Bertrand Cantat

Bertrand Lucien Bruno Cantat (born 5 March 1964) is a French singer and songwriter. He was the frontman for the rock band Noir Désir. Cantat was born in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The son of a Navy officer, he spent his childhood in Le Havre. His family moved when he was an adolescent to Bordeaux and at the lycée Saint-Genès he met Denis Barthe, Serge Teyssot-Gay, and Frédéric Vidalenc, who would soon become members of his band. At the end of Cantat's first performance in March 1981, when he was still 16, he threw himself into the crowd and suffered cranial trauma. In 1991 he suffered a black out, and in 1993 he had to undergo an operation on his vocal cords and then follow a series of vocal classes. Self destructive behaviour, cigarettes and alcohol, had taken a toll. In 1997 he married Krisztina Rády, with whom he had two children. Milo was born in 1998, and their daughter Alice in 2003. At the height of Noir Désir's success in the 1990s, he was one of the most prominent figures of...