Founded in 1996 as a structure generally devoted to songs within the record major Warner Music, the phonographic company Tôt ou Tard, which became independent in the mid-2000s, had planned to celebrate its twenty-five years of existence in 2021 , by a film and a compilation. If the disc, which brings together previously unreleased covers of songs from artists in the catalog by others from the house, was published in early November 2021, the film was finalized later.
“We filmed after the Covid-19 health crisis. We had to bring together teams, it took time, and so did the assembly…” Vincent Frèrebeau, founder and “boss” of Tôt ou Tard, explained to us. So here, out of step with his birthday desire, Tôt ou Tard, the beautiful story, by Benoit Toulemonde and Didier Varrod, cut into three episodes of around thirty minutes each, and broadcast on the record company’s YouTube account . Among the speakers: Yael Naim, Clou, Dick Annegarn, Vincent Delerm, Vianney, Mathieu Boogaerts, the duo Cats on Trees, the group Shaka Ponk, Thomas Fersen…
Enthusiasm intact
For interviews with Vincent Frèrebeau, we are in the Paris offices of Tôt ou Tard. Didier Varrod, journalist and musical director of the Radio France branches, questions him, not in the usual face-to-face manner – as he does during other exchanges with artists from the label – but here, everyone is on a chair back-to-back. Original visual effect for these conversations with, at times, close-ups of Frèrebeau, whose sparkling gaze is the sign of intact enthusiasm, even after years and years of activity, talking about music, about “family ” Sooner or later. There is something like the idea of a common home there.
For the sequences with the artists, the basements of the phonographic company serve as a setting. With the same choice as for the album of covers of songs from others. The camera moves slowly in a forward or backward tracking shot, panning, taking the time to stop on the hands of the instrumentalists or a look. Quite the opposite of the hysteria of successions of shots lasting a few seconds in most music shows. A respect for the music and its performers.
If the three films can be watched independently of each other, a sort of chronology nevertheless emerges. The beginnings, with Dick Annegarn, one of the first to join the house, in 1997, always faithful, Jacques Higelin (1940-2018), who will be at the origin of the name of the label, the approaches towards music other than the song, to which Tôt ou Tard is often brought back (pop, rap, rock, etc.), the moments of doubt and the successes of Vincent Delerm, Yael Naim or Vianney which come at the right time, when finances are at their lowest .
And then there is the emotion of the memory of the singer Lhasa (1972-2010), in the voice of Vincent Frèrebeau. And that of the images and songs of Yael Naim, Camélia Jordana and Nolwenn Leroy performing When we only have love, by Jacques Brel, on November 27, 2015, during the national tribute to the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis.