Invited on the set of C à vous this Wednesday April 17, 2024, to promote his new album Frida Kahlo, Jean-Jacque Debout returned to his relationship with Jacques Mesrine to whom he dedicated a song.
In his album, the author, composer, performer dedicates to his friend Mesrine, the title “July” in which he evokes his meeting and his friendship with the criminal at the college of Juilly in Seine-et-Marne. The opportunity for Jean-Jacques Debout to tell several anecdotes.
“A heart like that”
Chantal Goya’s husband remembers his schooling with Jacques Mesrine, whom they nicknamed “Jacky” and with whom he served mass. On the set of C à Vous, he talks about the first flights of the man who became “Public Enemy No. 1”: “He plundered the trunks, but it was for the war orphans, explains Jean Jacques Debout.
“He would ask his mother for money who came to see him on Sundays and he would go to the school grocery store, he would dress them, buy them everything they needed, and I would say to myself: “This boy really has a heart as big as that“, he recalled.
“It was terrible”
Now 84 years old, Jean Jacques Debout also recalls another, more unpleasant memory. During a concert by the singer Barbara in Canada, he was captured as the artists were leaving by his best friend, already wanted by Interpol at that time.
“The car had almost crashed into a store and what scared me was that he was sitting next to me, where he had put me in the back of the car, and when he found that the car wasn’t going fast enough, he slapped the driver and said: “Go, go, I’ve got all the police in my a**!” It was terrible”said Jean-Jacques Debout.
And added: “I said to myself: “We’re going to crash, we’re not going to make it alive.“”
