ROCH VOISINE IN PARIS
From Super Stardom To Anonymity

Montreal, 22 November 1999 - As Roch Voisine prepares to make a major comeback on the French music scene - appearing in concert at the Olympia in Paris tonight then setting off on an extensive French tour -, Pascal Evans catches up with the Quebecois star and takes stock of his double-edged career spanning two countries and two languages.

Roch, you're enormously popular in Canada whether you sing in English or French. But now that you've been away from the French music scene for five years, expectations about your comeback are running high - all the more so because French music fans haven't followed your career in English. The last they heard from you was "Hélène"!
That's true, of course. But "Chaque Feu" has a totally different image from my old albums. I've moved on a lot as an artist, and my new album doesn't say the same things in the same way. Basically, I'm still doing what I did before but I'm doing it from the perspective of a 36-year-old man, which means the lyrics and the messages in the songs are those of a 36-year-old man. The musical arrangements are obviously a bit more sophisticated too.
This new album is a major turning-point in my career and I can see people will take a while to get used to it - especially in France, where everyone still associates Roch Voisine with "Hélène". In collective memory, the Roch Voisine phenomenon hasn't moved on at all and the media tend to treat me a bit like an ex-Boys' Band member who's gone to seed. But a few minutes into the album, they'll realise I'm an artist who's matured a lot - even though I haven't become a totally different person in the process. Honestly, I never thought I'd have so much ground to make up with this new album.

When you recorded the album "Kissing Rain" back in '96 you rehearsed and recorded it in the States, because the album was destined for release in the States - although in the end it never actually came out there. On "Kissing Rain" you seemed to discover your voice and your guitar-playing skills. What has your new album brought you?
I recorded "Kissing Rain" in Los Angeles, where they really go in for big, powerful voices. The thing is, I was very influenced by the people I was working with at the time. You know, as soon as I started singing really loudly they were all really into it. People were much more moved by 'big voices' than by softer Latin or French-style ballads, the kind of thing that we go in for over here. What happened was, I ended up getting a bit pushed into things by the producers, songwriters and composers I was working with. As soon as they realised my voice was capable of reaching the high notes, they started giving me songs that swooped up that end of the scale.
But what I've discovered with the new album is that when you've got something to say you don't necessarily have to shout it at the top of your voice! This time round, I've learned how to construct an album around the lyrics. What happened was the songs were the starting-point this time. We wrote the lyrics first and then fitted the musical arrangements around them and only then did we started working out how each song would be performed.

Artists are destined to deal with critics on a daily basis, and you're no exception to the rule, Roch. Generally speaking, your new album has been well received by the critics this time round. But a few writers such as Jean-Christophe Laurence from La Presse (a daily newspaper in Montreal) have published quite harsh reviews. Laurence's review of "Chaque Feu" claims the album "contains the flaws of its perfections - melanin emotions, glazed sentimentality, disembodied love stories and cosmetic arrangements".
I'm quite happy to accept criticism from someone who's honest - whether the person in question loves or hates what I've done or is totally indifferent - as long as he's prepared to come up with constructive arguments. Not hide behind grand words and ready-made phrases like the guy at La Presse.

Do you think it's possible to be a fan and a critic at the same time?
Of course it is. But - and I'm being completely honest here - I really don't think I've made a bad job of this album. The critic phenomenon is a pretty surprising business when you think about it. I mean, most critics don't have any sense of melody. They're not songwriters or composers, they're not singers or musicians and yet for some rather obscure reason they think they've got the right to decide what's good and what's not. Depending on what mood they wake up in, critics have got the potential to do us a lot of harm.

If there's one major U-turn everyone's noticed in your career, it's the reaction of your fans. The mass hysteria of yesterday seems to have subsided and been replaced by an atmosphere where audiences seem to listen to you and respect you more. Is this something you've noticed yourself?
When I came back to Paris just over a year ago, things had already calmed down a lot compared to what it used to be like. I mean, I wasn't totally anonymous like I am in California. But even so I was able to lead a normal life, you know, eat out in restaurants, do a bit of sport, go skiing in the Alps or even just go out walking in the street. Life was a bit more like life has always been for me in Quebec. OK, people recognise me, but there's no longer this mass hysteria when I go out in the street. Which is great - I've been able to rediscover Paris! And that's been really good for me after all those years hidden away in hotel rooms and bundled up in the back seats of cars. That's the way I used to have to behave when I came over here, but France is too beautiful a country to experience that way. Things have calmed down a lot. It's a lot more reasonable now.

This new album has revealed a much more sociable side to Roch Voisine… Fans have been able to see you on programmes like "Les Enfoirés", for example, programmes you never ever appeared on before. You also seem to be getting a lot closer to other French artists, performing duets with singers like Jean-Jacques Goldman and Anggun...
I've never been a very sociable kind of guy. I used to play in a hockey team a while back and I'd give 110% all the time. My team mates knew they could really rely on me, but they couldn't necessarily rely on me to turn up and party in the evening. I wasn't into going out and doing the round of bars at night - I was never very involved with that side of things. And today things are pretty much the same.
Anyway, once you start getting successful in this business, you tend to become pretty isolated. In fact the more successful you get, the more people there are hanging round you but there's less genuine contact with people. The only people who can understand what it's really like are other artists. That's why I like doing things like "Les restos du cœur" (Ed. fund-raising concerts to provide meals for the homeless). It's great, gigs like that help me relax a bit and I get to meet a lot of other artists. I loved doing "Les restos du cœur". In fact, I ended up making lots of friends. But that doesn't mean I've changed and got really sociable all of a sudden...

We won't be seeing you at the Bains Douches (famous night club, ndlr) then?
No, no way! That whole show business and glamour thing, hanging out with the jet set, it's not part of my life. I'll never be involved with anything like that. It's not my thing at all!

It was while you were working on one of these fund-raising programmes that you met Erick Benzi, the man who produced your new album and who wrote "les Lys blancs", a tribute to your former manager and best friend Paul Vincent (who died in 1997). You're an excellent songwriter, very good at describing feelings and emotions - why didn't you write the lyrics for the song yourself? Or was it too personal, too painful for you?
It's quite strange in a way, Erick and I went through pretty much the same kind of experience at the same time. Erick lost his wife two or three years ago after a long drawn-out illness. And I lost my best friend and manager around the same time. So there was obviously a real complicity between us. We shared a lot of the same feelings on the subject. So I ended up letting myself be guided by Erick on quite a few aspects of the new album. As far as the production was concerned, I ended up letting Erick do practically anything he wanted. As for "les Lys blancs", he turned up with the words of the song and, with a lot of honesty and emotion, told the truth about how it feels and explained a part of my life. I really couldn't have done it better myself.

Most of your biographies omit any reference to your real first albums - the two albums which came out before "Hélène". Is there any hope of seeing these old albums re-released one day?
The first album was a compilation of covers we did specially for TV. Basically, we made that first album to survive, because I wasn't doing concerts in clubs or anything at the time. I was just working in television (Ed. as a presenter), so I had to make what I could out of the music thing because I wasn't earning much in TV in those days.
But there was a lot more work involved in the second album. It ended up getting taken out of the record shops though, because it was recorded in English and an album in English didn't stand much chance in the French music world in those days. We ended up re-doing a couple of songs from that album though, songs like "Hélène" and "Mi Calgary" which got turned into "la Fille de pluie". I also did a French version of "Little Devil's Lullaby" which is called "la Berceuse de petit diable".

Were you aware that these albums are now worth over 200$CA each?
I did know that actually - because there's not many of them around. I'm keeping them to one side. One day I'd like to make them available to fans who want to buy a real rarity.

All your albums - including the first two we've just mentioned - contain a song from the previous album translated into French. For instance the song "All I Know" (from "Kissing Rain") reappears on your new album as "Doucement". What's the idea behind these systematic covers?
When I used to come and do concerts in France, I'd often perform live French versions of some of my English songs. I felt like they were good songs and it was a shame to keep them in a language, which cut them off from the audience. So I'd sing them in French. But only if I thought the songs were good enough in the first place and they fitted with the rest of the album. I never sit down to write material for a new French album and say 'OK, what old songs can I translate and stick on this one?'

Now that you're less restricted by your public life, do you have time to enjoy yourself? Do you have time to go out and see other people's shows, for example?
Yes, I've got the time but I don't really do things like that much. In fact, it's a habit of mine not to go and see other people's shows. It's very, very rare for me to go and watch someone in concert. I've only seen two shows this year actually - I went to see Jean-Jacques Goldman at Le Zénith and Céline (Dion) at the Stade de France. I receive a lot of invitations but I end up not going, often because I'm working myself. I'm always asking myself why I don't go out to concerts more often. I don't get out to the cinema much either and I feel like that leaves a big gap in my culture. I think it would do me good to get out of my cocoon a bit more often, though. You know, get out and see what's going on elsewhere. It would do me good, give me some fresh ideas!

Interview: Pascal Evans (in Quebec)
English translation: Julie Street