The “Montreal Freak” is no more. Lucien Francoeur, first a poet, then a musician who became a literature teacher and radio and TV host, died yesterday evening at the age of 76, confirmed to Duty his daughter, Virginie Francoeur.
“My rocker dad, my hero, took off at the age of 76 for a long trip,” his daughter testified in a message published on Facebook. “Creation was the center of his universe. […] For him, handwriting was the vital breath, the beating heart of the Montreal Freak. His blackened notebooks are silent witnesses to his solitude and marginality. Poetry was his way of defying death, it was a form of oxygen. »
Lucien Francoeur had been hospitalized since October 22, after suffering a cardiac arrest. He is also survived by his wife, Claudine Bertrand, his sister Carole and his brothers Louis and Donald.
Founder of “the Rolling Stones of the time” in Quebec
The extraordinary artist whose innovative pen highlighted the American character of Quebec culture gave us works, literary and musical, so important that his many friends and admirers will mourn today an icon of the counterculture. Thanks to the legendary group Aut’Chose of which he was the singer and one of the founders, Francoeur gave birth to a real underground rock scene here.
Lucien Francoeur was only 26 years old when Aut’Chose launched Take a chance with mein February 1975, on the American label CBS. The album, which divided critics at the time, achieved astonishing success thanks to the songs I love you and I want it, Hey You Woman (cover of a Polnareff hit), Bar-B-Q Lady et The Montreal Freak. Led by a singer who recited and shouted more than he sang, supported by an orchestra that did not hide its Anglo-Saxon, and specifically New York, musical influences, Aut’Chose told the other side, murky, rough, but poetic. , of Montreal life presented by Beau Dommage, whose first album had been released six months earlier.
“How to describe Aut’Chose? They were the Rolling Stones of the time,” replied Lucien Francoeur at the microphone of Marie-Louise Arsenault (ICI Première) in December 2023, at the time of the release of the very beautiful documentary Francoeur: We finish off the rockers wellco-directed by Robbie Hart and his only daughter, Virginie Francoeur. “At the time [on était branchés sur] the Velvet Underground, Zappa, the New York Dolls, the New York scene” and took rock poets Jim Morrison and Lou Reed as models.
“I never had a career plan,” Francoeur told Sylvain Cormier in 2014. “It was an impulse. The first Aut’Chose was already an achievement for me, it was an incredible thing to find yourself on a record. We can’t imagine today what it was like, finding yourself “signed” by a multinational, being on a record. The high what it was, man! »
Aut’Chose will launch a few months later A night like any other (with songs Nancy Beaudoin and covers of Blue jeans on the beach et Like on the radiothis one by Brigitte Fontaine), then The American Nightmare the following year – these three albums in two years, drawing the contours of Quebec punk and metal, transformed our Music scene.
And she is grateful to him: for a 19e year 1is Next December, the artisans of the Alternative Gala of Independent Music of Quebec (GAMIQ) will award their Lucien prizes, an honor of which Francoeur was very proud, as he testifies in the film co-directed by his daughter.
“Each edition of the gala was a bit of a tribute to his spirit since 2015, when we renamed the Lucien Prize,” testifies Pat K, organizer of GAMIQ and friend of Francoeur. “Lucien gave [à la scène musicale québécoise] an urbanity that it did not have before, he believes. Many young people recognized themselves in Lucien Francoeur’s attitude; he embodied something that resembled the music they listened to, not necessarily Quebecois. [La musique d’Aut’Chose] was in tune with what was being done in the United States and England. The meeting between joual and literature, this mixture between the backstreet bum and the erudite, was super rich and continues to resonate today. His work is timeless, we can still identify with his texts because they do not embody an era, but a state of mind, an attitude, a French-speaking Americanness. »
The literate rocker
It was first of all as a poet that Lucien Francoeur emerged on the vibrant Montreal cultural scene of the early 1970s – “It was the beginning of the debacle, of the great freedom”, he recalled on ICI Première – , he who had spent his adolescence wandering around New York (where he had gone by thumbing at the age of 14), then in New Orleans where he completed his secondary studies, during which he discovered Rimbaud, his first literary inspiration. Transfixed by the Poetry Night which he attended on March 27, 1970, at the Gesù theater, he turned seriously to writing; Gaston Miron will publish his first collection, Mini brixes reactedpublished by Editions de l’Hexagone, in 1972.
“Lucien brought an American breath to Quebec poetry,” says poet Jean-Paul Daoust. “Lucien and I were reading then [William S.] Burroughs, [Lawrence] Ferlinghetti, [John] Giorno, Kerouak — it was the America of On the Road who stimulated us, me having lived for a long time in the United States, like him. We had affinities, musical and literary. »
“In his poetry, Lucien did not claim something political, as was often done at the time, particularly in the poetry of Miron,” explains Jean-Paul Daoust. It was more about everyday life and the hardware of American images — the drive-insfor example — which lives in us all. He was apologizing for it, whereas, in literature in Quebec, it was not a theme that was considered serious or important. He claimed it, because it was part of the DNA of who we are. »
Alongside his solo musical career which began in 1978, the surprise success of which will be remembered Rap-A-Billy (from the album Day and night1983) et The gypsies always come back (1987), album produced by Gerry Boulet who signed certain music with Jean Millaire (from Corbeau, Marjo’s accomplice), the poet completed a master’s degree at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières and taught literature at the Cégep de Rosemont and at the John Abbott College. He also continues to publish: his collection The sanctified rockers: imperial and pyramidal crawling maniapublished by l’Hexagone, earned him the Émile-Nelligan prize in 1983.
At the end of the 1980s, he reinvented himself as a radio host on CKOI FM, holding the microphone of Francoeur Show until 1996, and even briefly hosted a show on the television channel TQS. These years will be barely less restful than the sleepless nights at Casanous, rue Sherbrooke, “the bar of freaks » in the 1970s. Alcohol and cocaine distanced him from his daughter and his partner, the poet Claudine Bertrand, he still admitted in the recent documentary devoted to him.
The return of Aut’Chose
About twenty years ago, he reconnected with his old accomplice, the guitarist Jacques Racine (died last September 18), to form a new, more metal version of Aut’Chose, completed in particular by bassist Vincent Peake (from Groovy Aardvark) and drummer Michel “Away” Langevin (from Voïvod), both admirers of Francoeur’s work.
“When I saw the recording of the Aut’chose concert at the Jardin des Étoiles [en juin 1975]it opened my eyes” to its importance, says Alex Crow, guitarist, accompanist and friend of Lucien.
On stage with the new version of the group, he testifies, “Lucien fed a lot off the energy of the crowd. He loved talking with the public, being near them, he was a frontman engaging who loved to make people sing. On stage, he lit up: you could find him about to fall asleep backstage five minutes before going on stage, but when the lights came on and he held his microphone, it was as if a spark had set him on fire! » adds Alex Crow, who confides that Lucien Francoeur was toying with the project of recording a last album “knowing that it would be his last hurray. He wanted to make a double album, which he called his “Exile on Main Street” [en référence au classique des Rolling Stones]. He had been doing well lately — he was consuming less and feeling less bored with life. »
