Heeeeeere's ... Johnny! Dept.
He sang with his tripes, as they say in La Belle France. Like many great French stars, he wasn't French at all. A shivering refugee from the fetid, rainswept marshes of Belgium, Johnny Hallyday's real name was Jean-Philippe Léo Smet - that's S-m-e-t - so anyting would of been a improvemink.
He was the French Elvis, and before we get too superior about that, leave us remember that Cliff Richard was the British Elvis. The statistics tell the story, but not here, you'll have to go to his wiki page. Oh, okay then, here's the numbers: 57 years, 79 albums and sold more than 110 million records worldwide (i.e. in France). 2,500 magazine covers. One million spectators (I think I may have been there) crammed the streets to watch his gig at the Eiffel Tower, with some ten million watching on television. Not bad for a gut-gargling Walloon garagiste.
Here's Rough Town, his only foray into a U.S. recording studio, sung (pretty well, I think) in English, and the late-ish Sang Pour Sang, the title of which is a neat pun meaning Blood For Blood, but sounding like 100 per cent, which was always what he gave.
Faut demander gentilment, connards ...
ReplyDeleteEhhhhhhhhhhh...qui est-ce que tu appelle un connard, trouduc?!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI'm not very good with French (or anything else, really). All I could
ReplyDeletemake out was the part about ducks! But would you please be so kind as to provide a link to those late-period Smets?
Smets
ReplyDeleteThanks. I've listened to both albums now, and I like "Sang Pour
DeleteSang" a lot (but "Rough Town" somewhat less, on balance, than
that). According to one overviewish obituary, the singer's tragedy
was to have clung to Presley when he should have been
embracing Piaf. The writer of the article may have had a point.
All I know for sure is that Johnny Halliday would have belted
the living crap out of Bryan Ferry's "A Song For Europe."
He'd have got nowhere doing a Piaf at the start of his career. Elvis was the smart choice, as his career path shows. When he outgrew the yé-yé shit (one of the least attractive sub-genres of music), he started to find his own voice, and was singing better than ever at the end of his career. Rough Town was never going to fly - the French hated it, the Americans never got to hear it. It's a respectable effort. Two cheers.
DeleteFully agree with Farq here. Doing Piaf-style varieté songs wouldn't have enabled him to have the long-lasting career he had. Not to mention that he really didn't have the voice to pull off any Piaf-style songs at the beginning of his career, it was pretty thin and weedy and got rougher (cigarettes and drugs?) and better later on, to a full rock'n'roll roar.
DeleteI personally have little use for Johnny, but left-field stuff like this is why I like this blog. Might check out "Rough Town" just for the curiosity factor of Johnny singing "se Engleesh vay".
I admire him from a safe distance. I can - very occasionally - be blown away by a track like Sang Pour Sang, for its sheer balls-out fuck-everything passion, and I can understand why he had such a devoted following.
DeleteTalking of Piaf - I just read her bio on wiki. WHAT A LIFE. Holy freaking crap!
By the way, Farq, you would killed around these parts for suggesting Johnny is anything less than French! He was actually born in Paris (I looked that up 'cause my wife said "Huh?" when I suggested he wasn't French). His dad is from Belgium, though.
ReplyDeleteWell, yes. I just enjoy winding up the French. I see from my blog stats that quite a few of the 4/5 Guys are from France, and I was hoping that they'd speak up. Rough Town sold in France, too, just not as much. When I lived in Paris, I maintained that Proust was only good in translation - that the English language had freed him, and allowed him to find his voice. That always went down well.
DeleteOh, you rascal you! You rebel rouser!
DeleteSo I speak up for the French, when they can goddamn do the job all by themselves?
All right you flag-waving cheese-eating surrender monkeys hiding among the four or five guys, defend your icons! Tous pour Johnnyyyyyyy! Alles enfants de la patrie-iee-yeeee and all that…
Rough Town (you made me look that up also) actually went to no. 1 here (and thus bettered its predecessor) and still made gold. Not bad for a "flop".
Didn't you post some Francis Cabrel a while ago? Now that is more my stuff. Nice voice, memorable memories, good lyrics.
Mais oui. Cabrel etait FoamFeatured antécédément, Enorme!
DeleteThe best thing about the French rock'n'rollers are their noms de scène, trying to lure the French youth into spending their hard earned francs on (pseudo-)Americans who just happen to sing in French (that's how Johnny was marketed as at the beginning). Then again, I understand. If you're a teenager in the early 60's would you rather spend your money on someone who is named like your uncle or like a cool "Americain".
ReplyDeleteHands up: Would you rather buy rock'n'roll records from Jean-Phillipe Smet, Claude Moine and Hervé Forneri or rather from Johnny Halliday, Eddy Mitchell and Dick Rivers?
NO hands here for ANY of those jobs.
ReplyDeleteThe best thing about the French rock 'n' rollers . . . is that none of them made it in to my collection. Ha.
True dat: They never even made it in to ANY loco shops. Ever. I mean, the closest we came to ever having ANY such.... such... "culture" (?!) was Edith Piaf doing "Black Denim Trousers & Motorcycle Boots" which was a top spin on the nearby rib joint's 78-fueled jukebox.
O.K., I lied. Our grate state had nothing that cheesy to speak of. Until the Interwebs came to town and the whole handbasket went to hell.....o... I just thought of my faroite Froggie rocker: Henry Cording! I am sure he's YOOTOOBABLE (emphasis on "babble" part). "En-ree" made it to one of those Barney "Despearte R 'n' R" albums years ago...