I cover myself in napalm so I can burn like a bomb /
And go up in flames in front of the crowd – I want gas

On the lips of another rocker, this kind of lyrics might sound tacky or over the edge, or meant to create an aura of toughness and bravado that has nothing to do with real life. Éric Lapointe, a transparent artist singing without shame, embarrassment or filters of any kind, doesn’t need that, and fans listening to Jour et nuit (Day and Night), his latest album, already know that its excessive lyrics reflect the excesses of a rock ‘n’ roll life well lived.

Broadly exposed in the popular entertainment media and through such soul-baring earlier albums as Obsession, Invitez les vautours (Let the Vultures In), Coupable (Guilty) or Le Ciel de mes combats (My Demons’ Heaven), Lapointe’s personal life is no longer big news.

“There were times when I thought that being such an open book was not serving me, but in the end it’s proven to be the right thing,” he says. “People are well aware of my dark side. I’ve never hidden anything. So, if I ever find myself on the front page of the newspapers for something other than my music, well, nobody’s going to fall off their chairs. I am who I am. What you see is what you get.”

Should we, however, be concerned about Éric Lapointe’s future? His loved ones might, but his fans definitely shouldn’t. Artists going through long troubled periods tend to be treated as outcasts, existing in their own bubbles, but their life experience is too rich and too precious to be discarded off the bat. Lapointe belongs in that category with Quebec singer Jean Leloup, another mythical character with irreplaceable life experience.

“People started seeing me in a certain way because of my self-admitted alcoholism,”

“The thing is that, at some point, people started seeing me in a certain way, mostly because of my self-admitted alcoholism,” says Lapointe. “Sometimes, the myth becomes larger than life. At other times, the reality is even worse. I can only blame myself for that image I created by spelling my problems out in my songs. Everything I put in there is something I’ve gone through. That’s why I can identify with Roger Tabra, with whom I write many of my lyrics. We share the same lifestyle. I could never sing a lyric that wasn’t patterned after the way I live.”

In May 2014, Lapointe’s first album, Obsession, will have been out 20 years, and the artist will have been working with the same creative team (French-born lyricist Roger Tabra and guitarist Stéphane Dufour) for two full decades. “You don’t mess around with a winning team,” Lapointe insists, recalling how his first collaboration with Tabra came about. “I had completed all the lyrics for Obsession, but I still needed that one ballad. I had just broken up with the Marie-Pierre portrayed in ‘Marie Stone,’ and I was still too messed up to write it down – it was just not going to happen. Tabra came over my house for a ketchup spaghetti dinner and said to me, ‘OK, you and I are going to write this sucker. What is it you want that woman to know?’ I said, ‘How would I know? Anything!’ Without missing a beat, Tabra looked me and said, ‘That’s our title right there!’ The rest of the song was written in a matter of a few hours.”

Stéphane Dufour, whom Aldo Nova brought in towards the end of the studio recording sessions for Obsession, and who has produced Lapointe’s latest albums, also is an indelible part of the rock musician’s creative signature. “He produces and arranges all my songs. We’re so used to working together that we don’t even have to speak any more. We just look at each other and know exactly what’s going on. It’s a cosmic relationship,” Lapointe says. “If there is such a thing as inspiration after all, it can’t be striking if you’re not working.”

This, for Lapointe, usually happens in the middle of the night, as it did for his most recent album. “I don’t know why, but my brain seems to be working better then,” he says. “Maybe it’s because I sometimes find myself alone, and that thought frightens me. But I never feel alone with a guitar or a piano. Anyway, my studio is in the basement of the house, and it’s always dark like a son of a bitch down there at any time of the day or night. When we recorded Jour et nuit, the only way I could tell the time was when I could hear my kids’ footsteps overhead.”

So even as a dad, a rocker’s life is a rocker’s life.