Christophe

Daniel Bevilacqua, known professionally as Christophe, was one of the most important chansonniers, although outside French borders his name hasn't always resonated as much as some of his illustrious colleagues, past and present. He broke through in 1965 with the ballad “Aline”, still one of the ten best-selling singles ever in France. At this stage his music was heavily influenced by the yé-yé movement, a branch of French pop dating back to the early Sixties, influenced by rock'n'roll but with a decidedly lighter approach than its American counterpart. France Gall, Françoise Hardy, Sylvie Vartan and Brigitte Bardot are just some of the movement's most successful exponents; artists of the caliber of Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Dutronc instead made decisive contributions as songwriters behind the scenes. After the smash success of “Aline”, Christophe's career as a musician seemed to stall due to his passion for cars, which led him to attempt a career as a racing driver. After that attempt failed, he returned to music in 1970, and from there began the new phase of his career, this time with a less commercial approach.

“Les mots bleus”, released in 1974, is the second studio album of this new phase (the fourth if you count the soundtrack to the film “La route de Salina” and a singles compilation). It was produced by Francis Dreyfus, one of the most important producers in the history of French music: he would go on to launch Bernard Lavilliers, collaborate with Alain Bashung, and organize all of Jean-Michel Jarre's landmark concerts. Jarre himself, still unknown at the time, wrote the album's lyrics, as he had already done on the previous “Les Paradis perdus” (1973). All the music was composed by Christophe, who also plays the Eminent 310 electric organ and harmonica.

The album opens with “Le dernier des Bevilacquas” and its sprawling instrumental intro, running over three and a half minutes, following the progressive rock practice of pushing past the boundaries of standard song form. The keyboard-driven nature of the whole track is immediately obvious: piano and synthesizers take center stage. The synths in particular stage a kind of synthetic orchestral accompaniment, simulating strings that first back the piano arpeggios with long sustained notes, then punctuate the arrangement with the melodic phrase that begins at 0:35. The keyboards on the track are played by Dominique Perrier, who also arranged it: it's on this very album that his path crossed with Jarre's, with whom he would become a close collaborator for decades to come. You can also pick out the bowed double bass, as well as the doubled lead vocal intoning a wordless melody, before drums, bass and guitar come in, the climax of the long building tension. When Christophe finally enters, the song changes profoundly: after the long, dramatic minor-key introduction, “Le dernier des Bevilacquas” turns into an uptempo major-key number, a symphonic rock'n'roll narrating the exploits of the last of the Bevilacquas. It's a kind of fictionalized autobiography of Christophe, in which reality and fantasy constantly blend together. Like him, the song's protagonist has a passion for engines (“I took my Vespa, went straight, always straight ahead”, “Long is the road that leads to supreme irony driving my car of the future, cut Pininfarina-style”), got caught up in gambling (“So for dinner, sometimes, I bet on something. It all came down to a pair of kings for the last of the Bevilacquas”), made his fortune through music, and has now reached human and artistic maturity (“I'm almost thirty, now I make the music I love and I'll stay true to myself”). The songwriter then pays tribute to his own origins by singing the final lines in Italian (admittedly without showing much fluency); it should however be pointed out that he himself didn't grow up in Rome and never ran away from home, unlike the character described in these lyrics. Various digressions and arrangement flourishes seal this hybrid of chanson and progressive pop.

The title track, on the other hand, is a leaden, synthetic ballad. Although the bass notes are played on an electric bass, the songwriting seems to betray an underlying composition conceived primarily at the piano. This is especially clear in the B/C# chord ('B over C sharp'), where a B major chord is played “over” the C sharp note. Chords of this kind are usually rendered more naturally by an instrument like the piano, or any keyed instrument, than by, say, a guitar.

Beyond the individual chords, the verse of “Les Mots Bleus” seems to hint at a piece fairly straightforwardly rooted in D flat minor; in reality, the strategic use of the E flat major chord also brings in the natural G note, rather than the G flat one might have expected. This suggests either a key change toward A flat minor or, seen from another angle, a composition built entirely around that latter key.

The pervasive use of synthesizers of various kinds (particularly notable are the splendid, vocal-toned pads that permeate the choruses) will, paradoxically, point the way for Jean-Michel Jarre, who is indeed involved in the song, but not as composer or arranger — rather, as the author of the lyrics.

This is a love song shot through with desire and cinematic breadth, sung with great passion by the angelic, unblemished voice of Christophe: 

The church bell tower strikes six,

in the square the flowers turn into poetry,

a girl is about to leave the town hall.

As every evening I wait for her,

she smiles at me,

I have to talk to her, whatever it takes.

I'll tell her the blue words,

the words we say with our eyes.

Speaking seems ridiculous to me,

I step forward but then retreat,

faced with some pointless phrase

that would shatter the fragile moment of an encounter.

I'll tell her the blue words,

the ones that make people happy.

If these are the two most striking songs on the album from a lyrical and musical standpoint, the rest of the tracklist is far from mere filler—in fact, it stands as evidence of an approach that is both eclectic and so attuned to catching the new trends in world music as to be genuinely ahead of its time. Take, for example, "Señorita", "C'est la Question" and "La Mélodie": all three show varying degrees of kinship with the most advanced forms of art and glam rock of the era. In the first, string flourishes and sudden bursts of electric guitar typical of certain glam sounds find room among folk guitar arpeggios and the almost samba-rock feel of the choruses.

"C'est la question" might lead you to expect classic boogie rock: the blues rock riff is played on an electric guitar with a particularly crunchy tone, with drums, bass and piano rounding out the instrumental framework. After the second chorus, however, the song takes an unexpected turn: the beat slows down drastically and the time signature shifts from 4/4 to 3/4, alternating with bars of 5/4 (or 3+2, depending on how you prefer to count it). For about a minute, the length of this section, the guitar disappears, only to return and lead the track through the following verse and the instrumental coda.

Glam rock with abrasive guitars—though never pushed excessively "forward" in the mix—strong cabaret overtones, and vocals delivered in an operatic falsetto: these are the elements that have always set Sparks' music apart, and for which the Mael brothers have earned decades of praise from critics and fans alike. Well, in the very same year as "Kimono My House", "La mélodie" employed all of those same elements, effortlessly recontextualizing them within the tradition of French song, allowing Christophe to soar his voice to heights unthinkable for most male vocal cords. "Le petit gars" even anticipates, by a couple of years, certain atmospheres of "Low": there are German-style monophonic synthesizers, martial yet non-synthetic drums, unconventional melodic writing, and piano and electric guitars steeped in chromaticism and dissonance.

A cinematic-sounding Mellotron runs through the mournful ballad "Drôle de vie", slow-paced and staging yet another heartfelt performance from the singer-songwriter, while the brief instrumental sketch "Souvenirs" closes the album with a reminiscence of classical music with a symphonic flavor (though this is not a reworking: the music here, too, is Christophe's own composition).

Despite the classic status it has since achieved, the album sold around 125,000 copies, and the 45rpm single of the title track sold 220,000: more than satisfying figures, but not the triumphant numbers one might expect.

If "Les mots bleus" is one of the most famous French songs of all time today, that's partly thanks to the countless covers and reinterpretations that have paid tribute to it. Among the most notable are those by Alain Bashung (1992), Thierry Amiel (2003) and Johan Papaconstantino (2019). The song has become so significant that it's turned into something of a standard for French talent show auditions.

After this album, Christophe became one of the most emblematic names in French songwriting, remaining so for the rest of his career. He died on April 16, 2020, at the age of seventy-four, from complications related to Covid-19.

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24/12/2023