Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

HALLYDAY, Johnny

(b Jean-Philippe Smet, 15 June 1943, Paris; d 6 December 2017) He invented French rock'n'roll in about 1960. His mother was French, father Belgian' he was brought up by an aunt and grew up in the music hall, touring with a cousin and her husband, American dancer Lee Halliday; he appeared on stage at age five, made films and was inspired by Elvis Presley film Loving You '57. His second record was a hit '60. He represents France (to the French) the same way Maurice Chevalier did (to the rest of us), but he decided to be tops in France and ignore the rest of the world; he is not a rock singer at all, but with music-hall skill makes the French think he is: 'a mixture of Cliff Richard, Liberace and Tom Jones', said Jean-Bernard Hebey (disc jockey, then TV/radio producer). He was married to Sylvie Vartan, singer of Y,-Y, (yeh-yeh, a mindless pop genre); they were magazine fodder until splitting '74. He has 60 gold records (100,000 copies in France); his adroit changes of style have included album Hamlet -- Hallyday '76, a bizarre musical version of Shakespeare, one of his hits. He once filled the 6,500-seat Zenith concert hall in Paris for a series of concerts lasting three months; the Johnny Hallyday Boutique on the Left Bank sold T-shirts, photos, jogging outfits, etc (a marketing logo was a red heart pierced with a fist). Almost none of his records were released outside France, but he is said to have sold 110 million of them. He won praise for his acting in the Jean-Luc Godard film Detective '85.