Stéphane Papillon has always rolled at an open grave, but a year ago, the rocker almost ended up in a coffin. He heals his wounds, in country mode, on We will save what remains.
In February 2022, Stéphane Papillon wakes up one fine morning with the firm ambition, he says using one of his absurd hyperboles with which he sprinkles all his conversations, to “lose 100 pounds in one afternoon”. More accustomed to bars where you smear your lucidity than bars that you lift, the singer still tries to push hard. Too strong. “And it farted,” he said, pointing his noggin. “I smelled it in tabarnac. »
Pride being the strongest muscle in a man’s body, Grandpa (as his friends call him) will persist all day convincing himself that he is only suffering from a common headache. There was nothing trivial about her pain though. He was told, once in the hospital, that a craniotomy was needed. Implacable diagnosis: ruptured aneurysm.
Never one to do things by halves, the mainstay of the defunct L’Inspecteur Épingle tavern will add to his list a stroke and, once plunged into an artificial coma, a heart attack. Hat trick.
“Yes, I paid dearly for my arrogance at the age when I thought I was relaxing”, he summarizes in Pasteur, the pagan gospel taken from his magnificent fourth album, the first signed by the pseudo Pasteur Papillon, We will save what’s left.
Paid dearly for his arrogance? It’s because, as he says himself: in the world of excess, Papillon is a model of success. “Powder has been the most stable relationship of my life,” says the man whose first album, Badly Brought Up, dates from 2003. not invent – Are you afraid of death? “At 16, I couldn’t believe how well this little product was made: I could drink a thousand times more, a thousand times longer. Please send a thank you card to Pablo Escobar! »
Regrets ? “When you lead a party life, you know very well that you are doing yourself a lot of harm,” replies the one who is also a guitarist with the group Drogue, “but for me, it was in the name of fun, so that the party never stops. There was nothing dark about it.” Not yet, at least.
“Where I really broke was when I realized I was paralyzed on the left: face, hand, everything. Crushed on the couch at Studio Mystic, Stéphane Papillon puts aside his barrage of earthy formulas for a moment and reveals the crack behind his facade of an eternal teenager who seeks to make people laugh.
Who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword? The reverse is also true: while it was rock ‘n’ roll that got him to that hospital bed, it’s the guitar that will help him get out of it. Thanks to the six strings that his caregivers allow him to keep in his room, the miraculous will gradually regain his mobility, along with his desire to write songs.
But if the former cheeky Butterfly was some kind of cross between Iggy Pop and Redd Foxx, who shuffled pussy and built his songs on butt jokes, the big guy, 54, is now turning his sights to out-of-town country. law of his heroes Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams.
Healing by music was the mantra of its director, Tommy Stinson, in the studio. The bassist of legendary American band The Replacements (and a member of the Chinese Democracy incarnation of Guns N’ Roses) was well placed to sympathize with Grandpa, having also been forced by his body to moderate his transports.
“And since it hurts me too much when I scream, I had no choice but to learn how to go from emotion without screaming, to telling stories,” explains the one who did not entirely put aside the turns that make you smile, but who also signs a few songs to cry in his beer, including I lost a lot, a letter addressed to his two teenage daughters, with whom he tries to restore communication. Vulnerability is rarely as overwhelming as it is in those who embrace it for the first time.
It sounds like a gag, but it’s the truth: Stéphane Papillon now lives in Cap-Santé (!), in the house next to the one where he grew up. “We all have our dreams: when I was 16, 17, you had to live and die fast,” he recalls. But now what I want is to become Willie Nelson and end up looking like a potato chip. I want to die sitting on my amp at 92. »
