2023-05-25 18:14:00
« Ça, it’s a peasant’s handshake. In the mouth of Jean-Louis Murat, the remark was worth a nice compliment. I had met the singer a good ten years ago, in a café near the Maison de la radio, in Paris. He was on a promotional tour. The exercise did not seem to please him too much. No doubt he preferred the solitude of his Auvergne mountains. He was there, almost incognito, his hair loose, his clothes relaxed, the air of being in the city without wanting to be there, still with that warm, caressing voice.
I believe he had ordered a glass of white wine. He was sometimes charming, sometimes grumpy, denigrating “those screaming singers” (he was referring to Patrick Fiori and Patrick Bruel) and the “circus” of the Enfoirés, which he saw as an easy promotion system for second-rate artists to whom he had no desire to be associated. We almost hit it off. It’s amazing, a singer in promotion who does not do promotion. He had left me his phone number in Auvergne, offering me to come by on occasion, which I never dared to do.
I saw him again a few years later, in the opulent bar of a Parisian hotel. We had agreed to talk about France, for an interview to be published in the newspaper. Politics, society, all seemed to overwhelm him. He had cited Léon Bloy and Philippe Muray, eloquent references of a cultured and fine man. Muray-Murat, a final letter of difference, but the same criticism of the political game, and “the smile of Ségolène Royal”, this “smile that has never laughed and will never laugh”. That day, Murat was in a dark mood, as often.
His fans knew it: in concert, the artist alternated the good with the very good, but sometimes seemed determined to spoil everything. He grabbed his guitar, raped it as if to slaughter his pretty ballads. Other times, he cursed, scolded the public, chained heartless titles, there but not really there. And then, often, moments of grace, delicate melodies, and that voice, that voice. Murat, the Auvergnat “who still burns in my soul, like a great sun” (1).
The 5 best songs of Jean-Louis Murat
5. « Jim »
The song is a kind of tribute to Jim Harrison, the writer of the great American spaces. She appears on Mustang (1999), ranked by the magazine Rolling Stones like the 57e album best french rock album. The singer Jennifer Charles, of the group Elysian Fields, provides some voice parts.
4. “More seen from women”
The title is little known. It does not appear on any album, but was filmed during a studio session. It’s a pretty ballad, an ode to women, whispered by an inhabited Jean-Louis Murat, who broods over the singer Camille, with whom he sings in duet.
3. “Mount Sans Souci”
In concert, the public often asked for this song, a kind of ritornello on the piano which praised “the thermal baths of Choussy”, “the pretty blond heads”, the “short-term loves”… A delicacy in a few notes and such pretty texts : “When the deleterious mauve radiance/No longer lights up my life/I go to sleep in the heather/At Mont Sans-Souci”
2. “Roman Crowd”
The title appears on The Moujik and his wifereleased in 2002. A pretty refined ballad with probably a little abstruse lyrics, as often with Murat, but one of the artist’s concert gems.
1. “The Sickness of Love”
It’s obviously subjective, but Lilith, the double album released in 2003 where this title appears is undoubtedly Murat’s most accomplished work. The Auvergnat deploys all his talents there with a unique grace. This is obviously the case with this song, a dark and ethereal marvel, but also with a few others (“Se put aux anges”, “Le cri du papillon”, “Zibeline Tang”…).
(1) Words borrowed from Georges Brassens, Auvergne.
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