Michel Sardou

Biography

Origins and childhood

Michel Sardou is the heir to a family long tradition of spectacle. His/her paternal grandparents were comic of scene with Marseilles; his/her maternal grandmother was Danseuse. It thus passes its childhood in Parisian Cabaret S and follows his parents in round.

Its not very brilliant school situation and the life which it carries out, between slides and theaters, gradually pushes it to plan to stop its studies. In 1963, 16 years old, it projects to flee with the Brésil to mount a box of Strip-tease. His/her Fernand father will catch up with it in extremis with the Aéroport. His/her son announces then to him his desire of Travail ler and to leave the school.

Waiter in the Cabaret of his/her father, it makes his first weapons on scene and meets Michel Fugain then, passes a Audition at Barclay, and takes down its first Contrat.

Career

The beginnings (1965 - 1970)

Michel Sardou begins in the song in 1965 with Madras , Co-written with Michel Fugain and Patrice Laffont. This song offers to him a first passage to the Télévision, but fall quickly into the lapse of memory. Follows a series of 45 turns, which gradually make know this newcomer in the song (it is not yet 20 years old), without to meet commercial real success.

Its career is really launched in 1967, thanks to a Censure: whereas France left NATO one year earlier, and that the Guerre of Vietnam causes a wave of Anti-américanisme in France, Michel Sardou leaves the Yankees , song which insists on the duty of recognition towards the the United States, without which, according to him “You would be all in Germanie/À speech of I cannot quoi/À greet I do not know who”, clear allusions to the Libération of 1944 by the allied forces. The song is not taste of the Général de Gaulle, which “disadvises” its diffusion on the waves.

This episode confers to the singer a new notoriety, but without much relationship with its artistic talents. It provides especially the foundations of its future style. Between 1967 and 1970, it will pain nevertheless to meet one big hit.

In front of the sequence of 45 turns with very mitigated success, Eddie Barclay, which produces it at the time, decides in 1969 to terminate its contract, estimating it “not made for this trade”.

It creates then, with Jacques Revaux, which will become its more faithful type-setter, and Régis Talar, the label Tréma, which will produce from now on its discs.

A surging rise (1970-1975)

1970 is the year which will propel it truly to the row of high-speed motorboat. It records its first album, I live in France , from which is extracted the 45 turns which will become its first great radiophonic and commercial success: popular balls . Whereas he did not want any initially, this song places it in first place of the Hit parades. It will twice find this place in the year, with the tubes I live in France and And to die of pleasure .

The style of the album I live in France , which obtains the price of the Académie Charles-Cross-country race in 1971, is worth in Sardou to be classified in the category “popular singer”. The song of the same name imposes it even like the cantor of “deep France” on the eyes of the media. It is an image of which it will never get rid during its career, although it did not last for ever in the register of the drinking song.

the popular balls however opened the way at one decade of permanent success: at each exit of album, Sardou rises in the first places of the Hit parades. It is the case with the laughter of the sergeant (1971), the chief supervisor (1972), and in 1973, with the disease of love . This song remains to date its larger radiophonic success, the album éponyme remaining 21 weeks at the head sales, a record for the time. This success will be confirmed by the success met by the songs which will follow: the old grooms , towns of loneliness (1973), a girl with the clear eyes (1974).

While being affirmed like large a star of the French song, since it carries out in 1971 its first spectacle with the Olympia, Michel Sardou is the subject of polemics more and more sharp. Voices Féministe S protest against the songs the towns of loneliness , where Sardou affirms to want “of Viol er of the women”, and the old grooms , with the tone perceived like very patriarchal.

In November 1975 leaves the 45 turns France , in which Sardou speaks in the name of the steamer of the same name, then always moored with a quay of the port of the Havre in waiting of its disarmament. The singer seems to reproach the president Valery Giscard d'Estaing and the Gouvernement Jacques Chirac not to more deal with France (“call never again me France/La France, it dropped me”). The song is sold to more than one million specimens, and is worth in Sardou to be greeted by the Syndicat S and the Communiste S, in spite of its image of singer engaged on the right. But this success announces actually an album which will cause with its author many nuisances: the old woman .

Dark years (1976-1977)

1976 is one year black for Sardou, whose father dies in January. Moreover, several extracts of the album the old woman will cause polemics: I will love you , I show , and especially the time of the colonies and I am for .

With the time of the colonies , Sardou, already suspecté of machism, is seen to show to defend a Colonialisme primary and racist. The radios refuse to diffuse the title, except France Inter, which will diffuse it only once. Libération comments on then: “Fascism did not pass and Sardou will be able to continue to leave its disasters shits to the antenna. ”

But the singer does not give up occupying the ground of the policy. He launches in October 1976 I am for which, this time, is massively diffused. The song, which evokes the assassination of a child, arrives into full Affaire Patrick Henry, and definitively puts fire at the powders, Sardou being seen shown to defend the Capital punishment.

Since the singer positions definitely on the right, the principal detractors of Michel Sardou will be Libération , Rouge and the Daily newspaper of the people , three newspapers marked on the left. Sardou unchains leading battles, such as for example in the columns of Humanity . But it also causes deep interrogations on the sociological direction of its success. In Red , one can read for example: The characteristic of a singer as Sardou is to be parvenu to give form to a song reactionary, with the strong direction of the mot. It expresses the effects of the crisis of the values and the traditional ideology on those which are not ready to call at present this one into question.

The pro and the antiones, journalists as artists, make hear their voice. Its supports write in the columns of the Figaro , Paris Match or even of the Monde .

Beginning 1977, several committees Anti-Sardou are formed, with for goal to prevent the singer from giving his recitals during its round which begins in February 1977: they organize demonstrations in province against its arrival, accommodate it by insults on its arrival, paint Croix-gammée S on the vehicles of its caravan, distribute very virulent leaflets. A bends is even found in the boiler room of Forest National, with Brussels. Michel Sardou will end up deciding to cancel the four last dates of his round.

In 1978 appears an opuscule entitled Faut to burn Sardou? , symbol of the hostile climate which at that time surrounds the career of the singer.

Return to the sources (1977-1980)

In front of the extent of the events, Michel Sardou takes retreat with the song. He decides to return as of 1977, but seems to forsake the Provocation and the standpoint Politique. The albums of 1977 and 1978 (which enable him to record records of sale, proof that the recent events did not deteriorate its popularity) make the good share with the Introspection, the return towards the Enfance and with the Amour ( Ten years earlier , By singing , I steal …).

The albums of 1979 and 1980, which push further this logic intimist and personal, go less although the precedents.

Rumeur S circulate besides a time on a possible grave disease, because Sardou is done rarer in the Médias. It seems that the events of 1976 have it durably affected. In connection with the song By singing , he will declare: I needed a true popular song, easy to hear and simple to retain. The songs of combat started to tire me. I had in the idea to change trade. I was sick, and no doctor knew what I suffered. Somebody advised me to leave on a journey; by me ensuring that I was going to annoy me everywhere, but that while returning I would be cured. I left…

An always increasing popularity (1981-1991)

During the Années 1980, which however represented for many singers of its generation a fatal change of time, Michel Sardou sees its popularity reaching tops. Throughout this period, it connects the tubes, helped by the massive radiophonic diffusion, before each exit of album, of a song which seems conceived especially for the Bande FM ( Africa Adieu , Chanteur of Jazz , Musulmanes , same water which runs …). The album of 1981, which contains two of its greater successes ( lakes of Connemara , Être a woman ) enters to the Guinness Book for the level of its sales.

Moreover, the frequentation of its spectacles, with the Palate of the Congresses of Paris, then starting from 1989, with the general sports Palate of Paris-Bercy, is unceasingly increasing. It occurs most of the time with closed counters and beats records of duration in several rooms. The French regularly quote it like their singer preferred, in front of Johnny Hallyday and Jean-Jacques Goldman.

It is noted in addition that the texts of Sardou became much more consensual. Even the few “committed” titles (the singer refutes still and always this qualifier) which it leaves during the decade do not cause any agitation, which it is Vladimir Ilitch (1983), at the same time homage to the ideals of Lénine and denunciation of the drifts of the Communist regime in the USSR, the two schools (1984), standpoint in favor of the private school at the time of the law Savary, or Musulmanes (1987), bitter glance on the condition of the woman in the Arab countries. This last song, which wants to be before a whole homage to the Arab women, will in addition make the effect of a denial to suspicions of racism who had been able to plane on him, just like the privilege (1990) will be perceived like a denial with the charges of homophobie carried in its connection.

In 1987, Michel Sardou obtains the recognition of its pars by receiving the Victoire of the music of the best song for Musulmanes . Four years later, it will be the Victoire of the music Better male interpreter for the album the privilege and the round Bercy 91. Years 1990-91 can, in addition, being regarded as the apogee of its career in terms of success and recognition on behalf of the public and criticism.

Michel Sardou, who was a friend of Coluche and was present the day of the creation of the Resto du coeur, will take part with Jean-Jacques Goldman, Johnny Hallyday, Veronique Sanson and Eddy Mitchell with the very first round of the Enfoirés in 1989.

A relative decline, but a faithful public (1991-2001)

In the Years 1990, Michel Sardou is done more discrete on the media scene and the waves. Its songs go less better out of radio; there is hardly but the Vat G (1992), polemical song on the French education system, which makes speak about it. The tube machine seems to be blown.

Sardou is surely less in the air of time, but this relative decline is explained partly by its rupture with his/her principal collaborators (Pierre Delanoë for the words and Jacques Revaux for the compositions), like by a new priority given to its activities of actor. He plays in a film, Promotion settee , in 1991, several telefilms, and assembles several times on the boards.

If it is distinguished less out of radio, Sardou does not meet of them less always same success on scene, continuing to beat records of frequentation (it obtains in 1998 the victory of the music of the greatest number of spectators in round). In the same way, its record sales do not decline, because of fidelity of its public.

At the end of the round Bercy 2001, Sardou announces to want to put an end to its career of singer.

The years 2000

Sardou initially seems to withdraw music scene to be devoted to its activities of actor and director of the Théâtre of the Door Saint Martin's day.

But with the signature, in 2004 is after 35 years at Tréma, of an new agreement near the major of the disc Universal Music, the exit of a new album entitled Of the pleasure , the participation like godfather in the emission Star Academy, and the organization of a large news turned in 2004 and 2005 with the Sport hall of Paris, with the Olympia, in province, Belgium, Suisse and with the Canada, Michel Sardou proved that it had not given up his career of singer. This return is crowned of an unquestionable business success, since its album was sold with more than 1.200.000 specimens and that Sardou was, in 2004, the singer best paid France. To note that the Duet with the Québécois singer Garou, the river of our childhood , again opens to him the doors of the principal musical radios general practitioners, thing which had not arrived any more since 1992.

Its new double album, entitled Except format , left the November 13rd 2006. It includes/understands 23 new songs of which a duet with Chimène Badi, song of the men . The first extract of this album is Beethoven , available in legal downloading since the September 11th 2006. Except format reached since the 400.000 sold specimens, it is double platinum.

In 2007, it starts a round which it says being the " dernière" , which passes amongst other things by the Zenith of Paris and Olympia.

Private life

Michel Sardou was married three times:

with Francoise Pettré, dancer. They marry in 1965, they Divorce NT in 1977. Together, they will have two girls: Sandrine (born in 1970) and Cynthia (born in 1973).
with Elizabeth Haas, known as Babette. They marry in 1977, Divorce NT in 1998. From their union will be born two wire: Romain, writer (born in 1974) and Davy, actor (born in 1978).
with Anne-Marie Périer, girl of the actor François Périer, sister of the photographer Jean-Marie Périer and former editor association of the magazine It . They marry in 1999, with Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Work discographic

Albums

(P) only 45 turns/individual of promotion (except trade)

Emblematic songs

the Yankees , left in 1967 when the Général de Gaulle condemns the American intervention to the Vietnam and snap the door NATO. Sardou pays homage in this song to called American of the Second world war. The song is prohibited of diffusion on the French radios. At the same time, on a similar topic, he also interprets a polemical song, more to tend, If I had a brother in Vietnam
I live in France , considered like a provocation the shortly after the events of 1968. Some will say that it was about a song “Fasciste”.
Good evening Clara , comic song of 1972 when Sardou forges an image of assumed machist. Success of radio. It will go even further in I want to marry it for one evening .
the Disease of the love , surely largest tube of Michel Sardou, remained 11 weeks at the head of the Hit parades. The melody is inspired by the Canon de Pachelbel.
Cities of loneliness , which, as of 1973, mentions the problem of the cities and the ambient trouble which pushes the residents “to be burst of the banks”, “Viol er of the women”… The song is badly received by the movements Féministe S which protest highly. Sardou will réabordera the problem of the suburbs in 1984, by avoiding any provocation, with the song Atmosphères .
a girl with the clear eyes , homage of a man to his mother. One of the most famous songs of Sardou on the topic of the subsidiary relations.
France , homage to the steamer France then moored with the “quay of the lapse of memory” to the port of the Harbor. The song, which remains one of the largest tubes of Sardou, is greeted at its exit by the trade unions and the Communists, at the same time as it contributes to give of him the indication of a singer Patriote.
I will love you , erotic song of Amour , and this as of the first sentences: " To make fade all the Marquis de Sade, to make redden the whores of the roads… "
I show , lampoon denouncing the great drifts of humanity (Pollution, Guerre S, Génocide S…). One of greatest successes of Sardou in its vein " polémiste".
the time of the colonies , very discussed song, shown racism, and which remains one of the texts of which interpretation is reproached Sardou.
I am for , song on the Loi of Retaliation seen by the father of an assassinated child, left during the lawsuit Patrick Henry. Sardou makes scandal, but is defended to discuss the Capital punishment by evoking the Loi of retaliation and the instincts paternal. With final, the author considers to have written a musical whodunnit.
By singing , almost childish old story which sounds like a return to the sources, with the evocation of the childhood of the singer and of its father, recurrent themes in its career. Handing-over with the last style by the Star Academy in 2004.
I steal , song on the running away, that Sardou composed only, with double reading level: on the one hand the catch of autonomy of a teenager who leaves towards the unknown, and on the other hand the suicide of a déboussolé young man leaving a letter to his/her parents.
I did not die, I sleep , petition of a man refusing to die. It was, in the repertory of Sardou, the preferred song of François Mitterrand.
To be a woman . An attempt to gather all the desirable women of this beginning of the the Eighties.
lakes of the Connemara , lyric evocation of the Ireland, surely the tube more indémodable of its repertory. Traditional of the evening coeds and village f4etes.
Africa Good-bye , song typical of the taste of Sardou for the voyage describes on a lyric mode. Pessimistic vision of the African third world. Rythmée song but melancholic person, who will be brightened thereafter in concert where it will lose its direction first.
It was there (the armchair) , homage of Michel Sardou to his father Fernand Sardou. Topic of the passage of torch between generations of artists.
Vladimir Ilitch , indictment of 1983 against the drifts of the Soviet Union. Sardou there calls upon Lénine, and affirms that the ideals Socialiste S were lost in the Corruption and other deviances (" Lénine is raised they became fous" , reference to the Spring of Prague). To note that Sardou has constrained the anti Communiste Pierre Delanoë to include hagiographic passages with respect to Lénine: " Lénine is raised " , " you which had dreamed the equality of the hommes" .
the year Millet , historical song written with Pierre Barret, which binds the fears of the Moyen-âge to the crisis of today, two times being separated by an interlude from synthés and organ taking again the topic from the Dies Irae already heard at Saint-Saëns or in the " Symphony Fantasique " of Hector Berlioz. Mainly written to give place to imposing settings in scene in concert.
a woman my daughter , where Sardou pays homage to Rudyard Kipling and gives to an young girl a lesson to become an young woman and to satisfy her man.
Singer of jazz , song with high banc written by Jean-Loup Dabadie, guided visit of New York. Popular success, included in many concerts.
Moslem , great success near the public and of the critic: she is crowned song of the year in 1987 with the Victoires of the music.
Happy birthday , disillusioned song assessment on the trade of artist, where Sardou sings its love for America. It had just been 40 years old.
the privilege , after the Years 1970, where I show and the laughter of the sergeant had been worth to him to be taxed with homophobe, Sardou is repurchased by singing a lesson of Tolérance, account of the painful feelings of a young boy who pains to assume his Homosexualité.
Marijuana , the large last tubes of Sardou in solo: especially known song Rock'n'roll for its clip produced by Didier Kaminka and where figure, in particular, Thierry Lhermitte. The song goes back to 1990 and appears in the original soundtrack of the film Promotion settee , left the same year and in which Sardou holds a role.
the Vat G , stone launched in the garden of the Minister for Education Lionel Jospin on the “colleges dustbins”. Jospin is indignant that a “travelling acrobat” comes to make him the lesson.
Hello , ultimate collaboration of Sardou and Jacques Revaux, with a text of Dabadie inspired of " My more beautiful story of amour" of Barbara, whose Sardou will take again " The Noir" eagle; in its concerts of 2005.
French , written with Didier Barbelivien and Michel Fugain, where Sardou declares " because they are done Moslem in the name of the human rights, I love the French, even the French whom I do not love pas" , without this time to cause indignation, which will make say to certain observers " the Seventies are loin".
the river of our childhood , in Duet with Garou, it makes it possible Michel Sardou to rise in the first place of the individual signal S, after several years of absence in this place.
Beethoven , Michel Sardou, with the assistance of Didier Barbelivien, manages to mix the melodies of the genius of the classical music (the Andante of the 7th symphony, the Opening of 5th and the sonata with the moonlight) and the problems which the world meets at present. This song is accompanied by a clip produced by Olivier Marchal
Allons To dance , song on the current society. The appearance of the words of the song to the back of a national daily newspaper at the end of January 2007, made some waves. Indeed Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate UMP with the presidential election of 2007, established a plan of countryside very close to these last.

Sardou, a song writer and performer?

Sardou is especially known as an interpreter. It can play of the Piano and the Guitare; at the time of its last song recital, for the first time of its career, he played of these instruments on scene (guitar on Allons To dance in opening and piano on This song is not a in recall in the concert). If he very seldom wrote for other artists (a song written for Dalida: To sing the voices or another for Michel Fugain: Behind a song ), many which is those collaborated with him. Thus, for the compositions, one very frequently finds the signatures of Jacques Revaux, Jean-Pierre Bourtayre, Didier Barbelivien or Pierre Billon, his most frequent lyric writers being Pierre Delanoë, Didier Barbelivien and Jean-Loup Dabadie. It should be noted that since 2000, Sardou does not collaborate any more with these authors (except Barbelivien), but made the choice of the renewal of its team, while turning to younger personalities, like Jacques Veneruso or Robert Goldman (this last writing for him under the pseudonym of J. Kapler).

But these collaborations should not occult its credit of author and type-setter, even of composer-songwriter. He indeed signed or cosigné 90% of the texts of his repertory, of which a third as a single author. He also contributed to the composition of 15% of his songs, of which a third alone. He is also author and single type-setter on nine of his titles.

It is thus noticed that Michel Sardou is not only the interpreter of a repertory cut to measure by collaborators, but well an author with whole share, and an occasional type-setter, although it is not a Auteur-compositeur-interprète in a strict sense, i.e. the single craftsman of the near total of his repertory.

Style

How to classify Sardou?

By the great diversity of the explored styles and topics approached, Michel Sardou is not easily classable. The qualifiers generally employed to define it are: “popular singer” and “singer of varieties”, at the same time as “engaged singer”, which is paradoxical (see popular article Musique). Its songs fall under a traditional style, which privileges neither the text, neither the melody, neither the Orchestration, nor the voice, but looks after with equality these four components of a song.

Musical style

Musicalement, the songs of Sardou never had anything of revolutionist. He generally chose a musical style " neutre" , difficult to attach to a precise kind, and not seeking obviously more to like the young public that with the older public. For example, it is difficult to classify the Disease of Love in a category other than that, vague, of " varieties ". However, the singer knew to adapt his style to each time and to integrate new sonorities into his musical identity. One notices for example the influence of the Disco in certain songs of the end of the Années 1970 or the beginning of the Années 1980 ( I show , Être a woman …) or the abundance of the Synthetizer S in the albums of the Years 1980 ( Chanteur of Jazz , same water which runs , Rouge …).

The only constants which seem to emerge in heterogeneity from the orchestrations and the melodies are the importance of the coppers and the recurrence of the vocal flights, which are put at the service of a certain direction of dramatization and a lyricism that its detractors readily describe as grandiloquent. These typical features are found in good number of its successes: France , the Lakes of Connemara , I will love you , Vladimir Ilitch , Musulmanes … Some of his songs, less known, push to the extreme these characteristics and return in a tonality which one can describe as epic: a barbarian king , the year millet , I did not die I sleep , an accident , Vincent , Far , Beethoven …

Literary style

From the literary point of view, Sardou is not either innovating: its texts follow traditional diagrams, marked by regular rates/rhythms copied on the melodies and of the omnipresent Rime S, except for some very rare songs ( a letter with my wife , 1985). That is explained partly by the regularity of its collaborations with the lyric writers Pierre Delanoë and Didier Barbelivien, guards of a certain traditional line of the French song. The words result often simple, from the language running, even familiar, since Sardou, just like Georges Brassens or Renaud, likes to introduce coarse words into its texts (confers the simple title of the song Putain of time ). This crudeness of the language was a considerable element in the crystallization of violent reactions in its opposition during the years 1970 and contributed to label it as populist singer “”, even “demagog. ”

Recurrent themes

In the repertory of Sardou cohabit of the topics characteristic of the song of varieties, like the love or the subsidiary relations, and of the subjects suitable for the song with text or the committed song (criticism social and political, death), but as of the more frequent fields in Littérature as in song (the history, the voyage). This amalgam of topics borrowed from various opposite kinds of songs prevents from circumscribing it in a quite precise style, but forging mill its identity artistic.

Thus the songs on the Amour are most numerous (one counts among most famous I will love you , the disease of love , And will die of pleasure …), which is not astonishing on behalf of a singer known as " of variétés". But they are followed closely by the songs relating to the Politique and the description of our company (approximately 35 songs). One finds in this category of the songs such as I show , France , the two schools , the vat G , or recently Beethoven and Allons To dance …

Sardou also seems to attach a great importance to the Enfance, like with the relations between parents and children (about fifteen titles): I steal , It was there , a girl with the clear eyes , a woman my daughter , Petit … Not without bond with this preceding topic, one also finds many songs devoted to the time which passes and to the Mort (a score of songs), among which I did not die I sleep , the same water which runs , Roads of Rome …

The topic of the army and the war is omnipresent in many its songs. It seems that Sardou was deeply marked by its military service ( the laughter of the sergeant , 200 days more ) and that the war is a subject which challenges it: Verdun , walk ahead , the Yankees , the battle , If I had a brother …

Lastly, which marks more its difference with respect to the other singers of varieties, its repertory comprises many songs of Voyage, evoking a distant region (approximately 25), such as the lakes of Connemara , Africa good-bye or Musulmanes , and on the Histoire (a fortnight) of which the year millet , Danton or the Yankees .

Example: songs on America

The taste of Sardou for the songs of voyage is generally put at the service of its attraction and its fascination for the the United States. Although Sardou was often presented like a singer “jingoist” and “patriot”, it actually devoted much more songs to this country in which it lived several years (it had a house close to Miami) that with the France. Its very first success, the Yankees , watch already strong Atlantic tropism of its political orientations and geographical. Will follow, among most famous, the Java of Broadway or Chanteur of Jazz . This attraction was seen of an evil eye at the beginning of the Années 1970, when Sardou seemed to defend nozzle and nails the the United States into full war with Vietnam. But if it often evokes this country with a certain idealism - as in America of my ten years , Happy birthday or I had you well (“I often said Amérique/Je know that me I will go a jour/Et that I will return richer from there/Than Dupont de Nemours”) - it expresses per moments a real disenchantment, as in Los Angelien , which life in California says that one spends “three hundred days without rain/nothing to tell”, or in Eight days with El Paso , which, written following a voyage in the Colorado with Johnny Hallyday, the disappearance of environment Far-west with the profit of modernity regrets.

Michel Sardou continues today to place the Yankees , Chanteur of Jazz and the Java of Broadway in his spectacles. It should be known that it sang since 1973 only twice the Yankees in concert: it was in 1991, at the time of the Guerre of the Gulf and in 2004 and 2005, at the time of the second intervention American in Iraq.

Influences and filiations

By the syncretic aspect of its repertory, Sardou is not the heir to any French singer in particular. He recognizes himself nevertheless in a tradition of French-speaking singers with strong popularity, that of Jacques Brel, Jean Ferrat, Charles Aznavour, or Gilbert Bécaud. With respect to its contemporaries, it is as well connected with the rockers French Johnny Hallyday and Eddy Mitchell as with the artists of variety Claude François and Michel Fugain or with the singers with “committed” text Renaud and Maxime the Forester. But in the Années 1970, it is with Serge LAMA that it will be generally compared.

He asserts to have wanted “to make of Brel” to the whole beginning of his career, during the time former to the popular Bals . The influence of the Belgian singer will be found in many songs, particularly in the chief supervisor . Sardou forever hidden either its admiration for Charles Aznavour and the influence that this one could have on its work. Michel Drucker declares into 1994 that “in the register of the popular song of quality Michel is the natural successor of Charles… ”. In its repertory, the references to Charles Trenet are the reflection of another of its inspirations ( the Anatole, 1979 , the house of the holidays, 1990 ).

It is also difficult to clearly distinguish its heirs among the singers to the generation which follows it. But one finds behind the success of Florent Pagny of the receipts very close to those which ensured the success of Sardou. Other singers, like Patrick Bruel or Garou exploit fiber “singer popular”, and do not hide besides their admiration for him. Bénabar is also sometimes compared with him, having even been qualified of “Sardou of left”, but, contrary to Florent Pagny, he denies that Sardou had an influence on its work.

Controversies

Seldom a French singer will have crystallized as many polemics, of hostile reactions and quarrels that Michel Sardou. The range of its songs, throughout its career, largely exceeded the simple artistic framework: it has an obvious sociological dimension, even political. It is indeed not common that a singer of variety causes reactions up to more the high levels of the State, as Sardou could make it, since the Yankees in 1967, prohibited by the Général de Gaulle, until the Bac G , in 1992, which was worth to him to be made describe as “travelling acrobat” by the Minister for the State education of the time, Lionel Jospin. But the polemics around the singer will reach their paroxysm in the years 1970.

Charges

They are primarily the songs of Michel Sardou, often because of some lines, which are at the origin of the objections carried against him. For his detractors, Michel Sardou would be mainly:

sexist : it would defend in its songs of the patriarchal values , even male chauvinist pigs, machists. This charge also comes from the virilisation to the excess of its stage business in the first years of its career.

With regard to the texts, the first criticisms arrive with the old grooms (1973), in particular because of the sentence: “You gave me beautiful enfants/Tu ace the right to rest to you now”, of which the tone is perceived like very patriarchal. But it is especially the violence of the Villes of loneliness (1973), which marks, at the time, spirits. The lines of the second verse (“I want to rape women to force them to admire me Envie for drinking all their tears And for disappearing in smoke”) highly made react the feminist movements .

Sardou would thus push its male chauvinism at the point to defend the Viol in its songs. He would be also the cantor of a sexuality where the role of the man would be magnifié and that of the lowered woman, the reference to Sade in I will love you (1976), not being perceived as alleviating (“to make fade all the Marquis Sade/A to make redden the whores rade/A to make it shout thanks to all the échos/A to make tremble the walls of Jéricho/Je will love you”). The Sexisme supposed of Sardou can thus be summarized as follows: Miss in this table only the sexism, or the male chauvinism, as one will want. Not is not need to seek very far. Because the woman is in conformity here with the images of Épinal of a Mediterranean company. Marry, mother or whore, the woman of the Sardou universe does not have its place in these places of public rejoicing, with her the bed, the layers or the brothel. Marry, therefore, it has as a main role to provide blond to France.

homophobe . This charge is seen like the corollary of its sexism. One finds the elements with his load in the songs the laughter of the sergeant (1971), where Sardou reconsiders its passage to the army and evokes the memory of an effeminate sergeant (“the insane one of the regiment, preferred of the captain”) using of the “fayotage” to progress in the hierarchy, and I show (1976), where the term “fag” is employed in a pejorative context.

Nevertheless, Michel Sardou forever be victim of attacks on behalf of the homosexual community and these charges quickly dissipated himself. Besides the song the privilege , left in 1990, will give the indication of tolerant Sardou, understanding and opened in connection with the topic of homosexuality. It will go even until improving its own songs, since 1991, it does not pronounce any more “I show the men to believe of the hypocrites/Moitié fags, half hermaphrodites” but “I show the men to believe myself without limites/J' shows the men to be hypocrites”, when it sings I show in concert. However, its step can appear contradictory when, at the time of its live with the Sport hall in 2005, it takes again the laughter of the sergeant little before singing the privilege .

fascistic . It is necessary generally to include/understand by “fascist” his popular diminutive “facho”, which has a less strong direction and less marked ideologically and historically that the “fascistic” adjective. During Years 1970, “fascist” was however an invective much more widespread than to nominate a person with the ideas today approaching a line known as hard, even simply Conservatrice. Even if Humanity , inter alia, employs the term of fascist openly, one groups under this qualification a whole litany of charges related to certain preserving political standpoint of Sardou: Patriotism, Nationalism, Colonialism, Conservatism, Poujadisme, Populisme…

It is a label which one will very early join to him in his career, as of the Yankees in 1967, song that much interpreted like an unjustified standpoint in favor of the implication of the United States in the war of the Nâm Vietnamese soldier, even if the words do not refer clearly there:

“If the Yankees were not

there You all would be into Germanic

to be spoken about I do not know what

to be greeted I do not know who.

Of course the years

rifles changed is hands

passed a reason to forget

That one day one needed for it? ”

I live in France (1970) will install it thereafter in the role of the populist cantor of “deep France”, of the “silent majority”. He was presented a long time like the principal French, a moderate conservative right and patriotic line singer (post-gaullist), but its burning destroyers will go much further in the denunciation, as on this leaflet of 1977, where one can read: Call to Fascism: we do not hear any more that racist songs, or the apology for the Nazisme, moreover its service of order is composed of militants of parties of Extrême right-hand side, neofascists. With Minute and Parisian the, it is the insidious tool of a growing fascisation. These songs and newspapers encourage with the Haine and the Violence. These ideas are dangerous!! the songs which caused the greatest injury from this point of view to him, were those of 1976: the time of the colonies and especially I am for . One saw in the first an exaltation with the borders of the Racisme of the colonial time :

“Formerly with Colomb-Béchar,

I had full black servants

And four girls in my bed,

At the blessed time of the colonies.

Y does not have a Café, not of Coton, not of gasoline,

In France, but of the ideas that one has of it

Us, one thinks”

I am for , which calls on a father whose son has just been assassinated, and who swears in believed terms and violent one that it will find the assassin and will kill it, fire will put definitively at the powders. Sardou is shown of instrumentaliser the fears and the polemics, whereas France impassions itself for the murder of the small Philippe Bertrand by Patrick Henry, and to contribute to the call to the Lynchage. And especially, the singer is shown finger by a whole part of the left (and a minority fringe of the right-hand side) acquired with the free trade ideas of Robert Badinter, like the apologète of the Capital punishment:

“the philosophers, the imbeciles,

Because your father was weak,

Te will forgive but not me,

I will have your head in top of a mast.

You killed the child of a love.

I want your death.

I am for. ”

The point of view of Sardou

The singer, far from being insensitive with the reactions which it could cause, often deplored them, expressing at the same time his regret to be badly included/understood on behalf of a certain public, and his astonishment in front of the proportions which some can take polemical.

To defend oneself, it regularly uses a sales leaflet on the nature and the value of what is a song. He indeed affirms not to seek to transmit political or ideological message through his texts, and considers that the impassioned and politicized reactions that they could cause are unjustified and erroneous, because in shift with its intentions: I did not realize well either of the range of the songs. For me, they were only songs. Not professions of foi.

Its thesis is thus that of a quartering of the singer in the artistic sphere: the artist can cover political and polemical subjects, but always in a purely esthetic and scenic step, and not by militant activism.

This exclusively artistic design of the role of the singer confers on this one a certain latitude in the choice of the ideas to be expressed: not being prisoner of his characteristic “I” by his refusal to deliver any ideological message, it could consequently interpret characters with the first nobody without there being identity between its own ideas and those of the incarnated character. For example, it can adopt, the time of a song, the point of view of a man of the left ( Vladimir Ilitch , where it speaks in the name of a Soviet paying homage to Lénine, “You, Vladimir Illitch, You which had dreamed the equality of the men”) and, in another song, be expressed in the name of a man of the right ( the Time of the Colonies , which calls on a former French colonist regretting the time of the “Senegalese riflemen who all died for the fatherland”); but it would be an error to believe, in a case or the other, that Sardou seeks to announce its personal conviction.

This dissociation between character and interpreter approaches the step of the actor: These people-there have evil to admit that when one interprets like me fifteen, eighteen songs on scene each evening, one is not inevitably sincere, one plays of the characters. As an actor will play a priest, a pederast, a landlord, me I play an old groom, a boat, a prince. These are roles that I distribute myself. Then some come to seek me ideas that I did not have while too reading between the lignes.

As well able to speak in the name of a priest ( the Priest ), of the father of an assassinated child ( I am for ), of a boat ( France ), of Danton ( Danton ), of an hostage ( the Price of a man ), of an old woman ( Victoria ), of a homosexual teenager ( the Privilege ) or of a soldier who make fun of his homosexual sergeant ( the Laughter of the Sergeant ), Sardou puts at the place various characters whose it expresses the point of view, by preserving it “I ” like privileged mode of expression. It thus scrambles the tracks and the reference marks, and from its repertory releases a great quantity from ambiguities and contradictions. The polemics that Sardou caused would be thus only the result of a bad interpretation of its real intentions. He will say thus, in 1989, in connection with the Temps of the Colonies : The sky fell to me on the head. I believed to camp one of these characters of bar who tell all their life the battle of Indo-China. I partly failed. Certain journalists included/understood the opposite: I sublimated the colonial years! I incited with the racial hate! I like to sing with the first anybody. I enter a role thus as an actor would do it. Engagement is played. The scene is not a place where I confess myself. The misunderstanding always comes from those which do not listen. One says to them: “Sardou sings the colonies, they are ashamed!” Then it is a scandal!

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