Saw Luc yesterday for a tonkin soup and he says the Hoffmann came off before we left for St. Jovite. The Hoffmann is this odd contraption you can see in the picture made up of a linked up array of metallic rods that pierce right through the bones and line them up straight and still for the duration of the healing process. That way, the wound can be attended to from all sides, at anytime, something a cast would obviously preclude in cases like this one where the limb was completely severed.

Pino at the Royal Victoria.

At the time this picture was taken, Luc had undergone several skin and muscle tissue grafts “cannibalized” from other areas of his own body to minimize rejection of foreign bodies by his immune system. Later on, the Hoffmann was to be replaced by a plastic cast with a lid on top, allowing for daily care of the wound still vulnerable to infection, worms and flies…Just kidding.

Eric, who had suffered a nasty double open fracture of the lower left leg, was by now free of his cast and strolled around with a cane. As for myself, on those days when my back was killing me from my cracked vertebrae, all I had to do was to done my corset, and straighten up, literally. The thing was made of lightweight aluminum with pressure points on the sternum and pelvis in the front, tied to a large strap that went across my lower back, which I tightened with a jack screw situated on my left flank. The more I tightened the screw, the straighter I got.
You had to see the look on this waitress’s face as Éric and I stop by a greasy spoon on the 117 for a cheeseburger. We sit at the counter on these stools without a backrest and start looking a the menu. The girl is standing in front of us, check pad and pencil, ready to take our order. My back wouldn’t last long on one of them stools and since I already had the corset on, I stick my hand inside my shirt, reach for the jack screw and start cranking away.
Crwick, crwick, crwick…
Each crwick I give, my back straightens up a notch, until I’m as straight as a Parisian whore ! Then I stop… And re button my shirt.
I hadn’t noticed at first, but all the while, this waitress was watching me inching up, completely bemused, as if to say what the hell is this low tech transformer going to screw next !?

I mean, one would think of kids in a rock band as indestructible power houses doing back flips on stage and chasing girls all night while high on drugs and booze.
We looked like we were recently discharged from a retirement home in a geriatrics complex
what with our crutches, canes and corsets, moving no faster than a half a mile an hour !

Cut a long story short, I couldn’t speak for Rako and Pino, but I myself was driven by the unshakable conviction that if we just did what we had to do one step at a time, everything would work out just fine.
No sweat!
And the first thing to do was to buy some equipment with the insurance money, and find some place to record a demo.

Again, it was a single picture in a french magazine called Rock & Folk that inspired me for what was to follow in the next months. In this black and white shot, you could see the band members of Genesis ( yes, them again !) sitting around the table after a meal. Banks was recounting something with the other guys listening, a grin on their faces. No idea what he was talking about, but that scene carried an ambiance of such conviviality and camaraderie, underlined by the settings, an old medieval English pub at night, with a wood fire in a corner, you know, such as those found only in England.
That picture conveyed everything I fantasized about of a band experience, much more than the usual sex and drugs and Rock & Roll cliche so often associated with being in a rock outfit.
In time, I was to learn that in a band context, conviviality is often the first thing to fly out the window, and if I had known this simple truth back then, maybe I wouldn’t have so often been at the center of this otherwise avoidable state of things.

Luc’s chalet in St.Jovite

Be that as it may, it so happens that Luc’s family owned a chalet on Lake L’Amoureux, just past St.Jovite, in the Laurentians. The house was a reconstructed old barn complete with the original post and beam structure. One of the coziest place I know, to be sure, with it’s central wood stove, ancient kitchen and large mezzanine with bedrooms tucked away in the roofs.
It was unoccupied at the time, so Luc suggested we set up shop there for as long as we needed to make our demo, in an autumn setting, far from the distractions of the big city. Great idea !

But we needed a recording machine, at least eight tracks, and Fostex had recently put out a new one on the market precisely for people like us, much smaller and a lot less expensive than what the competition had to offer. Thing is, there weren’t any on the market in Canada yet, and we had to drive to New York to buy one. Oh well…The ride would do us good anyway.
We drove all night, showed up in time for opening, paid cash I think, and just buggered off with our new toy. No budget for hotels, so we zoomed back to Montréal, another 8 hour drive.
Canadian customs wouldn’t hear of us taking the machine in and paying taxes later. But we had run out of cash and interac did not exist back then. So we had to leave our new baby there, drive to town, get money and go back to fetch the little marvel. Irritating setback but hell…

The Fostex 8 track and my synth of the time, a fully polyphonic Korg PS 3200

And marvelous it was. That machine allowed us to record our music to a desired degree of complexity and detail. And that’s exactly what we did all day, comfortably set up in Luc’s chalet. We would only break to fix lunch and supper and to get water from the lake to do the dishes.
I forgot to say we didn’t have running water then. That’s right, we had to crap in a back house, not always very warm for our precious asses.

Walk Away and Weekend came about almost right from the get go. Walk Away was one such typical Rako guitar bits put together. The lyrics came to life in a flash too, inspired by The Talking Heads in the delivery, and recounting a day in the life of an office girl living in NYC.
A hit… At least in my mind !
Jacques Godbout was making a documentary on the cultural trends of the day in Québec and wanted us to flagship the music segment. Francis has put a bit of it on U Tube where we can be seen to argue that the American market being so close, it would be rather stupid not to try and reach for it. I particularly, am the cocky one saying it should be a walk in the park. So Godbout took Walk Away to a black female DJ in a New York radio station to have her take on it. She listens to the song and goes on to say the track has everything to be a hit, the beat, the subject. Anyone could identify to the character in the song, perfect for the drive home… A hit she says, no sweat.
( Of course, the label did nothing about it.)

The guitars in the demo have not much to do with those in the final version. They were pure
Rako style. One of these days, time permitting, I will rerecord that tune the way it was as a demo, with those exact same guitar parts, and the vocal chorus line on one note only. That’s right, one note — there wasn’t all this vocal melody in the first version–. Brilliant !

Well then, one might ask, if the damn thing was so brilliant the way it was, why have you not recorded it that way for the final version ?
The answer to this question lies in our stay in St.Jovite. Check out the absurdity.
You may recall a few posts back, I said we had unfortunately not enjoyed our St.Jovite experience the same way…
I was referring to Éric for whom our stay there progressively morphed into a personal hell with a bit of help from yours truly. Let me explain.
It so happens there was a big difference of character between Éric and I, which went like so: Éric’s artistic expression was that of a “dark” personality which didn’t take itself too seriously, whereas I, on the contrary, took it very seriously to be the least “dark” possible.
Now instead of identifying this difference as a potential asset, I did everything I could to repress it.
For example, Rako had written a complete piece of music inspired by a Munch painting called The Shout or The Scream — which incidentally would do a great jacket for Le Horla –.

The Shout or The Scream by Munch

Needless to say the music reflected the mood of the picture in all of it’s anguish and despair, and then some. One day, as I was off to Montreal for the day, Éric and Luc recorded the track and sat me down at night to have a listen.
Suffice it to say that I expressed the thought, in no uncertain terms, that we should concentrate our energies in crafting music capable of competing for a 3 minute slot on the radio with guys who came up with songs that stated every little thing she did was magic, as well as young perky pop starlets claiming to be material girls.
Once the millions rolled in, maybe we could think of addressing a musical psychoanalysis of the cycles of manic depression expressed by early century painters in the industrialized world…

I wasn’t entirely wrong about this, but it’s just that my elephant in a china store approach to things ended up exceeding Rako’s however grand sphere of patience until the day he got fed up and just instructed me to fuck off.
The funny part is that the pieces of music I’m talking about here are precisely those I asked him permission to use in The Horla, which, only last month, Luc and I dug up from the old tapes of that period, and which he graciously agreed to let me use.
How things come round.

So after Éric split, Luc and I were left to find people to play bass, guitars and drums. We stumbled across just such a trio who — you guessed it — were looking for a singer.
Now this band had names : Jean Pierre Brie played bass, Guy Florent played guitars and a fellow by the name of Pierre Lacoste did the drums. Those were excellent musicians whom I felt uncomfortable issuing orders to from fear of being handed the finger anytime I’d ask for them to play the songs as per the demo, especially the guitars which had been written by someone else.
As I needed a band to play the songs more than I needed the songs without a band, I just shut up, played cool and let them do pretty much what they wanted. I kind of went from being a pain in the ass for Rako to being way too fluid with the new guys.
The next few years was a perpetual balancing act which nonetheless ended up costing me quite a few band members, including Luc who called it quits in the summer of ‘90, just before we flew to England to record The Pleasure And The Pain.

I’m not sure I could say I have no regrets. There are many things I’d have done differently.
Matter of fact, I can speak in the present tense as I am currently doing things very differently with this line up, with much better results.
The ever so elusive conviviality I longed so much for is back in the equation, I’m happy to report.
Let’s put that 90% on account of experience.

Because you see, by definition, a band context is an extremely hostile environment to harmonious human relations, contrary to what is widely believed, particularly in a so called democratic band where the music brought by one must meet the approval of the others or worse still, must be rearranged ( and most often than not, diluted ) to every one’s personal taste. Or it can be simply dismissed from the back of the hand without as much as an afterthought about the person who wrote it and put all they had that’s intimate and personal into it. I did it to others and I tasted the medicine myself too. Not always fun…
Not to mention personal habits and traits of character, the effects of which can be blown right out of proportion given a sufficient amount of touring induced sleep deprivation, bad food, stress or even flat out boredom.
Add to that the shortcomings usually associated with a career in music, mitigated successes, and the feeling of being trapped in a record contract precluding you from handing your talent over to other possibly better positioned players to propel you to big time success.

Oh, but what about The Rolling Stones, I hear all the time…
Leave me alone with The Rolling Stone and freaking Pink Floyd. These guys represent but a fraction of a fraction of the percentage of all bands that ever existed and still populate the face of the planet today. They are probabilitical non entities. You have more chances of being hit by lightning every single day for an entire month right in the middle of the Sahara Desert than to make it like the Bee Gees made it in this business. Bob Dylan and Elvis are the result of an extraordinary combination of factors and circumstances which needed to line up just perfectly so and no other way. Even less important acts that still made it big defy the gravitational pull towards the bottom of the food chain so inherent to the recording industry.
And even being covered in gold is no guaranty of social harmony in a band. On the contrary. Ask The Police.
I’ll bet you what you want 99.9999999% of bands work their asses off putting out reasonable music year after year without being able to live from it.

Here’s how I’m going to leave you: I don’t give a hoot how well or bad this album does when it comes out. I’ll do everything I can to give it the best chances, but that’s a bit like avoiding black cats and passing under ladders on your way to buying a lotto ticket. It won’t do shit.
One thing I know, this record is going in places I had not expected. It kind of has a life of it’s own and I’m pretty exited to be a part of it. If it had to be my last ever album, ( say…),
I’d want it to be one I would proudly retire to. So I won’t cut corners. I’ll bring it home to where I want it to be, even if I have to kick myself up the ass to go to work sometimes.

Cheers !
JM

J’ai vu Luc hier — on est allé se faire une soupe tonkinoise près de chez lui — et il dit s’être fait retirer son Hoffmann avant que nous ne partions pour St. Jovite. Le Hoffmann, probablement éponyme de son inventeur, c’est ce charmant appareil de tiges de métal qui transpercent les os mais sont fixées les unes aux autres — on l’aperçoit dans la photo — et qui joue le rôle du plâtre c’est à dire de garder les os fracturés bien alignés et immobiles le temps qu’ils reprennent, tout en permettant l’accès à la blessure de tous les côtés pour fins de greffes d’os, de tissus musculaire, veines, peau et autres tâches de désinfection nécessaires dans ces cas où le membre qu’on “recolle” était effectivement sectionné en deux.

Dans cette photo où on le voit faire des flexions du genou, Luc avait déjà subi un paquet de greffes de toutes sortes, dont les “pièces” étaient cannibalisées — j’aime bien l’expression — à même d’autres parties de son corps de manière à éviter les problèmes de rejets par le système immunitaire.
À cet attirail métallique fut substitué une espèce de “plâtre” en plastique muni d’un couvercle je crois, que l’on pouvait ouvrir à l’occasion pour accéder à la plaie et y écraser les vers et en chasser les mouches. Je déconne…

Éric était débarrassé de son plâtre, lui, mais se déplaçait prudemment à l’aide d’une canne. Quant à moi, selon les jours, mes deux vertèbres fêlées me donnaient du fil à retordre, auquel cas je n’avais qu’à enfiler mon corset pour me remonter la colonne. Non, pas une gaine 18 heures Playtex, mais plutôt une espèce de cadre d’aluminium à trois points d’appui — sternum et pelvis devant, milieu de la colonne derrière — avec une grosse vis papillon au niveau des côtes. Plus je serrais la vis, plus l’appareil me redressait le dos. Je me souviendrai toujours de la tête d’une serveuse au comptoir du truck stop où Éric et moi étions allé prendre un cheese sur la 117. On s’installe au bar, un à côté de l’autre, un coup d’oeil distrait dans le menu. Elle vient se mettre devant nous, calpin et stylo en main, salut les gars, un p’tit café?…
– Hmm…
On était assis sur ces “poufs” de comptoir, savez, rouges avec un gros pied central et pas de dossier… Mon dos résisterait pas longtemps alors sans y penser, je défais un bouton de ma chemise, je fourre ma main dedans, j’attrape la vis papillon et je commence a crinquer. Crouïc, crouïc, crouïc…! À chaque crouïc, je me redresse d’un cran de plus jusqu’à ce que je sois droit comme une barre et j’arrête.
…!
Je ne m’étais pas rendu compte qu’elle me regardait faire, sans comprendre, l’air de dire il a un cric dans le derrière ou quoi?!

Imaginez trois types dans le début de la vingtaine qui veulent monter un band rock, mais qui ont l’air de vieillards chancelants tout droit sortis d’un centre d’acceuil avec leur attirail de cannes, marchettes et autres orthèses.
Tout un équipage !
Bref…
Je ne sais pas pour Rako et Pino, mais personnellement, j’étais animé par la conviction inébranlable qu’il ne s’agissait que de faire ce que nous avions à faire, une chose à la fois, pour que tout marche comme sur des roulettes.
Et la première chose à faire, c’était de nous procurer un peu d’équipement d’enregistrement — avec l’argent de l’assurance — et de nous installer quelque part pour faire un démo.

Vous dire à quel point une image peu faire remuer des montagnes, demandez aux journalistes. Dans mon cas, c’est une simple photo noir et blanc, parue dans un magazine de France appelé Rock & Folk,
où l’on voyait les membres de Genesis — hé oui, encore ceux là — assis à table dans une auberge médiévale bien de chez eux avec leurs plafonds trop bas et leurs cheminées de pierre, en train de prendre le café et discuter de je ne sais quel plan. C’était dans le cadre d’une rétrospective quelconque — le band existait déja depuis longtemps — et on y voyait un Tony Banks — flanqué de Gabriel avec sa tonsure en V — en train d’expliquer quelque chose, les mains devant lui comme pour mimer un jeu de clavier. Les autres membres le regardaient d’un air amusé, allez savoir pourquoi.
Cette photo incarnait tout ce qui m’attirait le plus d’un trip de band. Le côté convivial qu’elle convoyait m’interressait beaucoup plus que le légendaire “sex and drugs and Rock & Roll” apparament inévitable dans ce milieu.
J’ai appris avec le temps que pour toutes sortes de raisons, dans un contexte de band, c’est précisément le “convivial” qui prend le bord en premier, mais je n’en savais rien à l’époque et bien que je reconnais avoir été moi même le premier à tout faire pour le saborder — sans m’en rendre compte, en plus — j’étais déterminer à vivre le trip dans cette atmosphère là, autant que possible.

Le chalet à St Jovite.

Alors vous pensez bien que j’ai trouvé géniale l’idée qu’a eu Pino d’aller s’installer au chalet de ses parents au bord du Lac L’Amoureux juste passé St Jovite. La maison était en faite une ancienne grange dont on avait numéroté les pièces, qu’on avait démontée, transportée là et réassemblée plus ou moins comme l’originale, avec sa structure de vieilles pièces de bois écaries à la main et imbriquées les une aux autres dans la tradition de l’époque. Elle revêtait un cachet des plus intimes et chaleureux, surtout en automne, avec sa grosse truie placée en plein milieu, sa cuisine ancienne et sa mezzanine aux chambres minuscules situées dans le toit.
On a donc décidé de s’y installer un petit studio, et d’y passer l’automne, loin des distractions de la ville, pour y enregistrer nos premiers démos. Pour ce faire, il nous fallait une machine d’enregistrement multipiste d’au moins huit têtes, et il se trouve que Fostex venait d’en mettre une sur le marché, plus petite et beaucoup moins chère que les autres.

 
La Fostex et mon Synhté de l’époque, un Korg PS 3200

Le hic, c’est qu’il n’y en avait pas encore au Canada. Il a fallu qu’on aille en ramasser une a New York. Qu’à cela ne tienne, c’était un excellent prétexte pour aller fair un tour de bagnole. Si je me souviens bien, on a roulé toute la nuit et on est arrivé à la porte du magasin à temps pour l’ouverture. Ni un ni deux, on déballe les je sais plus combien de milliers de dollars US que ça nous a coûté c’te machine, et on repart avec. On a peut être déjeuné, et puis on est rentré à Montréal, sans dormir. Pas de budget pour une chambre d’hôtel.
C’est en arrivant aux douanes canadiennes que ça s’est gâté. On avait pas assez pour affranchir la machine. Il a fallu qu’on la laisse là, qu’on rentre en ville prendre des sous et qu’on retourne la chercher.

Qu’importe, on pouvait commencer. Confortablement installés au bord du lac, chez Luc, on s’est mis à composer les premières chansons. On ne faisait que ça du matin au soir. On ne s’arrêtait que pour faire la popote, et aller chercher de l’eau au lac pour faire la vaisselle. J’ai oublié de vous dire qu’y avait pas l’eau encore, dans ce chalet, à cette époque là. Oui, on allait crotter dans une bécosse dehors, pas toujours très chaud pour les fèfèsses.

Walk Away, Weekend…Ces deux là ont fait surface presque tout de suite. Walk Away était basée sur 3 ou 4 jeux de guitare qu’Éric mâchouillait depuis quelques temps. On y a mis de l’ordre, on y a collé le texte, parlé pour les couplets, chanté pour les refrains, façon Talking Heads. Compte rendu de la journée d’une femme ordinaire au travail depuis son lever jusqu’à l’embouteillage du retour à la maison dans un contexte New Yorkais. Un hit, sans aucun doute.
Jacques Godbout a réalisé un film sur les tendances culturelles du moment au Québec et a choisi de faire le segment musique avec nous comme toile de fond. Francis en a mis un extrait sur U tube où on nous voit en entrevue prétendre que le marché américain est juste à côté, qu’il n’y a qu’à aller le chercher pour le conquérir. Pas tout à fait faux: dans le même film, Godbout est allé demander à une animatrice noire dans une station de radio de New York ce qu’elle pensait de Walk Away. Elle répond sans hésiter que la chanson a tout pour marcher, le sujet, le rythme, les parties parlées, tout le monde peut s’identifier au personnage, parfaite pour les “drive” etc…
Aucun problème, ça devrait faire un hit, dit elle du même trait.
( Est-ce que je vous ai déjà parlé de ce que je pense de certains intervenants dans l’industrie du disque qui…)

Évidemment, la guitare ne ressemblait en rien à ce que vous connaissez tous de la version finale. C’était du pur Éric dans toute son originalité. Un jour, quand j’aurai le temps, je la remonterai cette toune là, exactement comme elle était sur ce premier démo, avec les jeux d’Éric intacts et le refrain chanté à une note seulement. Il n’y avait pas toute cette mélodie dans les parties “I caught myself dreaming of an open field” au départ. Toute la phrase était chantée sur une seule note. Génial.

Vous devez vous dire que si c’était si génial que ça, pourquoi ne pas l’avoir enregistrée conformément au démo dans sa version finale?
La réponse à cette question prend source précisément dans notre séjour à St Jovite. Vous allez comprendre l’absurdité. Dans un de mes messages précédents, je mentionne que nous n’avons pas tous vécu l’expérience de la même manière, vous vous souvenez ? Je faisais référence à Éric, pour qui notre petit séjour à la campagne est progressivement devenu un petit calvaire, principalement à cause de moi.

Il se trouve qu’il y a une différence de personnalité évidente entre Rako et moi et qu’au lieu d’en faire un atout, j’ai tout fait pour l’étouffer. Cette différence, je la décrirais comme suit: l’expression artistique d’Éric était le plus souvent celle d’une personnalité “dark” mais qui ne se prend pas trop au sérieux. Moi, au contraire, je me prenais très au sérieux à être le moins “dark” possible.

Munch, The Shout ou The Scream…

Exemple, Rako avait écrit toute une musique inspirée d’un tableau de Munch, The Shout — qui ferait une excellente pochette pour le Horla au demeurant — .Inutile de vous dire que la musique reflétait toute l’ambiance du tableau dans ce qu’il a de torturé et d’angoissant. Luc et lui avaient enregistré la pièce un jour où j’avais dû m’absenter pour la journée et me l’ont fait écouter le soir même.

Je vous passe les détails mais en gros j’ai tenté de faire valoir qu’il s’agissait de concentrer nos énergies à compétitionner pour un espace de trois minutes à la radio contre de mecs qui prétendaient que every little thing she does is magic, ou des starlettes en mal de vanter leur côté material girl etc…
Alors pour la psychanalyse musicale des cycles de la maniaco dépression, on pourrait y voir plus tard.

J’avais pas tort, mais c’était juste que ma façon éléphant dans un magasin de porcelaine de faire et dire les choses a fini par excéder les limites pourtant fort reculées d’Éric jusqu’au jour où il en a eu marre et m’a envoyé chier.
Ironiquement, ce sont précisément ces morceaux de musique composés par Rako à St Jovite qui vont voir le jour dans le prochain album, et pour lesquels il m’a gracieusement donné sa bénédiction. Juste retour des choses, peut être.

Toujours est-il qu’après le départ d’Éric, Luc et moi avons du nous trouver d’autres lurons pour assurer la guit, basse et batterie. Quelqu’un me mit en contact avec un trio en mal de chanteur, Jean Pierre, basse, Guy Florent, guit et un dénommé Pierre Lacoste, excellent batteur. Vous devinez la suite.

M’incombait alors la sale tâche de leur faire adopter le matos que nous avions pondu avec Rako à St Jovite, et plutôt que de me voir encore enfiler mon petit costume de nazi et de leur faire répéter note pour note ce qui avait été conçu par quelqu’un d’autre, je les ai laissé faire un peu n’importe quoi en me disant que j’avais avantage à avoir un band qui ne fait pas tout à fait les choses à mon goût plutôt que d’avoir exactement les accords que je voulais et pas un chat pour les jouer. Pour ne pas avoir à assumer le départ de musiciens qui en auraient ras le bol de m’entendre leur dire quoi faire à tout bout de champs, j’ai erré dans l’autre sens et j’en ai laissé trop passer, au début du moins. Par la suite, ça a été un balancing act au quotidien qui m’a quand même coûté Pierre Lacoste, Guy Florent, un autre batteur nommé Sylvain Coutu et ultimement, Luc lui- même, qui nous a quittés juste avant notre départ vers l’Angleterre en 90 pour l’enregistrement de The Pleasure And The Pain.

Je ne suis pas sûr de pouvoir dire que je ne regrette rien de cette aventure. Il y a plein de choses que je referais différemment si c’était à refaire. En fait, je peux parler au présent et dire que je fais effectivement les choses différement avec le nouveau line-up. Et ça fonctionne bien mieux. Mettons ça à 90% sur le compte de l’expérience.

Car le concept de band est par définition un prédicat extrèmement hostile, contrairement à ce qu’il devrait être, et très peu propice à la bonne entente inter personnelle, surtout quand il s’agit d’un band dit démocratique, où la musique, généralement le résultat de ce qu’on a envie d’exprimer de plus intime, doit subir le test des goûts subjectifs de chacun, et peut très bien être rejettée du revers de la main sans plus de considération pour son créateur. Je l’ai fait goûter à d’autres et je me le suis fait infliger aussi. C’est pas drôle tout le temps. Sans parler des différences fondamentales de caractères entre les uns et les autres, lesquelles deviennent vite exacerbées dans un contexte de tournée constante, de succès mitigés, de plafonnements et de frustrations par rapport à l’industrie en général et les cutifs en particulier. Guy, mon frère claviériste, nous a quittés en déclarant:” c’est Durand ou moi.” J’entendais Michel Rivard parler de la façon dont ça se passait dans Beau Dommage, pour ne parler que d’eux. Exactement notre histoire, du point de vue humain. En tous points.
On me dit souvent ha! mais les Rolling Stones…
Quand on est couverts de millions et qu’on a que ça à faire… Et encore, même là, y a pas de garanties. Mais quand ça fait dix ans qu’on rame et qu’on est toujours pas capable d’en vivre… Ce qui est le cas de 99.9999% des bands qui peuplent la planète assurément.

Je vous quitte sur une note positive en vous disant que je me fous un peu des résultats commerciaux qui découleront de ce prochain album. J’adore mon band, j’ai hâte de leur soumettre de faire le nouveau stuff live. S’il fallait que ce soit mon dernier album ( mettons…) je voudrais en être 100% satisfait et je suis toujours déterminé à mener le projet à bien en n’arrondissant aucunement les coins, même s’il faut que je me botte le cul des fois pour aller y travailler !

À+!

JM

My short stint with Men Without Hats convinced me that I now knew what I wanted to do and I had some idea of what needed be done in order to achieve success and fame, nothing less.
Five years had gone by, in fact, between the moment I realized I wanted to be part of a band, and the day I actually did something about it.

In March ‘77, Luc suggested we got tickets to see Genesis at the Montreal Forum, my first rock show ever in fact, with full sound and lights, in an indoors arena.

It was part of the ” And Then There Were Three ” tour. No Gabriel, no Hackett. Between songs, the crowd roared like a human 747 taking off and I remember thinking to myself how is it that so few people could generate such enthusiasm from so many, seen that we were well over
18 000 fans that night.

Genesis today: Rutherford, Collins, Banks.

I couldn’t compare Genesis with and without Gabriel, but I thought Collins was brilliant, working up the crowd as he seemed to relish doing, into complicated multi part singing and what have you.
I zombied out of the forum that night completely frosted ( natural high, that is! ) and it took me a full week to get over it. One thing was certain, my mind was made up : that’s what I wanted to do for a living. I just needed to get used to the idea.
Ten years, I thought. Ten years and I would come play the Forum with my own band.
I was twenty.

By the way, for the record, I did keep my word and indeed headlined the forum in ‘87 with The Box but I thought we were far from ready to do it and fought our management all I could not to do that gig. I pleaded in vain to play the St Denis two nights instead but ” Cats “, the Broadway musical, was booked there for a full year. As for the Spectrum, had we played there one more time, people would have started thinking we owned the place.
So the Forum it would be…

An experience that flew right by me, I must add, and which I never had a chance to appreciate for what it really was, i.e. our first big time concert in our own home town,( we had played the Forum three times before but as an opening act ) and that, for two reasons, one of which had it’s roots a few months earlier, as LEUCAN approached us to write two theme songs, one in French entitled ” Des enfants comme
les autres ” and the other in English which ended up being ” Closer Together “, for a vast fund raiser to benefit kids with leukemia at Ste Justine hospital. A video cassette was also put on the market featuring us, the Montréal Canadians ( who had won the Stanley Cup a year earlier ), Martine St Clair and a few kids from Ste Justine undergoing treatment. The thing was called “L’esprit d’équipe “-”Closer Together” and stressed the idea of team work as a weapon of choice to fight cancer.

( Francis posted a clip of that on you tube under my name. )

One of these kids was Charles Bruneau, son of Pierre Bruneau, the famous anchor at TVA. I say ” was ” cause he indeed lost the war against his cancer some time later. ( I salute his parents and younger brother’s courage through this ordeal. )
It was also decided that young Charles and myself would be paired up in a sort of promotional duet whereby the media would cover our activities together such as an outing to a Canadiens game, a visit to other kids in his wing, you know, that sort of thing, health permitting of course.
But that’s the thing: Charles had good days… and bad days.
As it was announced The Box would do the Forum, someone at LEUCAN thought it would be the perfect setup for a promo bit involving Charles and I, spending the afternoon at the forum together, going through the various preparations involved in view of the concert that same night. A camera crew was assigned to follow us around and collect footage.
Charles had no say in the choice of the date this time and it so happens that it wasn’t one of his best days. I could see him slip by the hour to the point where every other “scene” we were asked to lend ourselves to was becoming more and more arduous to tackle.
Maybe I was the only person around who knew Charles well enough to decode his behaviour, but I finally thought he had reached the point where we should back off.
We retreated to a delicatessen further down Ste Catherine and waited for his Mom to come pick him up.

I don’t mean to sound like a bleeding heart here, but for me, to see this kid with such a life threatening condition lend himself to whatever was being asked of him without as much as a minor issue over anything, knowing full well that he was going right back to his hospital bed to wage the fight of his life, long after cameras, microphones and every one’s benevolent attention had turned away…
Well, let’s just say that this first concert of ours, at the legendary Montreal Forum suddenly lost quite a bit of it’s all important shine, if you see what I mean.

Right.
Here’s a bit of background pertaining to the second reason this event flew right over my head: ( And by the way, maybe some of you have heard me ranting about the corporate mentality of sweet show business before ? Well here is a brilliant example of what these guys are capable of the minute you are not watching every little thing they do on your behalf. )

In the year leading up to the Forum, we had played so many times you wouldn’t believe it. One thing is for sure, we had to find ways of countering the boring repetitiveness of this long string of concerts and once in a while, we would improvise a bit of interaction with the crowd. Depending on how well it sat with the audience, we would try it again the next night and so on until something better happened. For example, we used to carry a green electric guitar on tour, plugged into a crappy amp. I would start playing the intro of a song on it, with a sound about as pleasant as nails on a blackboard, as if to show off my newly acquired skill ( everybody knew I could hardly play ) and then Claude would take over, blowing me and my ugly green guitar right off the stage with his own huge, overpowering and super ample sound. The crowd loved it. I would then stop playing, put the guitar back on it’s stand as if to say fine, I get it, I give up, and wouldn’t touch it again for the duration of the show.

One night, out of the blue, instead of putting the guitar back on it’s stand, I stop playing and I offer anyone in the audience who could play the guitar to simply come onstage and play the next song with us, on the greeny.
Hesitation in the crowd… I reassuringly say that the song is a well known one, three chords no more
( true! ), Claude will take care of things, anyone can do it…
A Chinese guy stands up, a smile cracked from one ear to the other, walks to the stage and climbs up before a cheering crowd. I hand him the guitar, Claude briefs our guest up the ear, and off we go doing Walk Away.
Had we rehearsed that thing for a year, it wouldn’t have come out better. The crowd went nuts. So we tried it again the night after, and the night after, and so on.
We had guys, gals, guitar heroes, beginners, real show men, name it. As long as I faked my introduction to this bit correctly, every thing looked completely improvised and the audience never saw it coming.
And in a way, improvised it was since I never knew what any particular night would throw at me. Some drunk redneck could as well have smacked me in the head with that guitar while screaming ” Black Sabbaaaaaaath !!! ”

Be that as it may, the Forum doesn’t seem right for this kind of stuff and I have serious doubts about doing the green guitar bit that night. The place is way too big. What if I get 24 guitar heroes willing to kill each other for a chance to climb onstage ? What if it takes forever for our chosen one to get from wherever he or she is in the room to go all the way backstage, pass security, stumbling in the dark with all these cables and power units lying around everywhere ?
Not a good idea. We don’t do the guitar bit tonight, end of story.

An hour before showtime, we are in the dressing room trying to relax before our most stressful gig to date, with the whole of the Montréal media in the audience, cameras everywhere, our Moms and Dads, our direct and indirect families, best friends and friends we haven’t seen since elementary school, the Portuguese mechanic who still can’t figure out why I don’t own a Ferrari yet, the waitress from the greasy spoon around the corner who worships Céline Dion and abhorres loud noisy music, not to mention aunt Dorothy who dragged aunt Lulu out to see us and who’ll probably be driving back home that night saying what a pity they couldn’t make out any of the lyrics “because the sound was soooo loud…What do you think Lulu, wouldn’t you say the sound was too loud ?
WHAT ? I CAN’T HEAR YOU, MY EARS ARE STILL BUZZING !! ”

Did I say we were trying to relax and focus on the job ahead…
In comes my favorite corporate dude with a grin on his face, spinning his BMW keys as if to say wait ’til you find out what little marketing stunt I was able to pull off at the last minute today…

Right that minute, I’m scared shit less. All my flags go up and start waving like crazy and a half dozen different alarm bells go off in my head, all at once.

You’ve got to understand, these guys are the undisputed grand masters of how to recuperate whatever it is an artist will do that’s creative, original and inspired and tie it in to the cheesiest and lamest of gimmicks ever to be conceived, in the hope of generating a few dozen sales.
Don’t believe me ? It was suggested, a few years before, as one such mastermind promo trick, that the shovel used in the video of “L’Affaire Dumoutier” ( to portray young Élizabeth being smacked in the head ), be put up as a prize in some sort of sweepstakes surrounding the launch of the clip on TV. That’s right, you won a freaking shovel !! The very shovel that killed Élizabeth Dumoutier. Or at least, that’s what they’d hope you’d believe.
I mean, if you are Kiss, you want these guys to manufacture barbie size dolls of your band. You’ll make money and insure GBBL, short for generation based brand loyalty. ( I just made that up!…)
If you are a Spice Girl, no problem.
Even Marilyn Manson, what the hell !
But U2 ?…
Barbie size dolls of REM ?
Loosing My Religion ?!
That’s me in the corner ?!

Spinning the BMW keys… He says I won’t have to worry about picking someone out of the audience for the green guitar bit tonight. The “winner”… has been drawn already.
The “winner”? What winner ?

Picture this : an Einsteinian scheme had been devised by which Walk Away would be played on XYZ Radio, and the 10th or 12th ( or whatever ) listener to call in would win the slot to come play the song live with us at the Forum… AND…
…take the green guitar home with them, that very same night.

Of course, it never occurred to them that the green guitar bit could only be done if my introduction leading up to it looked totally improvised. Nor does it seem to have crossed their mind that the “winner” could very well have never played the guitar in his entire life, but participated just the same for the heck of it and for a chance to go home with a guitar belonging to The Box if nothing else.
Low and behold, that’s exactly what happened. Come Walk Away, in the middle of our set, the moment I had apprehended until then, the moment that precluded me from being “in” the show for the better half of it, come Walk Away and sure enough, there’s this 25 - 30 year old gal standing by the side of the stage, looking as if she came straight from the office, flanked by our Newtonian corporate genius. Center stage she comes, the green guitar is hung from her neck, and she is clueless as to what she must do with it.
I think I even had to approach the mike and mutter one or two stupidities about this “contest” and mention the radio station behind it. Otherwise the crowd would have never understood what the hell was going on, what with that girl onstage, doing nothing in the middle of the show…
At that moment, I was so completely overwhelmed by the extraordinary absurdity of this sort of brainless mercantilism so typically associated with showbizness that I never had the presence of mind to put that girl and myself out of our miseries by just ushering her offstage, putting an end to this unbelievable brain fart.

I’m not proud to say this, but I owe that show to the lesson in life I had from Charles Bruneau that afternoon, and the undiyng support of the crowd. Had it not been for that, I probably would have set myself on cruise control ’til we got it over with. What an unbelievable waste that would have been. But I distinctly recognized that human 747 takeoff sound 3 or 4 time during the show and that was the kick in the butt I needed to go to work and play my crowd regardless of what went or would go wrong.

Thank all present for that.

JM