Three years after his death, an ultimate live album by Jean-Louis Murat revives memories of his final performances.
Three years already since Jean-Louis Murat left us abruptly, on a somber morning of May 25, 2023. A week earlier, the Auvergnat singer delivered in Tulle (Corrèze) the very last concert of the tour he had begun the year before. We still recall our last conversation, a Saturday evening in November 2022 in the backstage at La Marbrerie in Montreuil, after a magnetic trio performance with Fred Jimenez on bass and Yann Clavaizolle on drums.
That evening, as at the Trianon a few months earlier, Murat sang the unreleased track Hello You without imagining that its lyrics would take on a prophetic shade six months later: “Where are you hidden?/ But where is he?/ But where is he?” A poignant song that stands among the fourteen captured during this final Murat tour and gathered in this Tour de France 2022, directed by the faithful accomplice Denis Clavaizolle. Who recalls: “Today, among the strong images that remain with me, beyond the onstage complicity that radiated with or without me, I hold dearly in memory his immense smile when Jean-Louis confided to me: ‘We could call this record Tour de France 2022, in homage to cycling’ – and I know that idea meant a lot to him, as he adored cycling and every summer he would take Gaspard, Justine, and Laure to attend a stage, even if there were miles to travel.”
The Auvergne-born musician did nothing like anyone else
As Laure Desbruères writes, his final wife and mother of Justine and Gaspard Bergheaud, in a beautiful yet heartrending Instagram post, “When I met you in 1994, you told me: ‘I will not go back on stage, that does not interest me.’ You emerged drained from the Venus tour… Almost thirty years of collaboration later, you told me: ‘I make records to go on stage!’ … Today your Tour de France 2022 is out, you would be happy!” For this ultimate live recording, just like Live (1995), Live In Dolorès (1998), Muragostang (2000) and Innamorato (2019), once again proves that the Auvergne-born singer and musician did nothing like anyone else, especially on stage, transforming his songs as he pleased: “Each his own way/ Each in his infinity/ To tell yourself one day that it’s finished.”
Editor’s note originally published in the Musiques newsletter on May 29, 2026. To subscribe free to the Inrocks newsletters, it’s here!
