Patrick Coutin: The Way of Independence - Rolling Stone
What was it, exactly?Variety?Rock garage?A PRE-PRE-PULK manifesto?In 1981, an UFO song tumbled to the waves of the fresh free radios.Something that always sticks to the body and the heart, almost forty years later, called "I like to watch the girls".Responsible, named Patrick Coutin, Inveterate Glob-Trotter, Libertarian sixty-eight and rock-criticism in his spare time, suddenly powered at the top of the Hit-Parades of the time and became a star of nightclubs and campsites.All this for a frustration song, recorded in the middle of August, in confinement in the studio of Hérouville while everyone was overwhelmed on the beaches.
As he tells, "I took a long time to recover.Suddenly, I became someone else, I earned money, I was courted, I was invited everywhere.It quickly became too heavy to wear, especially since I had never dreamed of becoming a star of French variety."Instead of contenting himself with continuously continuing to watch the Bathers' approach, Coutin chose another path: that of independence, of the adventure, in short, of freedom.Today, here he is a dozen albums, the last three of which are also published in the form of a luxurious box, entitled Coutin Paradise and illustrated by designers like Liberatore, Di Rosa and Gilbert Shelton.
Virée californienne
His thing has always been rock.That of the Stones and Doors, his two favorite groups, without forgetting Bob Dylan and Neil Young, even if the first 45-tours he bought was "retain at night" by Johnny.A native of Sfax, Tunisia, a Vendée military father and an Italian mother, raised in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, it is in Paris that he becomes a philosophy student, literature and plastic arts, in aSorbonne occupied by the demonstrators of May 68.
Marx, Marcuse, Mao, same fight, but it is under the aegis of another mentor that he begins to frequent a certain Parisian intelligentsia refugee in the dome: the novelist and poet Daniel Théron, alias Jack-Alain Léger, alias Dashiell Hedayat, author of the cult album obsolete with the Gong group, brings him together Andy Warhol and also introduces him to the Beat Generation, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs and others.Coutin will even attend the French translation in whimsical cut up of the Tarantula de Dylan, signed by Théron and published by Bourgois.But it is a concert of the Grateful Dead, in Pontoise, which will make him want to go and see elsewhere how vibrates music vibrates.Here he arrives in San Francisco with guitar and backpack.He will stay two years in California, exercising various odd jobs, including, had to invent, guitarist accompanying a belly dancer.
Rentré en France, le voilà qui devient journaliste pour le magazine Rock&Folk : “J’ai sonné à la porte, j’ai prétendu que j’avais déjà écrit des articles pour la free presse américaine et ça a démarré comme ça.I even became the specialist in Baba Cool music: my first published paper spoke of Genesis… »»
La musique dans la peau
No wonder the rock group he founded then is called reporter.Between two concerts at Gibus, through Laurent Thibaut, sound engineer in the legendary studios of Hérouville, the group takes advantage of a hole in the schedule to record their first album in the summer of 1980.With an added song at the last moment, the story of a guy who spies on the gonzesses in a swimsuit.It is only a year later, that the title in question will be successful, with a million copies sold.History could have stopped there, like that of so many singers authors of a single tube before disappearing in collective forgetting.
Except that Patrick Coutin now has music in the skin.He who dreamed of becoming a film director and who had bought his first guitar for the beautiful eyes of a girl, becomes adventurer adventurer of the twelve measures.Whether he creates a musical structure in Bobigny or produces Dick Rivers or the Wampas in Austin (in the studios of Willie Nelson!), It is always with the same passion.Same for Star 80, the tour of the ex-idols, which he frequented for four years before throwing in the towel: “Singing in front of 5,000 people in full live, it taught me a form of rigor, me who was aLittle messy, if only not to happen on a drunk stage ... And then it made me rather humble in front of an audience that was not necessarily mine, it opened my mind.»»
Parmi les trois disques inédits qu’il publie simultanément, à côté d’un album en anglais et d’un autre en français, Patrick Coutin s’est amusé à reprendre quelques chansons qui ont marqué sa vie, de “Light My Fire»» à “Osez Joséphine»», en passant par “Like a Rolling Stone»» et “La musique que j’aime»».We find his game of guitar with a raucical fluid and his voice of a serious crooner that a Johnny Cash would not deny.With, always, this same scent of freedom that accompanies it: "One day I understood that it would be complicated to do exactly what I wanted while having interest in a major of the disc.A contract is often for me synonymous with suffering.I try to live music as Mallarmé to experience poetry.He was a teacher, I could have been consul in a banana republic and continue to compose.What I like is getting up in the morning and working on a song being written, it remains a limitless pleasure.»»
Regardez le nouveau clip de Coutin pour le titre «Pas très loin de minuit»» :
All the news of Patrick Coutin to find SUMER official site.Listen to Coutin Paradise.
Electric paradise available on all platforms.
Patrick Coutin will be in concert on September 25 at La Maroquinerie (Paris).Buy your places here.No more dates to come for 2022…
Interview by Philippe Barbot
