Jean-Louis Murat was still in concert on March 31 in Clermont-Ferrand in his native Auvergne which was so important to him. And he was still on stage last Friday, in Tulle (Corrèze). The artist died at the age of 71, learned the JDD Thursday. He leaves behind him a protean and poetic work.
National Auvergne
Born in La Bourboule in 1952, Jean-Louis Murat began in the ephemeral group Clara and had his first success in 1981, with Kill yourself, the people are dead. He returned five years later with private passions Then Cheyenne Autumn whose title If I should miss you allowed him to find success. Another success, critical and public: the duo Sorry, sang with Mylène Farmer in 1991.
At the end of the 1990s, Jean-Louis Murat became the national Auvergnat dear to critics, with the albums mustango (1999), The Mouzhik and his Wife (2002) and Lilith (2003). He imprints on it his very particular musical style, between rock and new wave, and his poetic texts.
Prolific and uncompromising
He then chained the opuses at a frantic pace – almost one a year, each time followed by a tour. He multiplies the experiences: he thus tries his hand at pop with A Bird on a Pear (2004), covers songs by Léo Ferré and poems by Charles Baudelaire – on Charles and Leo (2007) –, returns to the roots of rock by recording The Ordinary Course of Things (2009) in Nashville, or invites folk into his Auvergne universe with babel (2014).
” For me, releasing two albums a year is normal, he confided in 2007 in an interview with the JDD. But the business is not following suit. Yet this is the pace of work in force in the years 1960-1970. »
Over the years and by dint of inventions, Jean-Louis Murat thus influenced a whole generation of French artists. He writes for some of them, whether they are famous like Françoise Hardy and Isabelle Boulay, or beginners (Matt Low, Morgane Imbeaud…). He had his greatest success with A monkey in winter, composed for Indochina.
