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JOHNNY HALLYDAY

France to pay ‘people’s homage’ to rocker Johnny Hallyday on Champs-Elysées

France will pay a "people's homage" to the legendary rock star Johnny Hallyday with a procession down the Champs Elysees in Paris on Saturday.

Published: 7 December 2017 14:05 CET
France to pay 'people's homage' to rocker Johnny Hallyday on Champs-Elysées
Photo: AFP

Fans will be able to throng the Champs Elysees to bid a final farewell to their hero as his cortege passes down the grand ceremonial avenue from the Arc de Triomphe, after the Elysée announced details of the homage on Thursday.

President Emmanuel Macron will later pay a “brief” tribute to singer at his funeral at the grandiose Madeleine church (pictured below) in the centre of the French capital.

“It has been agreed between the family, relatives of Johnny Hallyday and the Presidency of the Republic, that as part of this 'people's tribute', the funeral procession will leave the Arc de Triomphe, then head down the Champs Elysees until the Place de la Concorde before entering the Madeleine church for a religious service,” read a statement from the Elysée Palace.

Johnny Hallyday's musicians will accompany the cortege as it heads down Paris's most famous avenue.

 

The announcement came as speculation mounted that the singer, known as the French Elvis, would be given a state funeral, an honour usually reserved for
France's greatest heroes.

But the French presidency stopped short of that, instead granting Hallyday, 74, who lost his long battle with lung cancer on Wednesday, a new kind of
ceremony it dubbed a “homage populaire” or “people's tribute”.

Paris transport bosses had earlier renamed a Metro station after Hallyday, whose death has plunged France into mourning.

Paris renames Metro station after French rock legend Johnny Hallyday

The RATP transport authority temporarily changed the name of the Duroc station near the Invalides where Napoleon is buried to “DuRock Johnny”.

It was also announced on Thursday that Hallyday would be buried on the French Caribbean island of Saint-Barthelemy, where he owned a house and would regularly spend time.

Adored by young and old, hard-living Hallyday was almost a national monument, selling more than 110 million records despite being almost unknown
outside the French-speaking world.

Television channels cleared their schedules to broadcast tribute shows to the star, who first came to fame in late 1950s yet managed to cleverly adapt
to changing musical styles.

Macron led the mourning by declaring that “there is something of Johnny in all of us”, promising that he and his wife Brigitte would attend the funeral.

CULTURE

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

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
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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