If he is today a recognized singer, Pascal Obispo did not imagine giving voice on a stage behind a microphone.

Guest of Michel Denisot on Saturday on Europe 1, he tells how, while he was a bassist, he found himself propelled singer of a new wave group from Rennes, Senso. 

INTERVIEW

A delay that launched a career.

If he is known and recognized today, Pascal Obispo was not yet destined to earn a living by giving voice on stage, behind a microphone.

"I didn't want to be a singer, I just wanted to make music", he confides in "Icons" on Europe 1. Passionate about rock music since his discovery of Cure a few years earlier, Pascal Obispo becomes bassist in several groups, before landing in the

new wave

group

Senso at the end of high school.

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A "service" that will change everything

And this is where fate will make him drop his bass to take a microphone in hand.

In 1988, when the group had to do a concert, the singer of the formation, Philippe Pascal, was late.

Without solution, the group decides to propel Pascal Obispo singer.

The latter accepts "to be of service".

It is from there that "everything is linked" until the release of his first solo disc,

Le long du rivière

, in 1990. An album of which some titles are also written by Franck Darcel, member of the group Senso.

But this first opus goes unnoticed.

Having left his native Rennes, which at the time was one of the rock cities of France, for the capital in search of success, the singer encountered a problem.

His proposals for songs indeed sound "too Rennes", as he explains himself at the microphone of Europe 1. His rock identity and his deep voice are in no way exceptional, and the music market is already saturated with music. artists on the same niche.

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The trigger Lenny Kravitz

But it is by going to a Lenny Kravitz concert that Pascal Obispo will find the solution.

"I heard him sing in a head voice," he explains.

A much higher pitched voice than what he is used to delivering behind a microphone.

He then began looking for French artists who sang in this way and ended up studying the repertoire of Polnareff, Christophe, or even Alain Chamfort.

"I thought maybe there was a way to find my voice, both ways, so I got to work on it."

And we have to believe that the idea was a good one, since two years after

Le Long du rivière

, Pascal Obispo released

Plus que tout au monde

in September 1992. An album that would be his first commercial success and allow him to become famous.