Belgian Rebel Singer Who Once Slept Rough in Paris

Didier Odieu is a singer from Brussels who built a following in Belgium as an artist with a distinctive stage presence. When he was about twenty, he went to Paris hoping to establish himself as an artist. It did not work out at first, and he ended up living on the streets of the French capital, a time he describes with the word clodo, a slang term for someone who sleeps rough.

In a 2019 post that L'Avenir reported, he looked back on those years. He said Notre-Dame was the only place where he found calm and warmth during that period, and where he could regain his strength before going back out. He has continued to return there whenever he is in Paris, and also after hard times in the years since. He says the place had a strong effect on him.

The article does not say how or when he stopped living on the street. What it does describe is the next stage of his career. He later gained recognition for his talent and had early successes. Among them was a performance at the Olympia, the Paris concert hall, as the opening act for William Sheller, who had supported him in the early 1980s.

His career, he says, has had its ups and downs, and he has been wary of the influence of show business on his path.

His account is a short one, and much of it is about a place rather than a date: a young artist without a home in a large city who found a quiet refuge in one building, and who went on to appear on one of the best-known stages in Paris.