Jean-Pierre Ferland, 1934-2024 | Lucky we had it

He sang his last love song: Jean-Pierre Ferland died this afternoon, according to his agency. His music, his “love of music”, as he sang, will survive him.

Jean-Pierre Ferland not only participated in the awakening and musical evolution here, he nourished them, and sometimes provoked them. He was a builder of “French-Canadian” song, which he helped to forge from its beginnings in the 1950s. He is also one of the most important architects of Quebec song and rock, which he made a mark thanks to his experiments in the 1970s, in particular with his album YELLOWconsidered one of the greatest Quebec records.

Jean-Pierre Ferland was born on June 24, 1934. After a childhood that he often described as boring, lived partly in the Plateau Mont-Royal, he joined the Société Radio-Canada as a clerk in 1954. He left his employment in 1958 to join the Bozos, a group of singer-songwriters who also included Clémence DesRochers, Claude Léveillée and Raymond Lévesque. The collective adventure will be significant – it is the beginning of the song boxes – but short-lived.

After having done a long series of shows with Clémence in 1959, his career was launched in earnest in 1962 with mistletoe leaves, first performed by Renée Claude, who won the Radio-Canada Chanson tailor-made competition and the grand prize at the Brussels International Song Gala. His manner is quite traditional and will serve as a foundation for the aesthetic shifts to come, as underlined by his biographer, Marc-François Bernier.

During the 1960s, Jean-Pierre Ferland increased his tours in Quebec, but also his stays in France. It was in Paris that he wrote, at the end of the decade, I’m coming back home, which would become his first big success. In 1968, his album of the same name, on which there are also Marie Claire, If I knew how to talk to women And The worldly assassinreceived the Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles-Cros.

The revolution YELLOW

The stars are then aligned for the singer-songwriter, who has always been ambitious. He seems at the dawn of a truly great career in Europe. However, he has had enough of France and the French way of doing things. He’s homesick. And the strong wind that raises it is about to turn…

The Osstidcho, created in the spring of 1968 at Quat’Sous, caused a real shock wave in Quebec. Jean-Pierre Ferland saw it in revival in January 1969 at Place des Arts and suffered what his biographer describes as “artistic trauma” – or “ostidshock”. The artist understands that, overnight, his style, inspired by Ferré, Brassens and Brel, is outdated. That he must bounce back if he wants to last.

A few months later, in Paris, he met Michel Robidoux, who was The Osstidcho and who accompanies Charlebois to France. Jean-Pierre Ferland tells him that he wants to consider his songs differently. Michel Robidoux holds out his hand. And it is in Paris that they will create the songs of YELLOWan album which marks the first artistic reinvention of Jean-Pierre Ferland.

YELLOWQuebec’s first concept album, unfolds with grandeur, finesse and audacity, somewhere between orchestral song and theatrical rock.

It not only marks a turning point in the career of its author, but also in the history of Quebec music, for which it remains an essential milestone and a reference.

We don’t know it yet, but throughout his career, Jean-Pierre Ferland will bounce back in this way. Celebrated one day, down the next, alternately wealthy and on the verge of bankruptcy, he faced winds that were not always favorable. However, he always ended up doing well, financially and artistically.

During the 1970s, in the wake of YELLOW and of Sun, he explores extensively, flirting in particular with progressive rock. His artistic daring does not please everyone. He even shocks some sensitive ears by putting the word “butt” in You are my love, you are my mistresswhich he sang in 1974 with Ginette Reno.

The latter will triumph the following year with another song by Ferland, A little further, during an outdoor show presented on Mount Royal. In 1976, Jean-Pierre Ferland was in the famous National Day show with Vigneault, Léveillée, Deschamps and Charlebois, which was given at Bois-de-Coulonge Park, in Quebec, then on Mount Royal, and immortalized on the album 1 time 5.

New renaissance

His 1980s were rather marked by television. The singer, who has already hosted Youth obliges in the 1960s, is notably at the helm of Sun station, The show business bus And Ferland-Nadeau live. In music, his hand is less happy. We don’t remember much from his albums Jean-Pierre Ferland (1980) and Androgynous (1984). His biggest artistic project of this decade, Galaa musical comedy inspired by the muse of Paul Éluard and Salvador Dalí, was a critical and financial failure in 1989. An “affront” that he would never fully digest.

But he has resilience. After Blue, white, blueswell received after eight years of absence on record, he relaunched in song three years later, in 1995, with don’t listen to thata superb disc on which we find his last great songs: the ambitious title song, the convivial Send to homethe fragile The music And A chance we haveepic and tender.

In 2006, Jean-Pierre Ferland announced his retirement from the stage, a place where he was often at the top of his art: both charming, comical, combative, tender and playful. The artist did not want to “grow old in public”, he said at that time, and offered a farewell concert at the Bell Center in January 2007. However, like Aznavour before him, he would not really stop: we has often seen himself on stage again (he performed the entirety of YELLOW at the Francos in 2011, among others) and also on television (notably on The voicewhere is he coach in 2013). At 86 years old, he announced another tour for the year 2021…

Established for decades in Saint-Norbert, in Lanaudière, the singer inaugurated the Jean-Pierre Ferland Cultural Space there in 2018, located in the old village church. Its transformation into a multifunctional room was made possible by a benefit show offered in 2010 by the artist and long-time friend Ginette Reno.