Stéphane Papillon has always rolled at breakneck speed, but a year ago the rocker almost landed in a coffin. He heals his wounds in country mode on We will save what stays.
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In February 2022, Stéphane Papillon wakes up one fine morning with the firm ambition, he says, with one of the absurd exaggerations he sprinkles on all his conversations, “to lose 100 pounds in one afternoon”. More used to bars you smear your clarity than bars you lift, the singer still tries to push hard. Too strong. “And it farted,” he said, gesturing with his noggin. “I felt it in Tabarnac. »
Since pride is the strongest muscle in a man’s body, Grandpa (as his friends call him) will insist all day on telling himself he’s only suffering from a mundane headache. However, his pain was not insignificant. At the hospital, he is told that a craniotomy is necessary. Adamant diagnosis: ruptured aneurysm.
Then they explained to me that they would remove my head to stop the blood pressure that was killing my brain, the bleeding was so heavy. And I say, “Listen, you seem more informed than me.”
Stephane Papillon
The pillar of the defunct tavern L’Inspecteur Épingle doesn’t do things by halves, adding a stroke and, after being put into an induced coma, a heart attack to his list. Hat trick.
Pay dearly for his arrogance
“Yes, I paid dearly for my arrogance at the age when I thought I would relax,” he summarizes in Pasteur, the Pagan Gospel from his magnificent fourth album, the first by pseudo-Pasteur Papillon was signed, we will save what is left.
Paid dearly for his arrogance? Because, as he says himself: In the world of excess, Papillon is a model for success. “Powder was the most stable relationship of my life,” says the man whose first album “Mal bred” dates back to 2003 ? “At 16 I couldn’t believe how well made this little product was: I was able to drink a thousand times more, a thousand times longer. Please send a thank you card to Pablo Escobar! »
regret ? “If you lead a party life, you know very well that you do yourself a lot of harm,” replies the man, who is also the guitarist for the group Drogue, “but for me it was in the name of fun, so the party never stops . There was nothing dark about that.” At least not yet.
Heal yourself through music
“The real break was when I realized I was paralyzed on the left side: face, hand, everything. Crushed on the couch at Studio Mystic, Stéphane Papillon puts aside his barrage of earthy formulas for a moment, revealing the crack behind his facade of a perpetual teenager trying to make people laugh.
In the weeks leading up to that, I was too stoned on morphine to do much. But to understand that I was paralyzed hit me deeply. Then I cried. I had trouble with that, especially since the ergo-exercises, putting the square in a square, are very infantilizing.
Stephane Papillon
Whoever lives by the sword will perish by the sword? The opposite is also true: while it was rock ‘n’ roll that got him into the hospital bed, it’s the guitar that will help him get out of it. Thanks to the six strings that his caretakers leave him in his room, the miraculous will gradually regain his agility, but at the same time his desire to write songs.
But if the once cheeky Butterfly was sort of a cross between Iggy Pop and Redd Foxx, who slurped their pussies and built his songs on ass jokes, the big guy, 54, now turns to the offbeat country law of his heroes Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY STÉPHANE PAPILLON
Pastor Papillon in the studio with Tommy Stinson
Healing through music: That was director Tommy Stinson’s mantra in the studio. The bassist for legendary American band The Replacements (and a member of the Chinese Democracy incarnation of Guns N’ Roses) was well-placed to sympathize with Grandpa, as he was also being compelled by his body to moderate his transport.
“And since it hurts me too much when I scream, I had no choice but to learn to tell stories from emotions without screaming,” explains the one who hasn’t quite discarded the twists that make you smile , but also signs a few songs to cry in his beer, including I lost a lot, a letter to his two teenage daughters with whom he is trying to reestablish communication. Vulnerability is seldom as overwhelming as in those who embrace it for the first time.
It sounds like a gag, but it’s the truth: Stéphane Papillon now lives in Cap-Santé (!), in the house next to the one where he grew up. “We all have our dreams: when I was 16, 17, you had to live and die fast,” he recalls. But now I want to be Willie Nelson and end up looking like a potato chip. I want to die sitting on my amp at 92. »
country rock
We’ll save what’s left
Pastor Butterfly
big fat truck