GREAT MAINTENANCE. “I’m drowning in work”: very affected by the death of his wife, Pierre Perret revives his Mémé Anna in a book and is preparing a new album

We find him in a Parisian hotel, near the Maison de la Radio, where he has just recorded a show. Twenty years have passed since our first meeting for the filming of a report for the magazine Envoyé Special, on France 2. A few wrinkles have appeared on his face. A veil of sadness too. But Pierre Perret always kept that bratty face that his friend Bernard Pivot liked so much. That of a little country boy, born during the summer of 1934 in Castelsarrasin, and whom he remembered to write the third part of his memoirs: Mémé Anna (Mareuil Éditions).
His wife, whom he named Rebecca, died at age 88 last January, following a terrible fall down the marble staircase of a Parisian hotel where they had just had lunch. Despite the infinite pain and pain of having lost his soul mate, the author of Lily and Nice summer camps continues to promote the book, in Paris and in the region. He also writes new songs.

Franceinfo Culture: How are you Pierre?
Pierre Perret : I make it go. I’m going because it’s not easy. I’m drowning in work. I started another book and just finished a bunch of songs. I have a dozen that will be the subject of an album that I have been working on for a little over three years. I’m glad to have finished because it was starting to get heavy to always question everything, forty, fifty times… But since I’ve done that all my life, I’m not going to stop halfway, you see.

This perfectionism in writing, hasn’t that changed?
No. There are songs that I must have started 4 or 5 years ago. It’s wildly eclectic. The songs are polar opposites of each other. There are lots of current topics, themes that are so prevalent today. Racism, once again, anti-Semitism, the ecologists who are having a bit of a blast… There is everything that surrounds us today. The same intolerance, stupidity, war. It’s quite common for me. It’s my Don Quixote side, I can’t help it.

Did Rebecca’s sudden death change anything in your way of writing and living?
No. This further strengthened my requirement. I have never tightened the screws like today in writing and I try to abstract myself… [Il s’interrompt longuement]. A daily life renewed for almost 70 years, you can’t erase that, so the best thing is to try to avoid ruminating.

Rebecca didn’t hesitate to tell you what she really thought of your songs?
Absolutely and often she encouraged me to go through with some of which I wondered if there was any point in doing them. She didn’t hesitate to yell at me to go through with it because uncertainty has always been very significant for me. I was happy to have an opinion because there is no more solitude than in writing. Whether you write a book or you write a song, you are alone. The word too many, the note too many or the missing note… it’s eternally questioned for me and it’s been the problem of my whole life to know how far to go and how far not to go. Rebecca knew I wouldn’t give up. She told me: “When you pick up the pen you know when it starts and never when it will stop, you’re a real morbac” It’s true that once I’ve started a song, I have to get the hang of it, no matter how long it takes me.

When will this new album be released?
I hope to record it by the end of the summer. I saw the little guy who will do the arrangements and I talked to him a lot about the atmosphere but I want to give him some models that I will make. If I am lucky, normally, it should see the light of day in October-November. For the end of the year.

Let’s come to the book “Mémé Anna”. In the cinema, we would speak of a prequel, because from a chronological point of view, it arrives before Le Café du Pont et A cappellathe first two parts of your memoirs.
Oui, I put the cart before the horse. It was really the one that had to be written first but it came at the end. All the little streams that fed the big river, they came from there. Even, she opened up so many little streams in my life. There are an infinity of characters feminine in my texts which come from her, which result from everything she brought me, from everything I saw without saying anything but which I kept in a corner of my head.

Did you do specific research or just use your elephant memory?
I knew her for almost 25 years, you see, because she raised me, she took me everywhere. Mom was happy to be rid of me on the days when there were press hits at the café [ses parents tenaient le Café du Pont à Castelsarrasin]. She couldn’t take care of me too much so Grandma put down her apron and took me away. In the end, I had a lot more intimacy with her than with my mother. There are so many things that struck me and that can be found in the book. What escaped me, I gathered from the grandchildren who had also known her, to see how she had continued to be with them. And it’s funny because I’m going to go to Castelsarrasin in July for a signing and I’m going to meet little Michel, André Ehanno’s son, who left for the maquis with his brother Félix, at 17-18 years old. when the Germans arrived in 1942. I talk about him in the book. He married Marthou, mom’s sister who served at the café. Their son is still there. I called him yesterday and he said to me: “Above all, you don’t go to the hotel. I’m here with the car, I’ll take you wherever you want. You come, you sleep at home, you have your room“. I saw him born and we often talked about Mémé with him. She loved the company of children and took care of them when I took off. It helped me to plug a few holes.

What makes Mémé Anna’s destiny extraordinary in your eyes?
I don’t know many women who have lived their lives having the same problems as she did. She was found on the salt floor of a butcher in Montauban, abandoned with a pin and a small paper on which was written: My name is Anna, I am nobody’s daughter. When you arrive in life like that, you don’t arrive through the front door.

She was beaten like a plaster cast by the man she had fallen in love with at a ball but on several occasions, despite the beatings, she returned to live with him. They had four children. Can you explain it to yourself?
It is the unfathomable mystery of an attachment. Why, in these conditions, have the weakness to come back and continue? Why not have the courage to take your children under your arm and get the hell out?

This man steals the little money she earns and does not marry her. Their children, Blanche, Pierrot, Marthou and Claudia, your mother, bear her name, Fauré.
Yes, she did not want to declare them in his name. She didn’t beat them, far from it, but she had a special way of loving them. She was hard on some people. Tender with her son Pierrot, with Marthou, the youngest, but with mother and Blanche, she was not very cuddly. Their life was hard.

On the other hand, she was very affectionate with you.
So . She was with me in a way she wasn’t with her children. Maybe due to lack of time, because the whole period I talk about in the book is survival. She was fighting to survive. His character has softened over time.

Grâce à vous ?
I wouldn’t make that claim but she was very happy when she was with me. At the café, she was quite affable with the customers even if she didn’t play the polka! Once, the man she called “the guy” came back and a client who was bigger than him made him fold. He was permanently banned from staying. Afterwards, she didn’t see him again and she began to truly live.

Lily, Malika, Battered womenall your songs on the condition of women, did you write them with her in mind?
There’s a little piece of her in each of these songs. In all these characters you just told me about, there are little pieces of her.

“It’s easier to write a book than a song.”

Pierre Perret

Franceinfo Culture

Did she always speak to you in patois?
Less towards the end but still a little nonetheless. I was his Pierril. In patois, she said “my son”. It was his first language. She didn’t have a mother or father and no one sent her to school so she did what she could. She was placed very young, notably with Doctor Lacassagne. He and his wife tried to teach him. Later, at the café where she was a waitress, she improved. I always spoke to her in French even if I understood everything she said in patois. She remained so present in my memory. It wasn’t easy to write this book because writing a book is never easy. You have to make a plan, know where you’re going, not be redundant or stingy with descriptions. It’s a balance to find, like a song, but it’s easier to write a book than a song. Because in a song, you have to say everything in three minutes. And nicely.

What was the most important thing that Mémé Anna passed on to you?
To have the courage to be yourself. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s very important to respect this value that we have within ourselves and that we lose too easily. To please, not to displease, for a thousand reasons. She told me: “Have the courage to be yourself.”

At home, in Nangis, you showed me your henhouse, your pigs, your can factory, your taste for natural products. Does this come from your childhood?
Yes. Mémé did all this on the farms. It was from her that I learned all that because at home she did that. When we killed the pig, she made the preparations, the pâtés. It’s a whole way of life. I reproduced all of this naturally, without effort. And it’s healthier than McDonald’s, for example.

Was it Grandma Anna who stopped you from getting a big head?
It’s never been my temperament to ride mechanics, to be smart, even at school. First or last, I didn’t care. I was trying to do the best I could. I have always found the need to cling to “insignificant”I’m the best, this that“. I have seen so many rollers all my life. On the contrary, my creation, it has been the mockery, the derision, very often of my songs. If you don’t know how to make fun of yourself, you shouldn’t do what I do.

Finally, can you tell me about the cover albums that will be released?
Rebecca chose the titles. Universal wanted to release the cream of my songs grouped into four themes: revolt (The little Kurd, Lily…), women, children and slang, this somewhat green language which I used extensively. She chose twenty titles for each of these albums and I made the inside notes.

What was Rebecca’s favorite song?
[Il réfléchit longuement]. It is one of the least known. A song called Leila. “When I go to the island of Java, I go to Leila’s house. She has a small business of her own. She only works in lace“What’s very funny is that one day I received a letter from a bistro in Java run by a girl called Leila. She took it at face value and wrote to me.”I don’t work in lace“. It’s cute. I was bursting out laughing. She had sent me a sailor’s beret, with a red pompom, that all her clients had signed. She said that my song was played 40 times a day on her jukebox!

Will you write other songs?
I’ve already started writing another album. I don’t force myself. It’s my pleasure. Masochistic but it’s my pleasure.

Mémé Anna by Pierre Perret, published on March 12, 2026 by Mareuil Éditions, 182 pages, 21 euros.