Robbie Williams for his first Parisian festival, Emmanuel Macron translator for Bono (U2), the patrol of France: the Solidays festival celebrates its 25th anniversary this week, so many “moments of truth” and anecdotes for Luc Barruet, boss of the ‘event.
Solidays, from Friday to Sunday, is used to finance the Solidarité Sida association and its international aid programs for HIV patients. Angèle, the favorite Belgian of the French, or even J Balvin, mega star of reggaeton, are among the headliners.
In 1992, at the time of creating Solidarité Sida, a media honorary president was needed, “navigating in the music for the festival, credible, with a real rating of sympathy”, tells AFP Luc Barruet. In his viewfinder, Antoine de Caunes, star host of Canal at the time.
After two months of phone calls to assistants, Barruet, then a student, is not moving forward. “I’m fed up, one morning I arrive at the Canal headquarters with a bouquet of flowers, supposedly ’to give him in person'”. Paid strategy.
Except that Antoine de Caunes, too monopolized by TV, is not present enough the first year. Mandated by the other members of Solidarité Sida, Luc Barruet must speak to him. “It’s a moment of truth, I lower my head stirring my coffee to tell him, he replies ‘you’re right Barruet, what can I do to make it better?’ Since then, Antoine has been loyal to the post.
Then you need support in the music industry for the festival. “We had a meeting with three of the biggest French producers and Jean-Jacques Goldman, who told me ‘no, Luc, a festival in Paris, it won’t work, but we can find something else'”.
“It’s another moment of truth, when I say, having never done anything in the festival world, ‘sorry I don’t agree with you’”. “Often, the reasonable compromise wins because there are many more reasons not to do than to do, but you have to know how to be unreasonable”. Jean-Jacques Goldman took part in the first edition of Solidays in 1999 and told Luc Barruet: “You were right not to listen to us”. In 2022, Solidays broke its attendance record with more than 247,000 festival-goers.
In addition to Goldman, Solidays hits hard for its first year with The Corrs, an Irish band in the charts at the time, the myth Iggy Pop and Robbie Williams for its first solo Parisian festival since breaking away from the boy band Take That. “Robbie Williams had said ‘Solidays, I want to do it’, well, not to me, because I don’t speak English”, confesses Luc Barruet.
How, then, to make the VRP of its structures with international stars? The manager has resources. Example at the refinancing conference of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Lyon in 2019. “I asked President Emmanuel Macron if he could help me and he did the article with Bono, he was super good from what I understood.
Emmanuel Macron has never come to Solidays, unlike François Hollande, the only President of the Republic in office to have done so. “It seems obvious that the current president is doing the agricultural show or Le Bourget, but not Solidays, it bothers me on the merits”, regrets Luc Barruet.
Who can boast, on the other hand, of having obtained the passage of the Patrouille de France in the sky of its festival in 2019? The pilots even drew the red ribbon in the air, a symbol of the fight against AIDS. “I didn’t think it would make such an impression, but for the festival volunteers, it was recognition of their work,” concludes Luc Barruet.
