Events took a surreal turn at the weekend when celebrity look-alikes of iconic French singers Serge Gainsbourg and Johnny Hallyday got into a fight, ending with one of them in hospital.

"/> Events took a surreal turn at the weekend when celebrity look-alikes of iconic French singers Serge Gainsbourg and Johnny Hallyday got into a fight, ending with one of them in hospital.

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JOHNNY HALLYDAY

‘Gainsbourg’ and ‘Hallyday’ come to blows

Events took a surreal turn at the weekend when celebrity look-alikes of iconic French singers Serge Gainsbourg and Johnny Hallyday got into a fight, ending with one of them in hospital.

Published: 29 July 2011 10:19 CEST

The middle-aged imitators both operate in the eastern town of Epinal in the Lorraine region where they have maintained a fierce rivalry over several years.

Until now, that enmity has been restricted to the odd verbal provocation and occasional jokes as the two tour the circuit of local events and competitions.

Local newspaper Vosges Matin reports that events took a more serious turn on Saturday when ‘Gainsbourg’, otherwise known as Denis C, 46, saw ‘Hallyday’, Michel P, 50, mowing the lawn of the apartment block where he lives.

Leaning from his upstairs window, Denis took the opportunity to taunt Michel who apparently gave as good as he got. Whatever remark he made clearly upset Denis to the point that he allegedly grabbed a knife, approached his rival and plunged it into his neck.

The Johnny Hallyday impersonator ended up in hospital. His attacker was arrested and now faces charges of attempted murder up to 30 years in prison.

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New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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