Johnny Hallyday

Johnny Hallyday (born June 15, 1943, Paris, France—died December 5, 2017, Marnes-la-Coquette) was a French rock singer and actor whose powerful vocals and prolific career spanning more than half a century enabled him to achieve unprecedented stardom in France.

Credited with popularizing rock and roll in France in the early 1960s, Johnny (as he is simply referred to in France) recorded more than a thousand songs, roughly a quarter of which are estimated to be Francophone adaptations of English-language songs. His chameleon-like nature allowed him to conquer each French generation, from the post-World War II generation to those born in the 2000s, and reach across social, economic, and political divides. Known for his spectacular stage entrances and grandiose showmanship, Johnny performed in front of an estimated 28 million people throughout his career, roughly one-third of the French population.

From Jean-Philippe to Johnny

Johnny was born Jean-Philippe Smet to Huguette Clerc, a French dairywoman, and Léon Smet, a Belgian actor and drama teacher who was married to another woman at the time. Mere months after his birth in 1943, his father, who had an alcohol addiction, abandoned him. After taking all rationing tickets, which were necessary to buy food in Nazi-occupied Paris, and selling all the furniture, including the cradle, Léon Smet left Jean-Philippe on the apartment floor and disappeared. In his memoir, Dans Mes Yeux (2013; “In My Eyes”), as told to Amanda Sthers, Johnny said about the incident:

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Que s’est-il passé ce jour dont je ne me souviens plus mais qui a dû imprimer ma peau fragile d’enfant, mon dos sur le parquet, mes pleurs qui ne l’avaient pas retenu? A t-il prononcé mon prénom? Est-ce qu’il a murmuré : “Je suis désolé, Jean-Philippe.” Est-ce que j’avais froid? A t-il pensé à moi? Un baiser? Un geste? Je ne le saurai jamais. Il m’a laissé le silence en héritage. Le silence et l’envie d’en faire quelque chose, un cri, un joli hurlement qui ressemble à la survie.

What happened on that day, which I don’t remember but that must have stamped my fragile child skin, my back on the parquet, my tears that did not hold him back? Did he pronounce my name? Did he whisper: “I’m sorry, Jean-Philippe”? Was I cold? Did he think about me? A kiss? A gesture? I will never know. He left me silence as an inheritance. Silence and the desire to make something out of it, a scream, a pretty howl that resembles survival.

At the end of World War II, at his sister Hélène Mar’s insistence, the recently divorced Léon Smet returned and married Huguette Clerc to recognize Jean-Philippe as his son. However, once he filled out the paperwork, Léon Smet left Paris once again, never to play the role of father.

Jean-Philippe’s mother started working as a fit model for Parisian fashion designers, a time-consuming job that did not allow her to raise her son, so his aunt Hélène Mar stepped in. The family moved at the rhythm of her two daughters’ dancing contracts. In 1946 Jean-Philippe’s cousins secured a two-year contract at the International Ballet in London. There one of cousins, Desta, met Lee Lemoine Ketcham, an American dancer known under the stage name Lee Halliday, and they soon married.

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Lee became a father figure for Jean-Philippe, whom he nicknamed Johnny, and he taught Johnny to play the guitar. It is thanks to him that Johnny started performing onstage. At nine years old, his first performance was singing “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” while Desta and Lee changed costumes. In 1954, during a brief stay in Paris, he met famous French singer Maurice Chevalier, who told him, “Take care of your entrance, take care of your exit. In the middle, you manage, you sing”—advice Johnny religiously followed throughout his career.

Soon after this encounter, the family settled in Paris. Johnny appeared in advertisements and was an extra in the 1955 movie Les Diaboliques (“The Devilish Ones”). Aspiring to be an actor, he started singing at balls and dance halls to pay for drama classes. In 1957 he met his best friend, future singer Eddy Mitchell, and they started going to the Golf-Drouot, a Parisian nightclub that helped launch the French rock and roll movement. Simultaneously, he decided to become a rock singer after witnessing girls scream in the movie theater as Elvis Presley performed in the movie Loving You.

“I wanted to do Elvis, I wanted to do James Dean, and I became me.”

In late December 1959 Johnny appeared in his first radio show, Paris Cocktail. He sang covers of popular American songs, such as Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti.” He was noticed by record label Vogue’s artistic director and signed a contract for his first record, which was released in March 1960. It contained just four tracks, including “Laisse les filles” (“Leave the Girls Alone”) and “T’aimer follement,” a Francophone adaptation of American song “Makin’ Love.” Printed on the back cover was Johnny’s biography, a tale worthy of a western: he was a bilingual cowboy ostensibly raised on a ranch by an American father. To his dismay, his stage name, “Johnny Halliday,” in honor of Lee, was misspelled. He would now be called Johnny Hallyday instead.

Initial sales were slow, but they skyrocketed after Johnny’s first television appearance in April 1960. Introduced by established singer Line Renaud, he frantically swayed his hips and got on his knees as he interpreted “Laisse les filles.” For French teenagers watching, he represented rock and roll and rebellion from the stiff postwar society that praised static performers. In June 1960 he released his first summer single, “Souvenirs, Souvenirs” (“Memories, Memories”), which became an instant hit.

In the early years of the 1960s, Johnny created a media frenzy as the perceived leader of the yé-yé (“yeah-yeah”) generation, a term coined by the media to describe those teenagers who supposedly did nothing except listen to English-language music, such as rock and roll. In September 1960, when Johnny opened for humorist Raymond Devos, it became clear that he embodied the generational divide between those who fought in World War II and their children. The cheapest seats were full of teenagers cheering him on, whereas the most expensive sections, populated by the intelligentsia, booed. In February 1961 his performance at a rock and roll festival worsened his sulfurous reputation, as his music and gestures, such as rolling around onstage, were deemed responsible for riots that ensued and the 700 seats that were broken in the venue. This event led to multiple cities prohibiting him from performing. Two years later, in June 1963, Johnny gave a similarly uninhibited performance at La Nuit de la Nation (“Night of the Nation”), a free concert at Place de la Nation in Paris that was attended by more than 150,000 spectators. He was again blamed for the disorder that followed the concert.

However, his military service in Offenburg, Germany, from 1964 to 1965, brought him respectability and acceptance in other segments of French society. (Despite eligibility changes, mandatory military service for men between 20 and 25 years old had existed since the French Revolution. Conscription in France ended in 1997.) Johnny continued to record albums, with the army even requesting that he appear in uniform on album covers. Softer songs—such as “Retiens la nuit” (1961; “Hold Back the Night”), featured in the movie Les Parisiennes (1962; “Tales of Paris”), which starred Catherine Deneuve—also helped to appease critics. During military service, he released “Le Pénitencier” (“The Penitentiary”), a Francophone adaptation of “The House of the Rising Sun,” which became a classic in his repertoire. During this time, his father chose to reappear. Meeting Léon Smet outside the barracks for what was supposed to be a father-son reunion, Johnny instead discovered crowds of paparazzi who had paid his father to take a picture with his now-famous son. But a happy event also marked these years, as Johnny married fellow yé-yé singer Sylvie Vartan on April 12, 1965.

The year 1966 was the beginning of a downward spiral for Johnny. Depressed and exhausted by his intense touring schedule, he tried to kill himself in September, a month after his son’s birth. But Johnny climbed back onstage with opening act Jimi Hendrix, who later encouraged him to cover “Hey Joe” in French, and he released “Noir c’est noir” (an adaptation of Los Bravos’s “Black Is Black”), a song about remaining hopeful in the face of difficulties.

Although he started his career heavily influenced by American rockers, Johnny created his own style as the 1960s progressed. “I wanted to do Elvis, I wanted to do James Dean, and I became me,” he stated in his memoir Dans Mes Yeux (2013).

More than a teen idol, a musical survivor

As the 1970s approached and other yé-yé idols struggled to adapt, Johnny recorded “Que je t’aime” (1969; “How I Love You”), one of his biggest hits. It immediately became a French classic. In 1969, to celebrate his 10th year on the stage, he put on a concert that featured stunt performers, video projections, and even a boxing match. An unprecedentedly modern show, it drew 170,000 spectators during its nine-day run in Paris.

To remain relevant with the incoming decade, he grew his hair and turned to psychedelic rock with the album Rivière…ouvre ton lit (1969; “River…Open Your Bed”). Inspired by the hippie movement, he next released the album Vie (1970; “Life”), with lyrics written by journalist Philippe Labro, among others. A more politically engaged work, notable songs include an ecological poem recited over Beethoven’s No. 7 Symphony and the controversial “Jésus-Christ.” The latter, describing Jesus as a hippie who smokes marijuana and is being pursued by the FBI, was censored by major radio stations, and several bishops called for Johnny and Labro to be excommunicated.

Diverse projects marked the rest of the decade for Johnny. In 1973 he wrote the music for the song “Toute la musique que j’aime” (“All the Music That I Love”), a rare occurrence in his career. He also played himself as a kidnapped rock star in Claude Lelouch’s cult movie L’aventure c’est l’aventure (1972; “Adventure Is Adventure”). By the second half of the 1970s, Johnny had adopted a crooner image, singing sentimental rock songs, including “Gabrielle” (an adaptation of Tony Cole’s “The King Is Dead”) and “Derrière l’amour” (1976; “Behind Love”).

However, these successes were punctuated by several setbacks. The 1972 Johnny Circus tour, in which Johnny performed under a circus tent, was a financial disaster. In 1976 his attempt to turn Shakespeare’s play Hamlet into a grandiose rock opera failed. After several on-off separations, Sylvie Vartan and Johnny finally divorced in 1980.

Onstage, Johnny did not hold anything back, whether dressed as a hippie or in a robotlike suit for the 1979 tour L’Ange Aux Yeux De Laser (“The Laser-Eyed Angel”). He fainted from exhaustion multiple times. The song “J’ai oublié de vivre” (1977; “I Forgot to Live”), about a singer dedicated to his art above everything else, summarized Johnny’s career.

Rock’n’roll Attitude and Gang: An era for songwriters

Full leather, fur coat, and eyeliner: this was how Johnny appeared during his 1982 tour Le Survivant (“The Survivor”), staged as a postapocalyptic world inspired by George Miller’s Mad Max movies. Even after breaking his hip onstage, Johnny continued the monthslong tour. In the studio, it was a time of masculinist albums, depicting him arm wrestling or covered in leather. Having lost part of his mainstream appeal, Johnny needed to reinvent himself once again.

Nathalie Baye, an actress and his partner since the end of his short-lived second marriage in 1982, could help. She introduced him to singer-songwriter Michel Berger, who decided to write Johnny’s next album, Rock’n’roll Attitude. Released in 1985, it was a critical and commercial success with such lasting hits as “Quelque chose de Tennessee” (“Something from Tennessee”) and “Le chanteur abandonné” (“The Abandoned Singer”).

With this success, collaborating with a talented singer-songwriter became Johnny’s formula. For his next album, the 1986 Gang, he worked with Jean-Jacques Goldman. Half of the songs were hits and became unavoidable must-plays on tour for decades, including “L’envie” (“The Urge”) and the ballads “Laura” (dedicated to Johnny and Baye’s newborn daughter) and “Je te promets” (“I Promise You”). Baye also introduced Johnny to multiple directors, including Jean-Luc Godard, making the 1980s a decade rich in acting roles as well.

Although the idyll with Baye did not last beyond 1986, Johnny emerged from the decade with songs that popularized him with those born in the 1960s and immortalized his appeal.

The consecration of a French idol

On June 15, 1993, Johnny celebrated his 50th birthday with three successive stadium concerts. The question on everyone’s lips was how would he appear onstage. Taking a risk, Johnny, surrounded only by a few bodyguards, waded through a massive, eager crowd to get to the stage. Over three nights, 150,000 spectators came to observe the tour de force. In 1996 Johnny made an even riskier bet: to play an intimate concert in Las Vegas. Johnny suffered from stress-induced angina pectoris, which affected his performance, but that did not matter to the 6,000 fans who flew to Vegas from France on 31 charters, each themed after one of his songs.

On a personal level, the 1990s started tumultuously with his marriage in 1990 to one of his best friends’ daughters, an ensuing divorce in 1992, their remarriage in 1994, and a final divorce the following year. The latter half of the decade was synonymous with stability: Johnny married his last wife in 1996 and released a best-selling album, Sang pour Sang (1999; “Blood for Blood”), entirely composed by his son.

In 1998 Johnny was set to be the first French artist to inaugurate the new Stade de France, the biggest stadium in the country, which can hold more than 80,000 spectators. To prepare for his three sold-out shows, he released a new album, Ce que je sais (1998; “What I Know”), which included the stadium anthem “Allumer le feu” (“Light the Fire”). It rained on the first night, leading to the concert’s cancellation for safety reasons. Memorably, the show began with a stuntman landing from a helicopter onto the stadium’s roof as a video was shown of Johnny performing the same stunt, recorded a few days before the first concert. It also rained on the last show, but Johnny played through the downpour. By the end of the 1990s, Johnny had truly been recognized as a pillar of French culture.

Johnny Hallyday in the new millennium

Johnny opened the new millennium with a free concert on June 15, 2000, at the Eiffel Tower to celebrate his 40-year career. He performed to 500,000 spectators and more than 8.5 million viewers on live TV. It ended with Johnny interpreting Edith Piaf’s hit “Non, je ne regrette rien” (“No, I Don’t Regret Anything”).

Popular success continued with the release of his double album À la vie, à la mort ! (2002; “To Life, to Death!”), which secured Johnny a new hit with “Marie.” The album sold 800,000 copies in the first week, a French record. It was followed by personal albums Ma Vérité (2005; “My Truth”) and Le cœur d’un homme (2007; “A Man’s Heart”), which featured American musician Taj Mahal and a song written by U2’s lead singer, Bono.

With his wife, Laeticia Hallyday, Johnny adopted two Vietnamese daughters, the elder in 2004 and the younger in 2008. In December 2007 he announced his decision to stop touring after a farewell tour scheduled for 2009. However, he reassured fans that he would continue to release new music, as promised by the title of his 2008 album Ça ne finira jamais (“It Will Never End”). In May 2009 he began his Tour 66, a reference to his age and to Route 66 in the United States, whose influence on rock music Johnny celebrated during the tour. Scheduled to end in early 2010, the tour would not, in fact, turn out to be his last.

“The first time I died, I didn’t like it, so I came back.”

Over the summer of 2009 Johnny underwent treatment for colon cancer. In late November he had surgery again, this time for a herniated disc. But the procedure led to an almost fatal infection, as the surgeon had pierced Johnny’s dura mater (the membrane protecting the brain and spinal cord). Roughly a week later in Los Angeles, Johnny was put in a medically induced coma for three weeks, which damaged his vocal cords. While in recovery, he suffered from depression because he had to learn how to sing again.

In 2011 Johnny was ready to return to the spotlight. In March he released Jamais seul (“Never Alone”), which was not commercially successful but enabled him to regain confidence in his singing abilities. In September he played the character Chicken in a Parisian staging of Tennessee Williams’s play Kingdom of Earth. In 2012 he embarked on a tour, performing at the Stade de France once again.

Surrounding himself with younger songwriters and musicians, Johnny released three major albums in the following years. The first, L’attente (2012; “The Wait”), was hailed by critics and the public for its rock songs that told stories on a human scale. Its ballad “20 ans” (“20 Years”) was cherished by the audience, and the album also included a duet with French Canadian singer Céline Dion.

In November 2014 Johnny and two of his childhood friends, French singers Eddy Mitchell and Jacques Dutronc, started touring together under the name Les Vieilles Canailles (“The Old Rascals”), performing a mix of songs from their repertoires. After their tour ended, Johnny released Rester Vivant (2014; “Stay Alive”) and toured solo for a year, until July 2016, to promote the new album.

During this period a wave of terrorist attacks occurred in Europe. At a ceremony commemorating the victims of the January and November 2015 attacks in Paris, Johnny performed “Un dimanche de janvier” (“A January Sunday”). On March 22, 2016, bombings took place across Brussels, killing dozens. Although other celebrities chose not to perform for safety reasons, Johnny maintained his scheduled concert there four days later, singing Jacques Brel’s “Quand on a que l’amour” (“When All We Have Is Love”) in honor of the victims.

In March 2017 Johnny announced he was battling lung cancer. Over the summer, Les Vieilles Canailles reunited for a tour throughout France. It ended on July 5 in Carcassonne, which was Johnny’s last appearance onstage. In November he was hospitalized for respiratory distress. On the evening of December 5, 2017, Johnny died at his home in Marnes-la-Coquette, a Parisian suburb.

“France watched me grow up. I’m everybody’s cousin.”

France woke up on December 6, 2017, to learn of Johnny’s passing. Countless homages, from politicians across the political spectrum to major French and foreign musicians, poured in. The National Assembly, part of the French parliament, paid tribute to the singer with a standing ovation. “Like the French people, we all have something of Johnny Hallyday,” said National Assembly president François de Rugy in reference to Johnny’s song “Quelque chose de Tennessee” (“Something from Tennessee”). The following day French Pres. Emmanuel Macron announced that a popular tribute would be organized.

On December 9, 2017, a funeral procession with Johnny’s white coffin (inspired by Elvis’s) went down the Champs-Élysées, followed by 700 bikers. One million people gathered in the center of Paris for this last goodbye, throwing flowers as Johnny’s musicians played acoustic versions of his songs. An additional 15 million people watched the tribute on TV. A religious service was held at the church La Madeleine, whose facade was partially covered with a giant portrait of Johnny. During the service Macron gave a eulogy.

Months before his death, despite his illness, Johnny worked on another record, his 51st. On October 19, 2018, it was released under the title Mon pays c’est l’amour (“My Country Is Love”). In its first week, 780,000 physical copies were sold, an impressive commercial success in France. In such tracks as “Pardonne-moi” (“Forgive Me”) and “J’en parlerai au diable” (“I’ll Talk About It to the Devil”), Johnny addressed his own mortality, providing closure to the soundtrack he built for more than half a century.