A figure of the anarchist left in the 1970s, notably with titles like
Parachutiste
,
Fontenay aux roses
,
La ville a des princes
, Maxime Le Forestier slipped towards the more mainstream variety with titles like “Né somewhere”
and
“
Né somewhere
”
and
On the road".
Has the artist, who celebrates his 75th birthday on February 10, abandoned his youthful ideals?
“I didn’t change the world but I don’t think the world changed me much.
I am always a bit utopian, a bit crazy and on cloud nine
,” he explained in 1988 in
Bains de midnight,
the cult show by Thierry Ardisson – available on the INA ArdiTube channel.
Maxime Le Forestier's career has been marked by very highs and very lows.
After the dazzling success of his first album
My Brother
, in 1972 - more than a million copies including
San Francisco
-, the sequence is more difficult.
Fewer hits, less television, fewer spectators.
“At the beginning of the 1980s, I noticed that the theaters were less full than before.
I took it philosophically.
I said to myself: '
I'm going to stop performing and when people want it again I'll come back.
'It only took 5 years.
It was a crossing of the desert... with oases
,” he laughs.
“A mountebank, not a thinker”
How can you find the motivation to continue your job when the rooms are half empty?
“It's a buzzkill.
But we must sing for those who are there.
We cannot make those who came pay for the fact that the other half of the room did not come,”
says Maxime Le Forestier, who admits to being, in 1988,
“less antimilitarist”
and
“a little less antinuclear
. ”
“It is not far from the Capitol to the Tarpeian rock
,” says the historian.
What follows is less well known:
“But the man who fights for reason, for his country, does not consider himself defeated so easily.”
In 1987, he recorded
“Né somewhere”
, a huge hit which won a Victoire de la Musique.
But is Le Forestier still the same?
Or did he
“compromise”
himself to find success.
We saw him disguise himself as Yves Mourousi in a Patrick Sébastien show.
“I hope the audience had a laugh.
I always said that I was an acrobat, not a thinker or a philosopher,
he justifies himself.
I am not ashamed.
I’m ready to do it again and I’m ready to dress up as Mireille Mathieu.”
An extract to discover: