Pagliaro: new albums coming
Rocker opens Bell Centre show for Offenbach, April Wine
By Craig McKee, The Suburban, March 29, 2005

He calls himself the tortoise.

And his fans would have a hard time disagreeing.

Michel Pagliaro, whose biggest French hits have included J'entends frapper, Les Bombes, and Dangereux, has released very little new material in the last two decades but that doesn't mean he isn't creating.

"People don't see you on TV, and they figure you're not doing anything," he said in an interview last week from his east end studio.

Pagliaro, who opens at the Bell Centre on Friday night for Offenbach and April Wine, now sports a grey beard that could keep him from being recognized on the street.

But Pagliaro has never cared about having a familiar face or doing what's expected by the industry or fans. He says he really doesn't care whether he has commercial success or not. The decisions he makes are creative ones, not because he wants to have a hit record.

"I don't feel weird about the way my career has gone," he says. "It could have been different, but it's not."

In fact, the Quebec rock legend says he's "very close" to finishing his first studio album in many years. Pagliaro says he has been working on the French album for several years, but is convinced it'll be worth it.

"I enjoy the process of finishing my monster puzzle," he says of the album. "And when it comes to fruition, I'll say 'Okay, now it's time to move on to something else.'"

And more importantly for Pag's English fans is that he's also got new English material on the way, stuff he said was originally intended for other projects that for one reason or another never got completed.

"And this material recorded for these other projects is really, really good."

The man who hit it big across Canada in the '70s with hits like Some Sing, Some Dance; Rainshowers; What the Hell I Got; and Loving You Ain't Easy hasn't released an English studio album in almost 30 years. He says that's the result of "a succession of disappointments" on the business side of things.

"But it never dimmed my desire to keep creating in English, which I've been doing," he says.

And making music is what it's all about for the veteran rocker. He says predictability is what happens when an artist's priority is their career.
"It's not a career for me; it's a life, it's a passion."