‘French Sinatra’ sold 100m records
When Charles Aznavour, who has died aged 94, began his singing career in postwar Paris, the French critics dismissed him as too short and too ugly. They also hated his voice.
Far from being discouraged, he went on to become France’s most celebrated singing star, writing about 1200 songs and selling more than 100 million records during a
70-year career. He became known as the French Frank Sinatra, and not just for his songs. Both also acted in films, were notorious womanisers and kept coming out of retirement for ‘‘one last concert’’.
‘‘The critics were very harsh,’’ he recalled on his
90th birthday. ‘‘They said I was short and I agree, I’m not tall. But what they said about my voice was unfair.’’
Dubbed ‘‘the Love Pixie’’ by sections of the media, Aznavour seemed irresistible to women. There were rumours of affairs with Audrey Hepburn and Britt Ekland, which he denied, and an acknowledged affair with the teenage Liza Minnelli. He and Edith Piaf, for whom he wrote songs, were flatmates for several years. ‘‘We really loved each other, but it was not sexual.’’
His first marriage, in 1946 to Micheline Rugel, produced a daughter, Seda, a singer who occasionally duetted with her father, and a son, Charles. In 1956 he married Evelyne Plessis,
with whom he had a son, Patrick, who committed suicide in 1981. In 1967 he married Ulla Thorsell, who was almost 20 years his junior. They had a daughter, Katia, a singer, and two sons Mischa, an actor, and Nicholas, who managed his father’s business affairs.
He remained devoted to Ulla and claimed that they did not have a single argument in almost half a century of married life. ‘‘I was not faithful between the wives, which was fun,’’ he said. ‘‘But it became boring. You want a normal life – marriage and children.’’
Aznavour’s reputation as a womaniser, deserved or not, was reinforced by his poetic songs about ‘‘love and other sorrows’’, as he put it.
She, his most famous English-language composition, topped the British singles chart in 1974. He also recorded the song in French, German, Italian and Spanish, all of which he spoke fluently.
Aznavour’s songs also tackled difficult subjects. He wrote about masculinity and libido, depression, sex, prejudice and rape. His 1972 song
was one of the first to deal openly with homosexual love. Apres
L’Amour, about post-coital
exhaustion, was one of several of his songs that were banned by French radio in the 1960s.
Others who recorded his songs included Fred Astaire, Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Ray Charles, Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and Placido Domingo. Elvis Costello put
She back on the chart in 1999 when he covered it for the soundtrack of the film
Notting Hill.
He was born Shahnour Varinag Aznavourian in Paris in 1924. His parents were Armenians who had come to France as refugees from the Turkish massacres.
His father had been a singer, but in Paris he became a restaurateur. He soon went bankrupt, however, because he offered free meals to fellow exiles. The family lived in a single room. Aznavour left school at the age of 9 to take small acting roles and sang for loose change on the streets. He survived the German occupation of Paris in World War II singing in cabarets, while his parents hid Armenians and Jews in their apartment and his father joined the resistance.
Aznavour started to write songs with Pierre Roche. After the war he met Piaf, who began recording the songs.
He continued to write, record and tour into old age. ‘‘My wife says, ‘Stop working! You are old enough to stop.’ I say, ‘If I stop, I die.’ ’’ He was right. His latest world tour continued into this year. –