2023-11-16 14:15:01
As the anniversary of his death approaches, December 5, 2017, Johnny Hallyday is still back in the news: this time, two unreleased releases, on two different labels, are hot on his heels.
“Un cri” and “Grave moi le coeur” are not the first unreleased releases taken from limbo: “La nuit avec moi” and “Two sorts of men” were published in 2020.
So first there is “Un cri” composed and produced by Yodelice, one of the accomplices (guitarist-producer) of the singer’s last years. The song is at the heart of “Made in Rock’n’Roll”, an album which compiles ten other tracks already known by “Taulier”, remastered for the occasion. The whole, very rock, was released Friday by Parlophone, a label in the Warner galaxy, the star’s last record company.
Two weeks before “Grave moi le coeur”, delivered in a complete set of Johnny’s songs revisited in symphony and supervised by another of his former right-hand men, the star arranger Yvan Cassar, who worked with Vangelis and Charles Aznavour.
Release scheduled for December 1st under the aegis of Universal, the historic record company of “the French’s favorite rocker”. Before a resumption of the “Johnny Symphonique” tour in March and April 2024.
“Play with my friend”
Rarely, the artist puts his voice on a model, accompanied by an acoustic blues guitar, whereas, usually, he gets behind the microphone with a group to package a finished product.
But the song will remain in this first draft because it does not fit into the disc released a little later, “My country is love”, produced by Yodelice, which will be released posthumously in 2018.
Shaken by the disappearance of the interpreter of “Light the fire”, Yodelice will leave this title aside. Until the continued fervor of the fans pushed him to rework the song. By isolating the voice, the urgency of the tone calls for a more rock instrumentation, of which Yodelice was largely responsible. “I felt like I was playing with my friend,” confides the musician.
The text by Vincent Walter Jacob, a musician unknown to the general public, takes on a testamentary aspect, between personal trajectory and love of the United States.
“Grave moi le coeur” is a ballad, adaptation in French by Jean Fauque, famous lyricist who worked notably with Alain Bashung, of the Elvis Presley standard “Love me tender”. The title was rehearsed and put on tape, originally, in anticipation of the Las Vegas show in 1996 and one of the resulting records, “Destination Vegas”. But “The idol of young people”, as he was nicknamed in his early days, did not choose this piece either for the live performance or for the album.
“Maturity, abandonment”
However, the two men spoke for hours regarding this title of the “King”, founder for Johnny who had seen and heard it as a teenager in the cinema in the film of the same title, “Love me tender”, with Elvis as the actor- singer. During the show in Las Vegas, Johnny will perform it in its original version, in English.
After isolating the vocal track, Yvan Cassar set it with a new orchestration, while keeping Johnny’s “breath”. “We feel in this song his relationship to life, there is a maturity, an abandonment,” notes the arranger.
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