I have a very vivid memory of an interview that Michel Rivard gave to Lise Payette the day after the death of Félix Leclerc. It was in 1988, Michel Rivard was 36 years old, and the host had asked the singer to “take back the torch”.
In this way, the former minister of René Lévesque was of course alluding to the fight for the independence of Quebec.
Rivard and I are sitting on the edge of Chaleur Bay, on the sidelines of the Carleton-sur-Mer International Journalism Festival where he was one of the guest artists. I remind him of this interview which had a great impact on the young adult that I was.
The author of The Lament of the Seal in Alaska – taken up by Félix, in fact – remembers this meeting very well. And the discomfort he felt at Ms. Payette’s request.
“I felt honored, but at the same time, there was a sort of reproach on his part towards my generation who were not as fierce as Pauline Julien, Gilles Vigneault and other artists who had preceded us. »
Over the years, Michel Rivard has carved out a place of his own in the song ecosystem in Quebec. First with Beau Dommage, a legendary group which, in just six years, has profoundly marked the history of Quebec music. Then with his solo career which he led in his own way, “like a craftsman”, he explains. “I would say that I didn’t give that much importance to my success and my image,” he explains.
“I’m someone who just followed a line that was laid out in front of him and felt like it was his,” he adds.
Michel Rivard may not have accepted the torch with a capital F that Lise Payette handed him at the time, but he got involved in his own way. For example, he wrote Le coeur de ma vie, a song about the French language. “I wrote it because, at that moment, I needed to say that my language is dying,” he explains. And I was a little bit in reaction to the song about language by Yves Duteil which presented an absolutely postcard vision of Quebec. I never really got into that song, so I needed to do one. »
Beyond the causes for which he sang in his life, alone or with Beau Dommage, Michel Rivard’s commitment is first and foremost a question of personal ethics. “I have a commitment to an audience that brings me to life and that has been there for 50 years,” he emphasizes. Then, when I had a family, I worked very hard to reconcile family life with the love of my job, the need I have to leave, to be a troubadour on the road. I did everything I could to balance that with the responsibility of raising children, taking them when possible, then cutting shows when that wasn’t possible. All of this, for me, is daily commitment. »
His writing process is “organic,” to use a buzzword.
“I have difficulty separating the commitment from the honesty of the writing,” the singer-songwriter explains to me. I try to write truth, to go with what I perceive of life, of what I read in the newspapers, of the state in which the news plunges me, and which will perhaps manifest itself in a sentence, at a given moment. I work like that rather than saying to myself: “Now I have to write a song about what’s happening in the world.” »
At 72, Michel Rivard evokes “the harsh desire to last” of which the poet Paul Éluard spoke. “How can I continue to do this job as honestly as possible? “, he asks himself.
In 50 years, Michel Rivard has enjoyed numerous successes within Beau Dommage and as a solo artist. He collected the Félix (him again!) and many other honors. He performed at the National Improvisation League. He has played in the theater, on television, in the cinema. He even played politics, in a humorous way, within the Rhinoceros Party. These years he plays Christine Beaulieu’s father in the hilarious comedy The Eye of the Storm. The more time passes, the more he claims the right to do things his way.
“I no longer try to create songs that last the number of minutes required to hope to play on the radio,” he says. I made a big let go at this level. My big victory was a few years ago, when I did the show The Origin of My Species. It was a daring project where I arrived with ONLY new songs, and a long introspective text about the quest for truth in what I knew about my parents’ history, what had been told to me and what I had been hidden. I toured Quebec twice with this show in which there were no concessions. It was a poetic text, sometimes funny, but not always, and then it worked. »
“Now,” concludes Rivard, “my decisions are made based on what I feel like doing. It takes the time it takes, and the budgets it requires. And I have an agenda which, if all goes well, takes me until 2026-2027… When you are true to yourself, things can just go well. »
Next September, Michel Rivard will be 73 years old. He is delighted to still be here and to continue doing what he loves. “I open my show Around the Block by saying: you have before you an authentic elder… [laughs]. I talk about growing old in a very honest way. I’m so happy about it because I’m offering people my age a quality show, with songs from several eras, but which isn’t retro for two seconds. It makes me proud to be that age and to do a show for people who come away with a smile on their face…”