In the middle of the last century, upon landing in Paris, intellectuals and artists went to the Café de Flore, hoping to run into Sartre, Beauvoir and company. International singers tended to have more carnal goals. Thus, John Lennon adored Brigitte Bardot: he forced his first wife, Cynthia, to become a version liverpooliana of the French. Without giving up, of course, getting intimate with Bardot. But their agendas did not coincide: in 1964, when the Beatles arrived triumphantly at the Olympia in Paris, Brigitte was filming outside.
The meeting finally took place in London, in May 1968. Brigitte and some friends were staying at the Mayfair Hotel. There appeared a Lennon accustomed to easy conquests, but inexperienced in the continental arts of seduction. Nervous, he had the bad idea to take LSD. In the presence of the goddess, he was unable to speak (John did not know French and her English was poor). Total fiasco.
When Bob Dylan was around Françoise Hardy, he was more careful. Dylan had as his ambassador in France the singer Hughes Auffray, translator of his repertoire, who explained to him what the interpreter of All the garçons and the girls. He left testimony of his hanging in Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), which included on the back cover that poem that began: “For Françoise Hardy / on the banks of the Seine…”.
The Dylan who arrived at the Olympia in 1966 was a force of nature, who had transformed rock with his music and his attitude. With the world at his feet, He demanded to meet Françoise. She agreed. She was backstage at the theater and then at the George V Hotel, where the American played I Want You and Just Like a Woman, love songs that he had recorded for the monumental Blonde on Blonde. They were too direct messages and she felt uncomfortable.
A couple of things to know about Françoise Hardy. After a tough childhood, she took precautions against male drooling. A born survivor, she had learned to be observant. She didn’t like the circus that surrounded Dylan; She said that Dylan himself seemed fragile, a candidate for an early death. He eventually deduced that he probably thought he was in love with her, but that he was only attracted to her image. And he continued to be. Never sent letters from Dylan to Hardy have been discovered. When he performed in Paris, he would inevitably ask about her, and he would disregard her suggestions to introduce himself.
It could have been different, if Dylan had understood that she was an artist, surely open to collaborating. As Blur’s Damon Albarn did when recording the exciting duet of The comedy in 1995. In full luxury: at Abbey Road, with orchestra and accordionist. As Françoise Hardy deserved.
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