Christophe, I won't forget you

So much freedom in this artist. Christophe, who passed away on Thursday, will be remembered as a man who didn't care what people said. During our maintenance released in December, he revealed some of the lyrics to forthcoming songs. «Not gross’»in his own words.

Christophe passed away this Thursday evening, and while this outcome doesn’t really surprise us—he led a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle—it still left us speechless. Of course, there is Blue words, a landmark of French pop music taken from a self-titled album whose fifty shades of genius no one can claim to fully understand. But there’s also the rest of his body of work, made up of lost paradises—and how, when you compare them to most of what’s being released in today’s music scene.

Above all, there’s the character: a completely offbeat dandy, a night owl, who experiences and perceives life as even darker than it really is, through the lens of his glasses. One morning in late 2019, at 10:30 p.m., I interviewed him as he was leaving his concert in Morges, Switzerland. We were in his dressing room; he was having breakfast: a sort of American-style drip coffee, which followed the glass of whiskey he’d sipped on stage between songs.

For me, Christophe, that’s what it was. A taste of freedom. Everyone who knew him well can confirm it. It’s no coincidence that this handsome eccentric loved to drive—and to drive fast. Time flies by at breakneck speed for those who love freedom. The car symbolizes this philosophy of life. And it carries with it an era that is no more, except in the minds of a few: us, the ones nostalgic for freedom—that is, for the future.

During our interview, which lasted much longer than expected—just like his concert (2 hours and 45 minutes instead of 1 hour and 30 minutes)—the singer showed me strings of words lined up on the screen of his iPhone, which just kept beeping away. These were lyrics he’d written himself whenever inspiration struck, sometimes taken from text messages he’d sent or received, and which might end up, in one way or another, in the songs on his next album.

«I'm working on some new stuff that, how should I put it, isn't too bad. And most importantly, it's radically different from what I've released with The Remnants of Chaos. […] »I want to release an album with no more than ten songs, and I already have six that I'm working on, and they're actually pretty good."

It hurts to read these sentences. I regret that I may never be able to listen to what was going to be a new album of unreleased tracks. They were so strangely beautiful, the Ocean of love, Lou and Drone from 2016. Radically different from his old hits, but sharing a common focus on sound—Christophe’s obsession. Today, his words to Elsa in La dolce vita are mine and are addressed directly to him:

«Elsa, Elsa"
I won't forget you
Elsa
Why did you leave?
»I didn't understand a thing!"

And I won’t forget you for one very simple reason: even now, I still haven’t «understood a thing» about your work. It is so rich that there is still so much to discover. It is so simple that it belongs to the realm of the fundamental, the primordial, the inaccessible. Farewell, Daniel Bevilacqua. Many of us carry wounds in our souls, but your soul and your words are eternal. And now at peace.

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