed down his production. He abandoned the albums in favor of singles, most of which enjoyed good fortune. Crazy success , J'lai not touched or Hang up amplify to the caricature, sometimes, his image of great seducer. As for the album, Clichés d'amour , a collection of standards from the 1940-1950 period translated by the editor in chief of Rock & Folk, Philippe Paringaux, it does not contribute much. In 1988, Chiqué, chiqué , a daring single, did not meet the general public. Retired from the scene, Christophe devoted himself fully to his passions: the jukeboxes, which he collected, the 78 turns of blues, and the cinema. He has at his home a private projection room in which he invites his friends to watch rare films. He is one of the first in France to be passionate about the work of the American director David Lynch. At one time, Christophe carried several DVDs of the filmmaker with him in a backpack.
After eight years of complete discographic silence, the singer made a grand comeback in the middle of a trip-hop wave, in 1996, with his most personal record. “ The album that will remain the record of my life is Bevilacqua. I did everything on it. I wrote everything - even if I co-signed the texts, ”he explained proudly. At 50, Christophe is at the top of his art with this unique work, which radically breaks with his classic production. The disc, which opens with a self-interview on electro loops, contains a tribute to Enzo Ferrari and a powerful duo with Alan Vega, of the New York duo Suicide, one of his models. The failure is hot, but who cares: Christophe is back on track. The following albums will more or less take up the formula, making it more accessible. Comm'si terre leaning , which marks his arrival at Universal Music in 2001, contains songs a little more accessible. Above all, the good reception reserved for the album allows him to go back on stage. On March 11, 2002, he was back on the stage of the Olympia, in an ambitious scenography signed by the visual artists Ange Leccia and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, containing a choreography by Marie-Claude Pietragalla. Paris is at the feet of the singer, who acquires a new status and becomes cult. Quite a snub to those who had buried it a little quickly. Christophe gives himself up enormously to the press, in river interviews which maintain his legend of night owl and unrepentant seducer.
Loving what we are (2008), which will take him four years of work and cost his label € 700,000, is certainly the craziest of all his records. This is undoubtedly the last French blockbuster of an industry which is sinking into the record crisis. Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Filipacchi lend their voices, and the American drummer Carmine Appice rubs shoulders with Andalusian musicians. The same year, Christophe played the Sun King in a magnificent concert at the Palace of Versailles.
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In 2013, to accompany the release of previously unreleased Motors, Christophe began his first solo tour. “ I started to know what the keyboard was when I played at the Théâtre Marigny. It was swollen. The piano has changed my life, ”he explained to us. The amateurism of his game does not detract from the intensity of these moments in which he revisits a repertoire that draws in all the periods of his career. On stage, he transposed the shambles of his apartment on the left bank: grand piano, synths, guitars. He notably reveals his sound chair, a seat of his invention, equipped with a microphone allowing him to move, as he pleases, behind the piano. Touching and funny at the same time.
Between two concert dates, the man advances the site of an album that will give him a lot of trouble, Les Vestiges du chaos , his most beautiful since Bevilacqua . He finds there the pen of Jean-Michel Jarre on a song, and pays homage to two missing heroes: Lou Reed and Alan Vega. The album, looking like a balance sheet, wonderfully synthesizes the explorations of this workaholic, who has never stopped questioning himself, unlike many other singers of his generation. If he considered that 50 was the best age of his life, Christophe lived his life as he intended until the end. On a sailboat during the summer months, in Tangier when he wanted to get away but most of the time in his studio on boulevard du Montparnasse. Without forgetting the permanent presence of women, an unchanging landmark. “ My chance has been to love women and to put art on the same level as love. When a love story didn't work for me, I had the art to support myself , ”confided to us in 2019 the man who had remained a great seducer.