INTERVIEW
We are in 1986. Étienne Daho is thirty years old and sings as a star on the stage of the Olympia, a first that marks the beginning of a period of great success. That day, just before he came on the scene, he was warned that a man who claims to be his father, whom he has not seen since he was four, wants to see him. Invited Saturday of There is not a life in life , on Europe 1, Étienne Daho, released October 18 a remastered box of his album Éden, came back on this episode "very difficult" of his life .
"It was very hard, very difficult, I knew that my parents had not seen each other for a very long time, that's what I thought, my mother's shock, it was surreal. It was the first time I had an Olympia, it was really the beginning of the massive success, a moment of joy, and I was brought back to being a little boy in three seconds. It was very difficult, really, "he recalls.
"My reaction was extremely brutal, I regretted it"
The singer then informs his father that he is not allowed to return to his dressing room, that he refuses to see him. Today, he regrets. While acknowledging that it could not have been otherwise. "It was a spontaneous impulse, I knew my mother was there, I did not want to put them back together, I was afraid of this confrontation, it was too late. My reaction was extremely brutal, I regretted it, but I acted as I could at that moment, with the maturity of that moment.
Étienne Daho's father, Étienne also, a wealthy heir, a regular soldier and a rather party-oriented temperament, had left his family some 25 years earlier. Little Etienne Daho was then four years old and lived with his mother and grandparents about twenty kilometers from Oran, just before the Algerian war struck his family and forced him into exile.
Years later, while the singer is already very popular, it is entrusted with letters written by his father. He draws a song, "Boulevard des Capucines", which will be released in 2007. Etienne Daho sings this particular: "I ask you by this letter, my boy, to grant me your forgiveness.You know, what crap my youth, my silence, what a mistake, what a waste of time ". The singer's father died recently and he still has not seen him again.
"I made a curious thing: I wrote a song from these letters, inverting the roles, and I put myself in my father's shoes," Étienne Daho tells Europe 1. a lot of relief, it was a kind of liberation, it's a song of forgiveness, I did not intend to publish it at all, and the people around me said to me, 'It would still be good if you put it in the record. "I let myself be convinced.
"Now I live very well with this song"
But the singer took time before being able to take a quieted look at this title. I regretted for a while, when we talk about intimate things, we talk about others, we expose others, his family, his mother, his sisters.For them, it was part of the things that we classify. , that we want to forget, I got a little bawling anyway! ", he recalls.
And then continue: "Then after that I fell silent with this song, I realized that many of my friends had such a relationship, which did not happen, with their father. belong to me more, it's universal. "And now I live very well with this song".
Above all, the singer insists on one thing: Boulevard des Capucines is not a sad song. "It was perceived as a sad song, it became a victimizer, but it speaks of forgiveness and forgiveness, it is very joyous, we release it, we share it with others. we make something sad, "he concludes.