Marc Lavoine has a forty-year career behind him. To celebrate, he released a compilation album of the most popular songs, many of which are about love. What place does this feeling occupy in the singer’s life? Here is his sincere response.
RTL info: Marc Lavoine, you are celebrating your 40 years of career in music with a new compilation album, “Revolver”. The latter includes your best-known songs. Is this the most important album of your life?
Yes, it’s 40 years of songs, it’s 40 years of gun eyes. Since this song, I have had the difficulty of making others and of fitting into a form of duration. Goldman told me, “You have seven years to do a second song.”
After you make a hit, you have seven years or you’ll be finished if you don’t make a second song. It marked me. It’s true that you have to have a little gumption and be able to look at the focal point, go further to try to go there, to dream further.
This album is only made up of hits, and the least we can say is that you have left an impact on several generations.
I always wanted to try making hits. I really respect teenagers who hang posters of their songs, of the singers they like. Tubes are like perfume. As soon as you hear it, even ten years later, you feel this scent. It’s useless, but it’s essential.
You collaborated with Catherine Ringer, why did you choose her?
At the time, I chose Catherine Ringer because she was the singer I liked, I loved what she did. And then we remained friends. We’ve been singing for 40 years now.
She’s a woman to whom I attached a lot because she’s like Françoise Hardy or Jane Birkin: they are respectable people, who do good to the people who listen to them. They are modest people, and their modesty is equal to their talent. When Catherine Ringer is there, when she dances and sings, it becomes a kind of wonderful gypsy. There is an Edith Piaf side to her too.
In those years, not many of us went to Indochina. Mylène Farmer, Daho, Rita Mitsouko… There were few of us. There is Florent Pagny, Bruel. But there are few people who stay. This means that their talent is work, it is permanent work. I am happy and proud to be with them.
Is love at 60 and love at 20 the same?
Falling in love is childhood, this childhood dream. It is mainly linked to the parents, to what they have experienced too. My mother is very important in my choices, and I don’t do it on purpose.
Love is something that is not serious, that is unreasonable, that grabs us. You have to be careful. It’s fragile.
With you, we have the impression that all the experiences of your life must be lived intensely. For what ?
I try to be calm when I work, because those who are too intense often miss their target. But yes, I believe in giving your all every time.
You know, when we write a song or a novel, we don’t know where the words are going to go, where they’re going to take us. Sometimes they go backwards, sometimes they move forward, sometimes it’s successful. But it’s mostly work.
Being an artist is not a choice. It’s something that came to you from who knows where. Me, I’m like that. In creation, I try to be as close as possible to the truth, to what I believe to be the truth.
Feelings are a wonderful thing. The letters from deportees that I have read always start with the same thing: “My love, I have two words to say to you. And the letter begins, all letters are like that.
Love is a revolution. You kiss a woman, someone photographs you, people will criticize that as if it was wrong to do that, but it’s not wrong. Then, people who love each other, we will attack them. It’s a provocation, love. It really is a form of revolution. I think loving is the most important thing in the world.
Marc Lavoine revolver album career love
