For Elvis Presley everything changed when he aired nationally on the Ed Sullivan Show on September 9, 1956 and all of America took notice of him, definitively. For the Beatles, fame came thanks to their arrival in the USA which occurred a few months after the assassination of President Kennedy, restoring joy and hope to the children of a wounded and disillusioned nation.
For our Adriano Celentano the turning point came thanks to the Sanremo Festival, when he dared to present himself from behind, “disrespecting the public”, to guarantee an unforgettable start to his “24 thousand kisses”. All great artists have a “breaking point”, that moment in which their career took a leap.
«Too melancholy»
Françoise Madeleine Hardy had already recorded a few songs including “Tous les garçons et les filles”, which initially went unnoticed and relegated to a B-side: according to her record company, Vogue, it was “too melancholy” to please… everyone boys and girls his age. Nonetheless, director Pierre Badel shot an ante litteram video clip of the song at the explicit request of the chanteuse who, on the contrary, believed in it very much. It was broadcast on a television program, people liked it, but it still didn’t generate the hype hoped for. The evening in which everything changed was that of 28 October 1962: all the French were anxiously awaiting the results of the constitutional referendum on the direct election of the President of the Republic, an event that would change the history of the country forever. During one of the downtimes of the television program accompanying the count, the film was rebroadcast and the Françoise Hardy phenomenon was born.
A global, uncontainable phenomenon. That Parisian girl, twenty years old, was simply perfect, as were the Beatles, she was the one that all the boys and girls her age were waiting for. She was beautiful, very beautiful, of an austere, unostentatious beauty. She had her own style and was a trend-setter (nobody used that term yet, certainly not in France where they refuse to call l’ordinatéur computer). All of her imitated her style, her hairstyle, her wiry body was far from the model of buttery beauty imposed by her BB, but she was not in conflict.
Designers such as André Courrèges, Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne designed for her (the impressive metallic dress weighing almost 40 kilos made history). All the photographers wanted to portray her (among all Jean – Marie Périer, her first great love), all the songwriters wanted to write for her (among all Jacques Dutronc, the love of her life, married after many years in 1981), but she knew do it yourself too.
Because François, illegitimate daughter of a father who had never taken much care of that part of his family, raised by nuns, shy and sensitive, was above all full of talent. She had a flexible voice, not robust, but unmistakable. He played the guitar and above all he composed: during his career he recorded several songs by other authors and sang, in French, Leonard Cohen and Bacharach, Mina in “Se Telephone” and Celentano in “Il Ragazzo della Via Gluck”, in most of the time he wrote lyrics and music. And what lyrics, truly a reflection of the times, the fragility of love (being beautiful and famous is not enough to be happy), loneliness.
Style
And what music: rich in arrangements and always in step with the times, from the “yé yé” of the origins to sophisticated pop, without disdaining some small forays into rock and then gradually developing a very personal style. Of course, in her imagination she remains the girl of the Sixties, with the fringe and the suede jacket, with a confident look and a mouth that almost never indulges in a smile. She was much more. She was an actress for Vadim, for Frankenheimer (the famous “Grand Prix”), for Godard and Lelouch while in Italy we only had her play silly musicals. Ah, Italy!
In these hours many have praised her, but it should be remembered that as soon as her phenomenon exploded, Rai dedicated a broadcast to her – “Chez Françoise Hardy”, directed by Enzo Trapani – where the journalist Enrica Cantani states that the singer «is the symbol of the triumphant young people of today, those young people who are carrying out a revolution with songs and guitars”, but, be careful: this is not a compliment. Those guys are the cicadas, who waste time singing and playing, while the ants, the good people, keep the country going. First question: «A strange thing, Françoise… Everyone we interviewed gave you zero humanity, why is that?». And so on, following the script also used for our own youth phenomena, seen with condescending good nature by a generation certain that all the boys and girls of her age would have settled down. In reality, times, as a Hardy admirer warned, were truly changing and all the boys and girls of their age had noticed it.
