The singer Gilles Dreu, performer of the hit song Larkdied on Tuesday January 7, 2025, at the age of 90 at his home in Vals-les-Bains (Ardèche), announced his producer Pierre-Nicolas Cléré. He had been suffering from cancer for several years.
Born in Dreux, in Eure-et-Loir, in 1934, Gilles Dreu – real name Jean-Paul Chapuisat – achieved his greatest success in 1968 with Larkadapted from an Argentinian song The Pilgrimage d’Ariel Ramirez.
“My whole life has been a misunderstanding!” »
“I was the first French (on the hit parade)after Aphrodite’s Child and the Beatles. Claude François and Johnny were far behind! A great success is the encounter of a work with the right performer and at the right time”had confided Gilles Dreu to the magazine Schnock in 2023.
“The song could have gone unnoticed. However, we were in a Latin American atmosphere in 68, a revolutionary period. I had a physique, mustache and cigar, which evoked a bit of Che Guevara as a poster in all the student rooms”he added.
“At the start, (actor and singer) Jean-Claude Pascal refused this song. My whole life has been a misunderstanding! »he added.
A regular on the tours of “Age Tender et Tête de Bois”
Gilles Dreu recorded more than 200 songs and sixteen albums, without however repeating this first and only great success. Since 2006, he has participated in several tours ofTender age and wooden head.
In 2022, he celebrated his 63-year career on the stage of La Nouvelle Ève in Paris. In 2023, he performed one last time at the Olympia during an evening in tribute to Jacques Brel, with other artists.
Before saying goodbye in February 2023 after a final concert in Vendée. “I will no longer be a singer tomorrow morning. Tonight is really the last time. And, even though I bragged about never having stage fright, tonight I do,” he then declared.
