Le 9 décembre 2017, France 24 diffuse un reportage en anglais retraçant la vie et l’héritage de Johnny Hallyday, surnommé le « French Elvis ». Une rétrospective internationale sur sa carrière, son influence musicale et son impact culturel bien au-delà des frontières françaises.
00:30It certainly is, but you would be forgiven if you don't know who in the world we're talking about,
00:33because Johnny Holiday is often called the rock star you've never heard about.
00:39Now, he's huge here in France, an icon, and it's not just because of his unique voice or his incredibly prolific music career.
00:48It's because whether or not you liked Johnny Holiday's music, well, he was part of the cultural landscape
00:54and perhaps not the most sophisticated part of French culture.
00:57I mean, it's not the Louvre or Molière, but Johnny Holiday is just as French as the Eiffel Tower and Baguette.
01:02He is. He's really an institution, and I can't overstate how much he really does mean to the French.
01:08He's such a household name. They hear people talk about him as simply Johnny.
01:12Johnny refers to one thing and one thing alone, and that's Johnny Holiday.
01:15And because of that, he is our word du jour.
01:17And you might remember Johnny was actually also the word du jour in the French Connection segment I did about music,
01:22so he deserves that title two times.
01:25Now, keep in mind that France doesn't really have the same caliber of celebrities as there are, for instance, in the U.K. or at U.S.
01:32So Johnny Holiday is really the closest thing we have to Mick Jagger or Michael Jackson,
01:37but he's more than just the biggest French rock star.
01:40He's part of the French psyche, if you will, because a lot of people grew up listening to Johnny Holiday's music.
01:46And with his passing, many people say that it feels like they lost a member of their family.
01:52We love him, love him, love him.
01:55Johnny.
01:56A page is turning. He represents my youth. So many memories.
02:01I listened to him during tough times.
02:04Johnny is part of the family. He's an uncle, a grandfather.
02:08A monument is gone.
02:11He's leaving behind a huge empty space in France.
02:15He was a monument.
02:15He's the only one who brought everyone together.
02:19Left, right, rich, poor.
02:24I feel like an orphan.
02:27We're going to miss him.
02:31Now, there might be a lot of love for Johnny Holiday today,
02:33but that wasn't always the case, particularly when he was a child.
02:36And in fact, his childhood story is quite sad.
02:39Indeed. Now, Johnny Holiday, keep in mind, wasn't born Johnny Holiday.
02:42He was born Jean-Philippe Smet in Paris to a French mother and a Belgian father.
02:48And actually, he was abandoned as a baby by his parents and raised by his aunt amongst cabaret singers and performers.
02:56And he says this really helped him become a performer.
02:58But it was actually Elvis who really inspired him and made him want to learn how to play the guitar.
03:03And he borrowed the name Holiday from an American relative because it was a little bit more rock and roll than Jean-Philippe Smet.
03:09Now, he was really a young heartthrob that broke from the chanson-francaise tradition
03:13and brought U.S.-style rock and roll to France in the 1960s.
03:18But he wasn't limited to reworking English-language classics.
03:21He actually had his own hits.
03:23He recorded about a thousand songs, a hundred of which he wrote himself.
03:28And they're so great and so diverse that I just made a little medley for you to listen to.
03:32Souvenirs, souvenirs, souvenirs, dès le départ dans le matin, où le soleil semblait rire.
03:41Or chez moi, il n'est jamais trop tard.
03:47Si vous allez à San Francisco, les mots ne sont jamais les mêmes.
03:58Pour exprimer ce qu'est le blues.
04:20And you kind of get a feel there from that last clip.
04:22His trademark was really these incredible stage shows.
04:26They were epic, Jeannie.
04:28He would arrive on stage on a motorcycle or from a helicopter.
04:31There would be fireworks, etc.
04:34Now, he was so famous in France that Jimi Hendrix actually opened for him at several concerts.
04:40And offstage, he also lived a very rock and roll lifestyle as well.
04:44He battled with addictions, with depression.
04:47He had all sorts of tumultuous relationships.
04:49In fact, he was married five times to four women.
04:52So he actually married the same woman several times.
04:55He was married 15 years to the French pop star Sylvie Vertan.
04:59They were kind of the golden couple.
05:00And his life was always followed by the paparazzi.
05:03He was always in the magazines.
05:04In fact, he was on the front page of Paris Match almost 80 times, which is more than Lady Diana.
05:09It's incredible.
05:10Now, he eventually settled down and became kind of the patriarch of French pop.
05:15He was quite a consensual figure.
05:17And he had lots of friends in high places.
05:19He was friends with just about every single French president in his lifetime, for instance.
05:24And in 1997, he was given the top award that you can get in France, the Legion of Honor.
05:29Now, despite being so huge, such an icon here in France, his music was actually very little known outside of the French-speaking world.
05:37It's pretty mysterious why that is.
05:39And, in fact, some of our viewers were quite curious about this.
05:42Why, given that he was so huge in France and in Europe, why was he not that big elsewhere?
05:47And it is quite strange that he didn't break into the U.S. market and remained, I guess you could say, kind of a French delicacy, especially because he was obsessed with America.
05:56And it's kind of ironic, I guess you could say, because Johnny Holliday was obsessed with America.
06:00He was almost more American than Americans are.
06:03And, in a way, this is actually something that makes him kind of French, this obsession that he had with America.
06:09Now, all sorts of other questions come up about Johnny Holliday.
06:12Just one more that one of our viewers picked up, wanted to know more about his relationship with Edith Piaf.
06:18Edith Piaf, of course, the legend as well.
06:20Now, he famously covered many of her songs, like the Im à l'amour, and in his autobiography, he said that when he was young, she came to see him in his shows and even hit on him.
06:30And he got shy and ran away.
06:32Now, Flo, despite all of this outpouring of love for Johnny Holliday, he actually did have and still does have critics, too.
06:39That's right.
06:39Now, some people just love to hate Johnny Holliday.
06:42It must be said, and he was often the target of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, for instance, which liked to poke fun at the fact that he's such a French legend but was a resident of Switzerland for tax purposes.
06:53But even with all this mockery, there was always a lot of affection for Johnny Holliday.
06:58He was seen as kind of a cheesy uncle that you have that you like to poke fun at because he likes leather and he has a wolf tattoo and he loves his Harley Davidson.
07:05But you still have a lot of sympathy for him and kind of want to steal his wardrobe as well.
07:10He was always part of the national wallpaper, I guess you could say.
07:14And so when he died, it really is the end of an era.
07:16It certainly is.
07:17Thank you so much for that, Florence Villeminot, for that look at the rock icon, Johnny Holliday.
07:22Thanks to you for watching.
07:23Don't forget, if you have any other questions about anything that's typically French and that you don't understand, feel free to tweet Florence Villeminot at Flo Villeminot.
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