Catherine Lara was already making a career in France in the early 1980s when she “fell in love” with the songs that Luc Plamondon had written for Diane Dufresne.
Sensing that the famed Quebec poet could take her to the next level, she grabbed the bull by the horns and placed her order directly with him.
“I said to myself: I want to sing that. I asked for his phone number, finally found him and met Luc. It just happened. He’s such a lovely boy.”
In an interview with the Journal, the 77-year-old French singer happily reminisces when she was asked to talk about the man who opened the doors to the highs of the charts for her by writing to her in Middle of Nowhere and Before above all, the unforgettable Magical Night.
If she could taste the rush of great public success, it was “thanks to him”, thanks to the one whose talent she admired for combining poetry and musicality in his songs, thanks to the one who befriended him, shared countless good meals and burst out laughing .
“I feel like I’ve always known him. He was there like the fairy godmother over my cradle. He was in my heart forever.”
An achievement created in minutes
Nuit Magique, the flagship in Catherine Lara’s repertoire, was what enabled her to become known to the Quebec public in 1985.
Time required for creation: a few minutes.
Catherine Lara tells.
“We spent months and months making an album. When it was finished I sat down at the piano with (the composer) Sébastien Santa Maria, we didn’t know what to do, we played, we were happy and we composed it in five minutes. I called Luc to tell him we were having one last time.
Luc Plamondon competed for the Holy of Holies.
“He came to listen to her. He said to me, remember we had a nightclub in Montreal called Nuit Magique that we loved? We spent whole nights there and left at 3 or 4 in the morning. I said what a great idea, we’re going to call it Magical Night.”
“We were in Switzerland,” the singer continues. We went for a walk together. We ended up in a kind of run down hotel, a terrible place. We sat on the edge of the bed, I sang him the song and he wrote the lyrics…oh…that must have taken fifteen minutes.”
A success had just been created.
Rare visit to Quebec
Despite this fruitful alliance with our greatest lyricist, and although encounters with Édith Butler, Mario Pelchat, Ginette Reno, Céline Dion and Diane Dufresne, to name a few, have enriched her professional career, Catherine Lara did not come to Quebec to sing very much often.
According to our research, his last appearance on one of our stages dates back to his participation in the show Le retour de nos idoles in 2011, an event that brought together past glory on the stage of the now disused Colisée de Québec.
Photo archive, Journal de Québec
Catherine Lara during her participation in the show Le retour de nos idoles at the Colisee de Quebec in 2011.
It’s newer on TV. We saw her surprise her friend Edith Butler during Live from the Universe’s special Francophonie program last March. There she met producer Paul Dupont-Hébert, who suggested that she come and do three concerts in Sherbrooke, Montreal and Quebec.
She is therefore preparing for the flight and will be there with her “little violin”, two grand pianos and her hits. Something simple, she said, out of a desire for privacy, not to save money.
“I gave concerts with 90 musicians, symphony orchestras, I played at the Palais des Sports two years ago with 500 choristers and there I finally feel like I’m going back to my roots.”
Should we see this as our last chance to see her on stage? “Oh, I never intend to stop. Maybe one day I’ll die on stage. Like my friend Edith, we have in common that we are always 20 years old.
***Catherine Lara will perform at the Center culturel de l’Université de Sherbrooke on October 27th, at the Place des Arts in Montreal on October 29th and at the Palais Montcalm in Quebec City on October 30th.