INTERVIEW
"He was rather confined during the day, and deconfigured at night." This is how Pascal Nègre evokes Christophe, interpreter of Aline and the Blue Words , who died on Thursday. The music producer, who was head of Universal Music for 18 years (1998-2016), was the guest of Europe 1, on Saturday, to tell Christophe, with whom he worked in the early 2000s then that the artist was back on stage after more than twenty years away from the public.
"The winter wind blows in April
I love the still silence
Of an encounter" the last of the Bevilacquas left to join the lost paradises. Thank you for this unforgettable journey. #Christophe RIP
"A studio man, no stage"
"Christophe's return to the Olympia on stage was a huge event," recalls Pascal Nègre. "He was a studio man, not on stage," he said, adding that singer Dandy had not been on stage for 24 years. "But suddenly, technology allowed him to have the quality of what he was able to create in the studio, on stage." A technological development that has given new life to his career, says the producer. "Christophe's discovery over the past twenty years has been to meet the public and find the joy of being on stage."
Before that, there was the Yéyé period, embodied by the song Aline, then Christophe's collaboration with Jean-Michel Jarre. "Jarre found the words that sublimated his sonic universe," says Pascal Nègre, who evokes a Christophe complexed by the fact of being French, as the French language seemed complicated to him "to ring". Christophe, "he was obsessed with sound".
>> Find all of Patrick Cohen's programs in replay and podcast here
"It was a nocturnal bird"
Before his big comeback on stage, sound, Christophe created it locked up in his studio. "It was a nocturnal bird," recalls Pascal Nègre. "He could spend hours working on sounds, but he was also someone who liked to meet people and who had a real social life," he insists.
Leitmotif of his life, the night was his moment of awakening and creation. In an interview with RFM with Pascal Nègre, Christophe himself said in 2016 that he had "always lived at night". "It's something very positive, it's silence, it's something I like, the night smells different from the day."