On stage, Marjo, confidently free, never thinks about what she might look like. “Well no! she calls. I wouldn’t live if I had to be aware of how to behave well. When we sing, we release things that we have taken inside. That’s singing: giving, giving, giving, to the fullest. Until exhaustion. ” Story of the legendary rocker’s passage at the microphone of our journalist Dominic Tardif’s podcast, Will you become what you wanted?.
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Marjo takes off her cleats and slips into her chic high-heeled ankle boots, which are worthy of a gala. Did you know that this interview will not be filmed? that I ask him. “Yes, but did you think I would do the interview in stockings?” ‘ she replies tit for tat, with her big, mocking smile.
Marjo, always performing, even when there’s no camera? The paradox that shapes the explosive 69-year-old woman, with an exuberance that doesn’t diminish with the years, stems largely from her inability to act as if life were a stage. In this respect, the stage is the place of the search for truth for them. Performing doesn’t mean putting on a mask, on the contrary.
Marjolaine Morin will therefore answer all my questions with the intensity of a person who refuses to pretend and who would rather learn about others than talk about their past. One of the first things she’ll do when she arrives at the studio is check on my family. “Do you have pictures of your daughter?” »
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
marjo
On the set of The Voice, don’t look for her in her dressing room between takes. You’re more likely to find her in the makeup room or elsewhere chatting with a member of the tech team. She has already been offered twice to take on this coaching role, which she has been doing for a few weeks.
And if she agreed this time, it was less to give singing tips than to convey her idea of the stage. “During a show, I reach out to the audience and look them in the eye. If I’m not quite there, I have no business there. And I have something to do: I’m here to give you a little confidence, a little hope, a little juice to carry on. »
The music lived in it
There is a parallel world where Marjolaine Morin, rather than becoming the biggest rocker in Quebec, would have lived the orderly life of a secretary, a job she trained for. Born in Rosemont, raised in North Montreal, at her heart her childhood furnishings are not concrete but mountains, those of the family chalet her father built somewhere between Rawdon and Chertsey.
PHOTO JEAN-MARIE VILLENEUVE, LE SOLEIL ARCHIVE
Marjo and Corbeau at the 1983 Quebec Summer Festival
“And next to us was the Lang family,” she recalls. Everyone played guitar. And the eldest, June, sang so well. Where do you think I went when I heard guitar? I wanted to go there. Fascinated. However, she will never confide in anyone her desire to make music herself.
I have inwardly and secretly nurtured the taste for singing. It remained a long, long mystery until it happened. I’ve always believed in life. I never pushed anything.
marjo
His big sister Carole, who is visiting photographer Daniel Poulin, one day offers to pose for him. “Obviously it was more fun walking in front of a Kodak than standing behind a typist. Wasn’t she intimidated by the device? But what a question! Marjo, intimidated? “Ha? she calls. “Well no, well no. No way. »
Her first modeling contracts soon lead her to another photographer, Pierre Dury, who becomes her boyfriend (“He courted me for two years!”) and remains one of her best friends. His home at 1620 Avenue des Pins was Montreal’s second cultural salon at the time. One fine evening, as he passes by, songwriter François Guy tells Dury that he’s working on a musical and that he’s looking for new talent.
“Pierre said to her, ‘Go to Jojo, she’s upstairs in our room.’ François came with his guitar, played me two tunes and I got in. In All hot, all show (1975) and then L’île en ville (1978) she felt for the first time, late (she was in her early twenties), the Intoxication of singing in front of people and not only in her dreams. “My body moved well, I was fine. The music lived in me, it seems. »
To stop falling
La Marjo de Corbeau, the group of Pierre Harel she joined in 1978, was a little more shy at first, she recalls, than the cheerful risk-taker she would morph into. risk everything? In 2016, Marjo had her left knee replaced, plagued by countless shocks, including a legendary fall at the Jonquière en musique festival in 2007, immortalized on the internet.
She took part in a show at the Casino de Montréal with Guylaine Tanguay and Maxime Landry just before Christmas. “I looked after them and said, ‘My God, they’re a long way from the edge of the stage. They sang four, five feet from the edge.” And I understood, “Ah, that must be why I keep falling. I sing on the edge, on the edge, on the edge.” »
The veteran now has the wisdom to request that fluorescent tape be placed on the floor so she knows where the void begins. “Because otherwise I’ll fall back into the hole. »
PHOTO BERNARD BRAULT, PRESS ARCHIVE
Marjo, November 11, 1986
Up to 100 years
When Marjo is no longer happy, Marjo leaves. That’s what happened after the release of the album Visionnaire in 1983. Tired of the booze and touring life, she sent her then-boyfriend, guitarist Jean Millaire, to tell the other guys Crow that she was quitting the group.
If I don’t like a place, if I’m not feeling well, I leave, I don’t stay, I can’t stand it.
marjo
Music was over for her then, she swears it 30 years later, which still seems unimaginable. A world without wildcats? Without provocation? Impossible ! But music will inevitably catch up to her as she is at the heart of her relationship with Jean Millaire, her creative partner – Marjo signs the lyrics and co-signs the music for most of her hits.
PHOTO ROBERT MAILLOUX, PRESS ARCHIVE
Marjo, August 31, 1990
Above all, alcohol and drugs will catch up with them. “That’s why I lost my boyfriend,” she confides in Millaire. “He was a quiet gentleman, I was a tanning woman. She fled to Charlevoix in the late 1990s, into her own rehab. “I had to take a deep breath and become Marjolaine Morin again, break my bad habits. »
Although she never left the stage, her last album, Turquoise, dates back to a very, very long time: 2005. Her reunion with Jean Millaire, filmed by the great Télé Québec show Amoureuse, will have ended in failure work session. “Me, it takes love from me. If I don’t have love, it doesn’t work. I would have to fall in love with a musician. »
But it would be sad if there were never any new Marjo songs, get it? ” I know ! But I have hope. Hope is part of my life. »
The good news? Marjo has a lot of time ahead of her. At 95, her mother “still has everything in her head”. “She’s someone to watch. I look at her and I’m like, ‘Here you go, Jojo. You too will be 100 years old.” »