Daniel Lavoie: official website

"Platine" magazine

Platine magazine - 1999

Have you any fears that your success in the trio Belle will overwhelm you?
Daniel Lavoie: Notre Dame is an immense blockbuster but I shall continue alongside it as writer, composer... I have released an album in Québec which is awaiting release in France, when it comes out a bit of Notre Dame is sure to stick to it.

Does the musical stimulate or stifle you?
Daniel Lavoie: I’ll tell you that in six months time … (he smiles). In every way it’s not an easy album. I don’t even know if it will have success in getting it’s first airing on the radio, I suspect not. It’s a very gentle disc with subtle tracks, rhythmical but, underneath all that, strong … Certainly it’s my favourite. [Here Daniel is speaking about the album Ici/Ou la route mène]

You’ve included two songs from Notre Dame de Paris …
Daniel Lavoie: Charles Talar, the producer of Notre Dame de Paris, is also my producer in France, he suggested to me that two tracks from the studio version of Notre Dame should be added and I said “OK”.

On the French compilation album of 1997 one can find the same joint writers as on the last album, Dubuc, Moraillon, Lelièvre, Proulx …
Daniel Lavoie: Louise Dubuc is my best partner because she’s my wife and also my editor … I don’t always work with the same people but generally I don’t quarrel with my partners. At times I do distance myself from them temporarily. For example, I’ve worked with Daniel DeShaime on Tension attention, together we wrote Ils s’aiment in 1983 but then Danny decided to concentrate on computing. I don’t know why. On the other hand, I always work with Thierry Séchan (the brother of the singer Renaud Séchan). It’s not so on this album, but is on the one for which I am about to write four songs for Luce Duffault, as well as for others on my next disc.

Your last album included a famous name, that of Louise Forestier, with Nantucket?
Daniel Lavoie: It’s the first song which we’ve done together. There have been others since then, notably Louise’s last album which was released in Québec.

From time to time you co-write the words and at other times the music. Which do you specialise in?
Daniel Lavoie: From the beginning I wrote my music by myself, sometimes my wife joined in but she was the only one. As for words, they have become less and less my own.

Have you been writing for others for a long time?
Daniel Lavoie: No, four or five years. I offered my compositions to Louise Duffault and I wrote Urgent Désir for the last album of Lara Fabian.

Nevertheless, we find your name in 1987 on the album Incognito by Celine Dion with “Lolita”.
Daniel Lavoie: That was an exception. I had composed the music of that song, and sung it in English. Celine and René asked Luc Plamondon to make a French adaptation, and there it was …

You began in 1967, does it not bother you to perform as part of a company where there are younger people, often beginners?
Daniel Lavoie: No, not at all, quite the opposite, because they have talent and great maturity. For me it’s like a shot in the arm … and then I get fired up, believe me …

Aren’t you sad to be known in France just for Ils s’aiment and now for Frollo?
Daniel Lavoie: Had I been known in France for the “Dance of the Ducks” I would have found it very frustrating … On the other hand, with a song like Ils s’aiment, which has kept it’s relevance and topicality, I am at ease with it, the same as I would like to be as well-known here as in Québec where for 25 years I’ve had songs which went to number one. But I’m the one at fault, I get tired of travelling and a bit lazy, and I prefer to put all my efforts into Québec.

You have sung in Paris at the Petit Journal Montparnasse in 1979, at the Théâtre de la Ville in 1981 at the Bobino in 1982, at the Rex in 1985, at the Olympia in 1984 and 1986 … and you also went live on your last album.
Daniel Lavoie: The compilation 1996 was made live, but in studio conditions, without the public, because the clapping drives me mad.

Notre Dame is your second musical after Sand et les Romantiques [George Sand and the Romantics] by Plamondon and Lara in 1991, the same year that you acted in the film Le Fabuleux Voyage de l’ange [The angel’s Fantastic Journey]. Are you tempted to become an actor?
Daniel Lavoie: Only as far as Frollo, I don’t feel like a proper actor. But it’s true that this role which is nothing like me, made me work.

Around 1974, on your first album, you sang J’ai quitté mon île which became a success in Portuguese (Deixei mihaterra) [I left my land] in Brazil and Portugal. In 1983 with your sixth album, Ils s’aiment was adapted into English, Spanish, and Portuguese … Does a career outside the French speaking countries appeal to you?
Daniel Lavoie: In 1983 with my tenth album I had success in the USA with the soundtrack of General Hospital, following on from which I released my fourteenth and last album in English but I don’t want to follow it up in the USA because American show business is a mad world.