The 80-some-year-old, credited with creating the distinctive sound of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper album, agreed to get on the project. With a stroke of genius, Laliberté invited the Fab Four's legendary arranger George Martin to supervise the production at Abbey Road studios in London. We went to London to negotiate with Apple." We came up with the idea of a permanent show in Vegas, Love. George wanted to close the loop with his mythical group. "For me, George Harrison was one of the pioneers of world music. "In the middle of a party I had invited him to, we started fantasizing about a project revolving around the music of The Beatles," he remembers. The two men, both passionate about Formula One motor racing, bumped into one another at different races, and a strong friendship developed. "He never missed a single one of our shows and became a friend of Cirque du Soleil."Īnother close friend was George Harrison. Michael Jackson would come every month in disguise," recalls Laliberté. It was an instant love affair and the beginning of a crazy adventure. It wasn't long before Laliberté attracted attention from across the border. He met a group of stilt-walkers, called The High Heels Club, and launched a show with them. On his return to Montreal, he couldn't shake off his love of street entertainment. After Paris, this nomadic spirit headed to Berlin, then Marrakesh, a must for any self-respecting beatnik. #Founder of cirque de soleol movie#Guy Laliberte's biography is the stuff of Hollywood movie scripts. I didn't have an elevator, but my sense of pleasure was exactly the same." I lived on the top floor of an old building with a view of the roofs, like this suite today. I begged on the street and sometimes performed with a group of musician friends, influenced by the folk music of a band called Malicorne. "I arrived from Montreal in 1978 with 50 Canadian dollars in my pocket," he recalls. A lean face, a shaved head and clearly in top physical shape, he recalls his Parisian years as an accordionist and fire-eater. In spite of this, Laliberté remains a hippie at heart, nostalgic for the 1970's Flower Power. What Laliberté cannot deny is that today he's the head of a company which employs 5,000 people, including 700 artists, producing 10 shows a year – five permanent ones in Las Vegas and Orlando, and five road acts – which annually entertain 11 million people, on five continents.Īccording to Forbes magazine, Laliberté"s personal fortune stands at more than 2 billion euros ($2.7 billion). This master of an all-powerful multinational dream factory claims he has changed little in the 30 years since he began his career in Paris. Sitting in a penthouse suite at the Meurice Hotel overlooking the rooftops of Paris, the Cirque du Soleil founder swears he's a dreamer, a backpacker, a lover of open spaces and the human race. PARIS - He's been dubbed the "saltimbanquier." It's a French play on words that loosely translates as "acrobat banker," an epithet Guy Laliberté is not particularly fond of.
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