We’ve all once wondered what goes on behind the curtain before a concert. And this is what Alain Rémy, alias the designer Gaston, wanted to show, by following Renaud on his last tour : “Renaud behind the curtain, it’s a book which obviously talks about Renaud’s concert, but it sheds a little light on all the professions, all the people who are active behind the curtain, behind the scenes, so that the concert takes place do.”
Whether they are stage managers, makeup artists, sound or lighting engineers, Gaston shines a spotlight on these men and women from the shadows. Around twenty people work permanently on the tour In my ropesstarted a year and a half ago. From behind the scenes, the designer was able to observe the links established with the singer Renaud: “What surprised me was the love he provoked in people. Both among his team and the public, he is adored. All he has to do is smile and that’s it, we’re under the spell. He is not someone who shouts, who is authoritarian. He’s a nice guy, really!”
The designer says to himself that he leaves, with this comic, a trace of Renaud’s tourperhaps the last before he definitively draws the curtain: “It is a document that carries weight, especially at the dawn of his fiftieth year of career”. This is the second book that Gaston devotes to Renaud, he wrote the first – Renaud born under the sign of the hexagon – with Bertrand Dicale and it was by signing this first album during the tour that the idea was born to make another one, backstage.
“Despite being a little gruff and not talking much, he unites the people around him”
Gaston has been a fan of Renaud’s songs for a long time: “He’s a bit like the author of the soundtrack of our life”. Since meeting him more closely, he describes as “a very endearing character. Although he is a little gruff and doesn’t talk much, he unites the people around him.” And even if he no longer sings like before, if he gets tired on stage, Gaston remains, like all the fans, under the spell: “There were still 150 concerts in a year and a half, so that’s more than one concert per week. For someone who is said to be damaged, finished, he is still really strong.”
As for the fact that Renaud took up residence in the Trentemoult district, in Rezé, and that the publishing house Rouquemoute be from Nantes, it’s a pretty but pure coincidence: “I don’t think there’s a connection.”admits the designer Gaston.
