Johnny Hallyday born 15 June 1943

Johnny Hallyday (15 June 1943 – 5 December 2017) was a French rock and roll and pop singer and actor, credited for having brought rock and roll to France. 

Born Jean-Philippe Smet in the Cité Malesherbes estate in Paris, Hallyday was the son of Huguette Clerc and Léon Smet, an itinerant Belgian who at the time was married to another woman. His parents separated within a few months of his birth and Hallyday was raised by a paternal aunt, Hélène Mar. Her two daughters, Menen and Desta, were professional dancers, and from an early age Hallyday accompanied the family on tour in France and abroad. His aunt paid for dance and guitar lessons, and by the age of nine Hallyday was performing on stage during his cousins’ costume changes. 

Desta’s husband, an American whose stage name, Lee Halliday, Hallyday borrowed and misspelled, was an early influence: one song the young Johnny performed in Copenhagen in the mid-50s was The Ballad of Davy Crockett. Aged 14 and back in Paris, Hallyday saw Elvis Presley’s Lovin’ You at the cinema: it determined, he would later say, the course of his life. He began performing regularly at an early Paris rock venue, Golf-Drouot, and in late 1959 was signed by Vogue records following an appearance on the Paris Cocktail radio show. His first record was released in March 1960; the second single from that four-track EP, Souvenirs Souvenirs, which he performed on television, marked his definitive breakthrough. 

By the following year, Hallyday was topping the bill at the Olympia music hall in Paris. His Viens Danser le Twist launched the transatlantic dance craze in France, and a switch to the Philips record label saw the release of his hugely successful first album, Salut les Copains. The first major tour of France by the man now known as l’idole des jeunes witnessed scenes of near-hysteria among fans. A concert at the Place de la Nation drew a crowd of 150,000; France’s yé-yé generation was born and Hallyday was its leader and the country’s biggest new star. President Charles de Gaulle was so disgusted at this corruption of the country’s youth that he suggested Hallyday fans should be drafted into road-gangs “because they clearly have too much energy to spare”. 

                              

Remarkably, the singer’s immense popularity in France never really waned. He was, for better or worse, the god of Gallic rock, with all that came with it: the alcohol, the orgies, the fights, the tax scandals and the fast cars (including the Lamborghini from which he walked unscathed after a 125mph pile-up). There was a suicide attempt as early as 1966, and a now-famous drugs confession many years later. 

There were weddings, flings and divorces. Hallyday was married four times: first, to the pop singer Sylvie Vartan, from 1965 to 1980, with whom he had a son, David; then, in succession, to the actors Babeth Étienne and Adeline Blondieau; and, finally, in 1996, to Laeticia Boudou, a model.. He was a friend of Jacques Chirac, who made him a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1997, and an even closer friend of Nicolas Sarkozy. 

Hallyday enjoyed, in fact, the kind of collective adulation the French accord to very few – Edith Piaf, Georges Brassens, Jacques Brel. He was the idol of the farmer and the factory worker, but also of the Left Bank set, who even in the 60s were describing him as “a new Orpheus”, a “French Mayakovsky”, the “ultimate existentialist”. He acted in cult movies and won an award in 2003 for his role in Patrice Leconte’s L’Homme du Train. 

Few outside France, of course, ever really understood this. Hallyday’s records went gold 40 times and platinum 22 times in France, yet sold barely a copy in Britain or the US. Besides the biggest talents in French music, from Michel Polnareff to Michel Berger, Jean-Jacques Goldman to Pascal Obispo, he worked with some enormous British and American names – Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Peter Frampton, Mick Jones. Of his 50 studio and 29 live albums, only a tiny handful were recorded in English: in a positively Springsteen-esque snarl, without a hint of an accent. Like the rest, they were huge hits in France, and bombed elsewhere. 

He received a diagnosis of colon cancer in 2009, then, later the same year, endured an operation on a herniated disc that resulted in him being put in a medically induced coma for three weeks. When news leaked, the doctor responsible for the surgery was attacked in his home by a masked gang. Hallyday recovered to put out the album L’Attente in 2012, promoted by his first-ever gigs in the UK, at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Two more followed, in 2014 and 2015, as well as a 90-date tour – Rester Vivant (Staying Alive) – that ended in 2017. 

Hallyday died of lung cancer at 10:10 pm on 5 December 2017 in Marnes-la-Coquette, near Paris, at the age of 74. French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute, saying he "transcended generations and is etched in the memory of the French people".On 9 December, his funeral was held in Paris; 900,000 lined the Champs-Élysées as his body was taken to the Madeleine Church. He was buried on the French Caribbean island of Saint Barthélemy in the cemetery of Lorient parish church.

  (Edited from Guardian obit by Jon Henley & Wikipedia)