JHe tells you about a time that those under 20, or even 30, cannot know. Those of a time when Johnny Hallyday and Claude François were not (yet) at the top of record sales. A time when the one who beat the young guns was called Gilles Dreu. It was 1968, and it was “Alouette.” The hit of a lifetime for its performer, who died this Tuesday, January 7 at the age of 90.
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It was its producer, Pierre-Nicolas Cléré, who announced the news to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Suffering from cancer, which he made public in 2020, the singer published his sixteenth and final studio album that same year, The Friends Counterwhich featured duets with Serge Lama, Fabienne Thibeault, Stone, Gérard Lenorman and Didier Barbelivien.
ALSO READ Didier Barbelivien: “Macron has a 19th century romantic hero side” Gilles Dreu, if he did not have the plethoric career of these fellow travelers, will have known the mysteries of success with “Alouette”, therefore. A title born under two beautiful stars: those of Pierre Delanoë, lyricist of “Lacs du Connemara”, “L’Été indienne” or “Fais comme l’oiseau”, as well as Norbert Saada, producer of Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré and Charles Aznavour.
“The encounter of a work with the performer”
Adapted from an Argentinian song, “La peregrinación” by Ariel Ramirez (whose lyrics he takes phonetically, “A la huella, a la huella”), the title, as Gilles Dreu explained to Schnock in 2023, is “the encounter of a work with the right performer and at the right time”.
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The time was the barricades of May 1968, “a Latin American atmosphere, revolutionary period,” he remembers. With mustaches and a cigar in his mouth, Gilles Dreu (who chose his name in homage to his hometown, Dreux) evokes Che Guevara or Emiliano Zapata, a connection which could only be fruitful in these times of revolt. In short, he is a man who was in the right place at the right time and who, no doubt in spite of himself, knew how to capture a certain spirit of the times.
ALSO READ The confessions of Sylvie Vartan, before her farewell to the stageThat year, more than 150,000 copies of the 45 rpm “Alouette” were sold. “I was the first Frenchman, after Aphrodite’s Child and the Beatles,” he boasted. Although he composed more than 200 songs in his career, he will never repeat this unique and immense success. Jean-Paul Chapuisat, his real name, performed one last time in Vendée, last February. “I will no longer be a singer tomorrow morning,” he predicted then. More of a singer, no: but for eternity the singer of “Alouette”.
