A beautiful story. “A sacred obsession,” as he himself says in a big smile. It then started that Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine had a dozen years at the most. At the time, the young native of the Jura is planning to become a priest. “When I went on pension at the beginning of the 1960s, I had the vocation. The guy sitting next to me made me discover Hi copainset the yé-yé. In a week, it was finished: I wanted to become a singer,” recalled the now seventy-year-old, who this year celebrates the fortieth anniversary of his first album with a campaign to reissue its entire discography. “This represents six kilograms!”, “he observes. It was at the initiative of his son Hugo, who works with him, that the body of Thiéfaine spring at a rate of three albums per month since last winter, way series. Ten-seven references in total, a thirty vinyl records. To accompany this integral, Thiéfaine has begun a new journey that will allow him to find his faithful audience. “In the 1980s, there were a lot of boys, now it’s entire families, grandparents, parents and children who come to see me. Some are aware of my songs since the age of 5 years old!”
The man is moved by this reunion with the scene. He even confesses to feel more trafc today than at its inception. “Initially, I wondered if I was going to take me a beer can on the head. Now, getting up on stage is more difficult: I want people to come out happy, like friends that I don’t want to disappoint them.” For his third stint in the Arena of Bercy, the singer plans a concert almost 3 hours, garnished with a songs rare. To do this, Thiéfaine has been revisiting his discography. “I was pretty proud of what I’ve heard, apart from a handful of discs on which I am less invested. Moreover, these are the ones that have the least market,” he acknowledges. Fan of the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan in adolescence, it is when he discovers the work of Léo Ferré that Thiéfaine has perceived that one could write poetry and songs in the same breath. “From there, it became a fixed idea: as soon as I was finishing a piece, I started another. I even got to write a song while I playing another on the stage.”
“My first albums were not the point, this has caused me to brake also. I was the mole of the French song.”
After starting as a cabaret, his meeting with the group Thing allows him to present a true spectacle. “They were folkeux, which has inspired me one or two comic songs.” It is from the awesome Latest tags before mutation, in 1981, that Thiéfaine is his style. “With this disc, I was taking terrible risks. But this is where I became a happy musically. After that, I had the right to do my music,” he recalls.
This is by injecting the new wave in its style that this cousin underground of Bashung became the singer of cult 1980s, without crossing the tv or radio broadcast. “My first albums were not the point, this has caused me to brake also. I was the mole of the French song.” Very popular, the literary Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine has always fled from the worldly parisian, like the plague. “I’m not a person of demonstrative, who likes to get forward,” he says. What makes his ease on stage all the more mysterious. “This is where I feel myself, not in a tv studio, which is a place contemptible.” In 1998, the singer fills Bercy despite a poster which shows him from the back. “It was full a month before,” he recalls. If the gap with the media is again expanded in the last twenty years, Thiéfaine ensures that it is now more sure of himself and his audience.
Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine at Bercy AccorHotels Arena, 8, bd de Bercy (Xiith). On 9 nov. at 19h20. Tel.: 01 40 02 60 60. Tickets: from 45 to 69€.
