Special guest in Europe 1 five years after the Paris and Saint-Denis attacks, Sting explains why he accepted to be the first artist to return to the Bataclan stage.
The cult singer, who remembers this concert as one "of the strongest moments of his career", explains that he had "two missions".
INTERVIEW
He is the first artist to have rested one foot on stage after the drama.
While France commemorates this Friday the five years of the Bataclan attack, which killed 90 people, the legendary singer Sting looks back on "one of the strongest moments of his career": the reopening concert that he gave in the hall scarred by the shootings a year later.
Exceptional guest of Europe Morning, he explains why he accepted this heavy task and affirms "that we must exorcise the ghosts" of the Bataclan.
"A moment of great gravity"
"I was very honored and also aware that it was a very serious moment," says the artist.
As he took the stage on November 12, 2016, Sting knew he had "two missions to accomplish": "to honor the dead and to celebrate the reopening of a historic concert hall".
Two contradictory tasks at first sight.
Faced with this dilemma, he decides, even before the minute of silence that preceded his concert, to explain the situation to the audience.
And despite the presence of some survivors and relatives of victims, "the more the evening progressed, the more the concert became a celebration", he says.
Sting during his Bataclan reopening concert. Photo credit: STRINGER / AFP
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Songs for those special events
Despite the exceptional nature of this concert, it was not a first for Sting.
"This kind of experience is not foreign to me, I have known moving moments, in serious moments: I played in Chile, Argentina, in memory of the disappeared, in the presence of their families in the same places. where they were executed. "
The singer even has songs "for these kinds of events", titles that allow both to honor the memory of the dead, and to celebrate life.
This is particularly the case with his song
Fragile
, released at the end of the 1980s. A title which "evokes the fragility of men, their sadness, but also their strength", explains Sting.
The song begins with these words: "If the blood flows when flesh and steel are one and dries in the color of twilight, tomorrow's rain will remove all the stains. But one thing will remain. always anchored in us. "
Words which resonated in the Bataclan on this evening of November 12, 2016 and which bear witness to the "paradox of the human condition" described by Sting: "to live between life and death."
And despite the difficulty of performing in front of survivors and relatives of victims, Sting "likes to be offered this kind of opportunity".