Lucien Francoeur, 1984-2024: Quebec loses its rebel poet

Quebec has lost a monument to its counterculture. Rebel poet, rebellious rocker, professor and radio host, Lucien Francoeur died at the end of a wonderful life filled with excess at the age of 76, Tuesday evening.

It was a cardiac arrest that occurred in the middle of the street, on October 22, which was fatal to the man known in particular for his collections of poetry, the hard-hitting rock of his group Aut’Chose and his famous Rap-to-Billy.

Kept in a coma for two weeks, he died surrounded by his partner Claudine Bertrand and his daughter Virginie.

“Poetry accompanied him until his last breath. At his bedside, my mother and I read to him. It allowed him to leave in peace,” confided his daughter Virginie Francoeur, in an interview with Journal.

“Francoeur, it’s Rimbaud”

Lucien Francoeur had started writing and publishing poetry a couple of years ago when his path crossed that of Pierre-André Gauthier in 1974.

“I met him at a Christmas party. He drove taxis. He told me, “I’m a rock and roll poet.” Cuddly, it feels good, I’m a rock and roll guitarist,” Mr. Gauthier told us.

Together, they formed Aut’Chose, released three albums on which we find songs like The freak from Montreal et Nancy Beaudoin.

“Francoeur is Rimbaud. What he was saying wasn’t “I love you” and “I want to hold your hand”. It was a little rawer, a little more real. He wrote street poetry.”

Sans regret

As his daughter explains in the touching documentary Francoeur: we finish off the rockers wellthe Quebecois disciple of Henry Miller and Jim Morrison had a rock’n’roll life, full of fascinating adventures and drug abuse.

“He was a character larger than life,” summarizes artist agent Mario Lefebvre, who knew Lucien Francoeur when he was a journalist at the magazine Pop Rock.

Any regrets? Not at all, said the rocker-poet in an interview with Sophie Durocher on QUB radio last year, quoting the immortal song No, I don’t regret anythingby Edith Piaf.

“I’ve always had that as a slogan. To regret is already to capitulate.”

From studio to CEGEP

Winner of the Émile-Nelligan Prize, in 1983, for his book The hallowed rockersLucien Francoeur explored various professions, always linked to the arts.

Between rock and poetry, he taught literature at CEGEP, was a columnist in various publications and hosted a show on CKOI radio at the end of the 1980s. In 2004, he participated in the second incarnation of Aut ‘Thing, then formed of musicians from the younger generation.

“He is a man of many facets. I think everyone knows part of Lucien Francoeur, but not everyone knows him as a whole,” observes his daughter Virginie.

Pay homage to him

She would welcome paying tribute to her father. In an interview, she talks about renaming a street in Repentigny, her hometown. She also proposes a monument or a park bench in the Outremont district, where he lived for 36 years.

“A bench lends itself well to reading poetry,” she submits.

In the meantime, she launched a crowdfunding campaign to offer him a burial in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery, a wish he had expressed just two days before suffering his heart attack. “It is in this cemetery that Émile Nelligan rests. We would like to be able to offer him that.”

They said

«Lucien Francoeur, poet and rocker, left his mark on Quebecers with his unique style. He made us vibrate to the sound of several hits. I have a thought for his loved ones, to whom I offer my condolences.”

Mathieu Lacombe, Quebec Minister of Culture

“The Parti Québécois salutes the memory of Lucien Francoeur, a pioneer of psychedelic music and an emblematic poet of Quebec counterculture. Quebec remembers the path that Lucien Francoeur paved, the “other things” he brought and the horizons he broadened for local culture. Thank you Lucien for all these years of disturbing, of innovating, without omitting the unforgettable Rap-to-Billy.»