Death of Denis LePage | The brain of the Lime group is no more

An obscure genius of Quebec music has passed away. Producer and composer Denis LePage died Monday morning at the Sacré-Coeur hospital from generalized cancer. He was 74 years old.

His name may not be widely known. But this brilliant musician nevertheless contributed significantly to the global growth of Quebec pop. Trumpeter in the jazz group The Persuaders, then studio keyboardist in demand in the 1970s, Denis LePage enjoyed success dancing phenomenal with the group Lime in the early 1980s, a duo he formed with his wife Denyse.

Born from the thigh of Limelight, a trendy Montreal nightclub, Lime very quickly crossed the borders of Quebec and Canada. In 1981, the duo climbed to number one on the disco charts.dancing in the United States with the song Your Love. The following year, he reached the sixth position with the single Babe We’re Gonna Love Tonight.

Between 1970s disco and 1980s electro-pop, these two songs give a good idea of ​​the sound of the time. Even if the clips – still visible on YouTube – can make you smile, LePage had undoubtedly captured the spirit of his time.

A gifted composer, Denis LePage also created the song Dancing‘ the Night Awayfor the Voggue duo, which will be number 1 on the American Billboard for 15 weeks, in 1980.

Before this international explosion, he had also been part of the groups Kat Mandu and Le Pouls, other projects with a funky flavor, prefiguring his period. dancing.

“Disco in Montreal was him,” sums up entrepreneur and musician Jeff Plante, who worked with Denis LePage a dozen years ago.

All projects combined, Denis LePage would have sold a total of more than 20 million records worldwide, according to an article in the Montreal Journal published in 2011.

But success story hides a dark side and a more difficult end of life.

Caught up by his consumption problems, Denis LePage had sold his entire catalog to the company Unidisc, a Montreal giant of world disco. This explaining that, the musician no longer rolled on gold for a long time, when he could have been a millionaire. “He was very bitter. But he had created his misfortune himself, ”sums up Yvon Lafrance, former owner of Limelight and manager of Denis LePage after 2011.

Still, LePage never stopped making music.

Transition

At the turn of the 2010s, he had begun a gender transition and hoped to return to success under the name of Nini Nobless, his female alter ego. Armed with his synthesizers, the musician would thus have produced “the equivalent of eight CDs” of electronic music.dancing, according to Yvon Lafrance. But commercially speaking, the sauce never really lifted, other than a minor success in Eastern Europe. Lime’s magic was gone, even if her female character had the potential to make an impression.

“The music was good, but the lyrics were on the transgender side and the radios didn’t accept that. He wanted to advance the cause, ”believes Yvon Lafrance.

In recent years, Denis LePage had become more difficult to access. A skilled shooter, he lived in his small apartment in Ahuntsic, with his collection of firearms, which he occasionally exhibited on Nini Nobless’ YouTube channel. His complex personality, flirting with paranoia, had isolated him from part of his entourage. “He was a very intense person. He was brilliant, but it wasn’t always easy to work with him”, summarizes Jeff Plante.

The disease will at least have allowed Denis LePage to reconnect with his daughter Claudine, with whom ties had been broken for fifteen years. “It was the nurse who called me to tell me that he was going to enter palliative care,” she said.

According to Claudine LePage, they talked a lot about music and drawing. But above all their reconciliation, which allowed him to leave in peace. “He was serene…because of the times we spent together…”