After Manu Dibango, Lee Konitz, Patrick Frankfurt, Bill Whithers, a new death in the music world darkens this sad period a little more. Daniel Bevilacqua, alias Christophe, died Thursday evening in Brest. The 74-year-old singer was transferred from Paris to Brittany last week in intensive care. Back in song on the career of the interpreter of Blue words.
Aline (1965)
Come back Sophie, Christophe’s first single, is a failure. It’s with the album Aline that the singer made a remarkable entry on the French musical scene. The disc is carried by a title track inspired by the American blues that the singer loves and composed in a few minutes during a lunch at his grandmother’s. The title ranks number one in France, with almost half a million copies sold, and transforms the newcomer into an icon of yé-yé.
The lost paradises (1973)
After a slump, Christophe, who has grown a mustache that will never leave him, is joined by the services of lyricist Jean-Michel Jarre. From this collaboration is born the album Paradise Lost. Record of consecration, it is considered one of the most important of hexagonal rock. His first single, a seven-minute ballad that ends up in a dissonant frenzied rock, is inspired by bands from across the Channel like Pink Floyd. The title has been taken up by many artists, notably in a hybrid version with a song by Kanye West by pop singer Christine and the Queen.
The blue words (1974)
Christophe benefits from the success of Lost paradise to target a new audience. Still helped by the young lyricist, he released the album a year later The blue words, carried by a song of the same name. The singer expresses the difficulty of expressing his feelings to a young girl with whom he is madly in love in a refrain which now figures in the repertoire of all karaokes in France and Navarre: “I will tell him the blue words, the words that are said with the eyes. Talking seems ridiculous to me, I rush forward and I step back. ”
Crazy success (1984)
In the following years, the singer revived rock. His albums are critically acclaimed without really meeting the same enthusiasm as the Blue Words from the public. He takes out a ballad in 45 laps, Crazy success in which he boasts of his success with the fairer sex. A slow carried by an arpeggiated guitar and a saxophone which, as its title let predict, meets an enthusiastic public.
Enzo (1996)
Christophe has deserted concert halls and studios for a long time. The singer has not released a single album for 13 years (Love shots). He returns with the experimental and very personal record Bevilacqua, named after his last name. Going unnoticed when it came out, the techno-sounding disc experienced renewed interest in the 2000s. It was reissued in 2013 at the singer’s request. In the title Enzo, it pays tribute to the car manufacturer Enzo Ferrari who died eight years earlier.
Silence we die (2013)
An ultra-productive period has begun since the start of the century for Christophe. He is back on the scene and sings “paradise found” in the eponymous album. The disc opens with the experimental piece Silence we die, which one would think left of an album of Sébastien Tellier – which it will invite besides to sing on its disc of duet Christophe Etc. We can hear a dialogue from Billy Wilder’s film Twilight Boulevard, which Christophe, a lover of the seventh art since his childhood, inserted at the beginning of the song.
Little Guy , with Étienne Daho (2019)
For several years, Christophe has multiplied collaborations. He fulfilled his dream by singing with his idol Alain Vega in the song Tangerine a few weeks before his death. In his album Christophe Etc., released in two volumes, he surrounds himself with his favorite artists for a versatile disc composed exclusively of duets. There are notably collaborations with Eddy Mitchell, Raphaël, Juliette Armanet, Jeanne Added and Étienne Daho.
– .
