French song of the 60s loses one of its proudest representatives. The singer Gilles Dreu, whose real name was Jean-Paul Chapuisat, died at the age of 90 on the morning of Tuesday January 7 at his home in Vals-les-Bains, located in Ardèche. It is his producer Pierre-Nicolas Cléré who announces his sad disappearance “ on behalf of the family » to AFP. Four years ago, the artist revealed that he was suffering from a recurrence of prostate cancer against which he had been fighting since 2001. He had, at the same time as this announcement, published his 16th and final album “Le Comptoir des friends”, on which the public could find duets with his close friends in the profession such as Serge Lama, Fabienne Thibeault, Didier Barbelivien or Gérard Lenorman. In the meantime, and despite his fight against illness, Gilles Dreu continued to perform in concert, notably at the Olympia in 2023. Last February, he put a definitive end to his stage career with a final meeting in Saint -Pierre-du-Chemin, in Vendée. “ I won't be a singer tomorrow morning. Tonight is really the last time. And, even though I bragged about never having stage fright, tonight I did. » he then confided with emotion.
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“I dreamed of being an Olympic champion”
Gilles Dreu, whose stage name is a nod to Dreux, his birthplace, owes his musical career to a strange twist of fate. The studies of the man who aspired to become a gym teacher, with his athletic physique and strong build, were interrupted by his entry into the army. After 30 months in Algeria, he returned to France with a new passion: music! It was following a bet between friends that he tried his luck at the “Tire-bouchon”, a famous cabaret in Montmartre, in 1959, and began to rub shoulders with other artists such as Bernard Dimey, Daniel Prévost, Pierre Richard, Victor Lanoux or a young Serge Lama beginner.
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If his first song “Filles de Garches, enfants de Puteaux” did not meet with the expected success, his meeting in 1966 with Norbert Saada, the producer of Hugues Aufray, allowed him to record “Alouette, alouette”, which propelled him under the limelight in the middle of May 68. “ The song could have gone unnoticed. However, we were in a Latin American atmosphere in 68, a revolutionary period. I had a physique, mustache and cigar, which evoked a bit of Che Guevara as a poster in all the student rooms » he smiled in 2023 for the magazine Schnockamused: “ Initially, Jean-Claude Pascal refused this song. My whole life has been a misunderstanding! I dreamed of being an Olympic champion, I became a singing star ».
Evolving in the close circle of Eddie Barclay, Gilles Dreu struggled to repeat this first and great success, but he recorded more than 200 songs throughout his life, marked by successive tragedies: his eldest son Christophe committed suicide at 8 years old. and his daughter Dominique died of uterine cancer. Besides the music, the “ thug face » of the artist had opened the doors of comedy to him. He filmed for Claude Chabrol's cinema, with Bourvil, and even presented television shows in the 70s on Télé Monte-Carlo. A busy existence which therefore finds its end six months after the celebration of his 90th birthday. All our thoughts are with his loved ones and fans.
