«Maman est partie». While the whole world is wondering how to say goodbye to Françoise Hardy, citing the title of one of her most famous songs, it is with these three words that Thomas Dutronc announced the death of her mother. And with a black and white photo of a chubby newborn Thomas and a radiant and beautiful Françoise, as always. Leaving, leaving, is what he has wanted to do for some time, as he reiterated in the last interview given to Paris Match last December: «To go to the other dimension as soon as possible… immediately and quickly, without having to suffer great trials, such as the impossibility of breathing». She had been ill for twenty years. In 2004 she discovered that she had cancer, which after phases of remission would return several times and in various forms. Already in 2021 you had invoked the right to euthanasia in France, and you had criticized the President of the Republic for the stalemate in the debate on the issue. “Most of the time I live in a state of nightmarish suffering,” she told RTL. She was not made of spirit alone, therefore, despite her appearances.
«ÉGÉRIE» of the Sixties like her peer Jane Birkin, who passed away just under a year ago: they were two similar women in their androgynous and dazzling beauty, both anti-Bardot in their absence of curves, large clear eyes and long, straight hair. Jane and Françoise were, however, opposites in their conception of their role and private life. If the Birkin-Gainsbourg couple lived in public 24 hours a day, greedy for covers and sensational titles, feeding on their disruptive force towards customs and common morality, Hardy had long since chosen privacy, a life away from the spotlight.
She was born on January 17, 1944 under German occupation, during an air raid alert, and grew up with a single mother whose name she bore. A melancholic and complex girl, she found refuge like many peers in books and music. With a little risk, we could say, quoting Lou Reed, that Françoise’s life was also saved by rock and roll, thanks to the frequencies of Radio Luxembourg. Well ahead of its time, it is a guitar – still an exotic object in the hands of a girl in the punk seventies – that she wants to pick up. A black and white photo shows her asleep on a French bed while on tour, next to her the curved sheath of the instrument. It’s the rock sound of the guitar that she craves and that is denied to her at the time of All boys and girls. Another noteworthy detail: she was also the author of the song as well as the performer.
Françoise Hardy
What a person sings is an expression of who they are. Luckily for me, the songs we remember are the sad and romantic ones France discovered it on the evening of Sunday 28 October 1962, while awaiting the results of the referendum for the election of the President of the Republic. During a musical interval, a thin and shy creature appears on the screens, singing in a faint voice. The song becomes an international success. The media goes crazy for her, Paris Match he gave her the cover at the beginning of 1963 and consecrated her as a new musical idol. Madame Hardy (it’s not natural to call her Françoise) never tolerated that song because it was “very badly done”. Many years later you will discover Carla Bruni and Laurent Vaulzy’s version on Youtube. The arrangement of the latter was exactly what she would have wanted in 1962: with prominent electric guitar punctuations, Apache of the Shadows. And instead they had given her bland guitars, not at all resonating, “horrible”.
Another photo. London, April 1968. Françoise Hardy strides like an alien mannequin along the Embankment gardens, she wears a metallic jumpsuit by Paco Rabanne closed by a long zip on the front of her. Next to her, an elderly man in a pinstripe suit is dozing, slumped on a bench, stunned by the warm midday sun. The future and the past of humanity, generations that touch each other without locking eyes. She was a global star at the time, starring in films, fashion shoots, touring every corner of the world. She and she was already tired. 1969, the year of Comment te say adieu, directed by Serge Gainsbourg, is also the year of his first retirement from the stage: only TV and playback. Another withdrawal comes in 1988, when he announces that Décalages it will be the last album. In reality his last recording work will be Personne d’autre of 2018.
A CAREER so long and dense, which has embraced extramusical interests such as graphology and astrology, it is impossible to summarize. We won’t even focus on her centrist political positions, in favor of abortion but against feminism. The only cause she identified with was ecology. She leaves a France dangerously poised on the edge of the far right.
Another snapshot, then. A little girl putting a 45 on the turntable. She is The times of love. The perfect song to evoke the nostalgia of childhood and pre-adolescence, Hardy’s voice makes the colors and atmospheres of Wes Anderson resonate. In 2012 Moonrise Kingdom it puts it back into circulation among the new generations, just as Anderson had used years before, in the Tenenbaums Fly by Nick Drake, contributing to his rediscovery. The last slide is an imaginary shot, a collaboration that never happened. The photo shows them together in the studio, smiling. Two diaphanous and shy creatures, two ethereal voices for a melancholic duet rediscovered after decades in a dusty archive, on a forgotten reel, but punctually rediscovered by Light in the Attic. Today, among the many successes, we would listen to precisely that, for a posthumous happy ending, fifty years after Nick’s death, while we say doucement adieu to Françoise.
