Beloved rocker Johnny Hallyday dies
Johnny Hallyday, a singer who helped bring rock and roll to France, where he sold more than 110 million records, rivaled the Eiffel Tower in popularity and acquired the status of an unabashedly Gallic — and consistently inexportable — Elvis Presley, died Wednesday. He was 74.
His wife, Laeticia Hallyday, announced the death to Agence France-Presse but did not provide additional details. Hallyday said in March that he had lung cancer, the latest in a string of health problems that included colon cancer and a hernia operation that led doctors to place him in an artificial coma.
Although Hallyday was often described as his country’s Elvis, he was also France’s David Bowie, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and Bono, a chameleonic rocker who endured cultural changes.
He sang against longhaired peaceniks one year (“long of hair, short of French rock star Johnny Hallyday and Laeticia Boudou after their civil wedding ceremony on March 25, 1996. Hallyday, France’s biggest rock star for more than half a century and a cultural icon, died Wednesday. He was 74.
ideas”), likened hippies to Jesus Christ the next, appeared in more than 30 films and was chosen to perform at an anniversary concert for the victims of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris.
His appeal was a mystery to many outsiders, who wondered how a culture that valued the elusive quality of “Frenchness” above all else could fall for a man who once moved to Switzerland for tax reasons, applied for citizenship in Belgium, Americanized his name and sought to infuse his music with the idealism of Norman Rockwell paintings and Western films.
Yet while drawn to English-language music and low-tax jurisdictions, Hallyday remained defiantly French, singing “les blues” before massive crowds at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where he appeared alongside dancers from the Moulin Rouge and drove a motorcycle across the stage.
Although he performed few original tracks in his early years, he ushered in a cultural revolution in France, where pop music had long been dominated by the gentle ballads of chanteurs Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour.
Christened by USA Today as “the biggest rock star you’ve never heard of,” Hallyday was largely unknown in the United States and attracted about the same scant attention in England.