It was a strange moment. Riding in the car, the girls trying to tell me all the 'super news' at the same time and the radio on. I couldn't even hear my thoughts when Johnny Hallyday came on. I'm unable to remember what song it was, but that voice… It's unmistakable. I traveled to 2017, to the funeral procession of the Parisian singer along the Champs-Elysées. After the official procession – how well they pay tribute to their legends in France – hundreds of bikers accompanied one of the fundamental figures of European rock. Music that he demonstrated could be sung in a language other than English.
As we tried to get home, I kept connecting the dots in my head. From his funeral with Paris decked out, I went to a little gem that went unnoticed in the avalanche of weekly releases on streaming platforms. In 2022, Netflix released the documentary miniseries 'Johnny Hallyday, beyond rock'. Six chapters, between 30 and 40 minutes, that serve to review the artist's life. And it doesn't do it like a usual documentary in which family, friends and experts appear sitting in a chair to reflect on the good and the bad – in Hallyday's life there was a lot of both sides – of the singer. They appear, yes, but as a subtle accompaniment.
The documentary uses the enormous amount of audiovisual material existing in six decades of career. Images of concerts, weddings, fans or the dozens of interviews he gave throughout his life come together to tell the biography of a particular being, who marked an era in the neighboring country, a way of understanding music and be an artist He constantly claimed that he had met Elvis. It was a lie. But he had to cultivate his figure.
#France #Johnny
